Negotiating religious change and conflict: Female religious communities in early modern Ireland, c.1530–c.1641

2017 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 357-382 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bronagh A. McShane
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Women Religious ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Religious Change ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
Monastic Life ◽  
Devotional Practices ◽  
Sphere Of Influence ◽  
Religious Vocations

This article explores how communities of female religious within the English sphere of influence in Ireland negotiated their survival, firstly in the aftermath of the Henrician dissolution campaigns of the late 1530s and 1540s and thereafter down to the early 1640s. It begins by examining the strategies devised by women religious in order to circumvent the state’s proscription of vocational living in the aftermath of the Henrician suppression campaigns. These ranged from clandestine continuation of conventual life to the maintenance of informal religious vows within domestic settings. It then moves on to consider the modes of migration and destinations of Irish women who, from the late sixteenth century onwards, travelled to the Continent in pursuit of religious vocations, an experience they shared with their English counterparts. Finally, it considers how the return to Ireland from Europe of Irish Poor Clare nuns in 1629 signalled the revival of monastic life for women religious on the island. The article traces the importance of familial and clerical patronage networks to the ongoing survival of Irish female religious communities and highlights their role in sustaining Catholic devotional practices, which were to prove vital to the success of the Counter-Reformation mission in seventeenth-century Ireland.

Other Factors Influencing Religious Vocations

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thu T. Do
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Secondary School ◽  
Women Religious ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Factors Influencing ◽  
Religious Vocation ◽  
Devotional Practices ◽  
Religious Vocations ◽  
Primary And Secondary School

This chapter presents an overview of aspects that may influence women and men religious on their religious vocational decision during their childhood with their family and parish, their attendance of primary and secondary school, their participation in parish life, and their college years. The influential aspects addressed are: attending Mass regularly and devotional practices, having the opportunity to discuss and receive encouragement from others to discern a religious vocation, the witness of men and women religious, and being engaged in youth and voluntary ministry programs. The chapter concludes that while not every individual religious has opportunities to experience these activities in various environments before he or she decides to enter religious life, all the aspects complement one another and have an impact on religious vocational discernment and decision-making.

They Lived Under That Rule as Do Those Who Have Succeeded Them: Simultaneity and Conflict in the Foundation Narratives of a French Women’s Convent (10th–18th Centuries)

2021 ◽  
Vol 139 (1) ◽  
pp. 82-97
Author(s):  
Steven Vanderputten
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Women Religious ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Literary Genre ◽  
Eastern Region ◽  
Religious Institutions ◽  
Memory Culture

While foundation accounts of medieval religious institutions have been the focus of intense scholarly interest for decades, so far there has been comparatively little interest in how successive versions related to each other in the perception of medieval and early modern observers. This essay considers that question via a case study of three such narratives about the 930s creation of Bouxières Abbey, a convent of women religious in France’s eastern region of Lorraine. At the heart of its argument stands the hypothesis that these conflicting narratives of origins were allowed to coexist in the memory culture of this small convent because they related to different arguments in its identity narrative. As such, it hopes to contribute to an ill-understood aspect of foundation narratives as a literary genre and a memorial practice in religious communities, with particular attention to long-term developments.

RELIGIOUS CHANGE AND THE TIMING OF BAPTISM IN ENGLAND, 1538–1750

2009 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 269-294 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. M. KITSON
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Religious Change ◽  
Public Performance ◽  
The Public ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Medieval Church ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
Common Prayer

ABSTRACTThe religious reforms of the sixteenth century exerted a profound impact upon the liturgy of baptism in England. While historians' attention has been drawn to the theological debates concerning the making of the sign of the cross, the new baptism liturgy contained within the Book of common prayer also placed an innovative importance on the public performance of the rite in the presence of the whole congregation on Sundays and other holy days. Both religious radicals and conservatives contested this stress on ceremony and publicity throughout the early modern period. Through the collection of large numbers of baptism dates from parish registers, it is possible to measure adherence to these new requirements across both space and time. Before the introduction of the first prayer book in 1549, there was considerable uniformity among communities in terms of the timing of baptism, and the observed patterns are suggestive of conformity to the requirements of the late medieval church. After the mid-sixteenth century, parishes exhibited a range of responses, ranging from enthusiastic adoption by many communities to complete disregard in religiously conservative parts of Lancashire and Cheshire. Additionally, the popularity of saints' festivals as popular days for baptism fell markedly after 1660, suggesting a decline in the observance of these feasts.

Abortion and the Confessional in Counter-Reformation Italy

2012 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
pp. 443-484 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Christopoulos
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
The Social ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
Ecclesiastical Administration ◽  
Renaissance Italy ◽  
Late Renaissance

What did abortion mean in late Renaissance Italy? In what ways did the reforming Church conceive of it and try to regulate its practice? This study explores attitudes toward abortion in Italy in the second half of the sixteenth century through the lens of confessional discourses and practices. In the last three decades of the century, bishops and popes attempted to eradicate the practice of abortion by imposing shaming and increasingly severe punishments for its procurers. However, such initiatives were hindered by the social and practical consequences of bringing procurers of abortion to light. The ecclesiastical establishment had to rely on the secret space of the confessional to reform this aspect of morality. Exploring the negotiations between theological pronouncements and the sociopolitical realities of ecclesiastical administration, this article draws attention to the ambiguities inherent in early modern conceptions of abortion and contends that these led to inconsistent responses among Counter-Reformation ecclesiastical authorities.

Staging Vice and Acting Evil: Theatre and Anti-Theatre in Early Modern England

2012 ◽  
Vol 48 ◽  
pp. 156-169
Author(s):  
George Oppitz-Trotman
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Moral Evil ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Religious Change ◽  
Religious Writings ◽  
Moral Ambivalence ◽  
The Relationship

This article revisits the relationship between dramatic production and religious change in the sixteenth century, specifically by examining the allegorical Vice figure - a dramatic embodiment of evil forces - that came to particular prominence during this period. It suggests that the professional actor became increasingly associated with this figure of moral evil. I propose also that understanding the moral ambivalence of the actor’s presence can inform our understanding of many plays in which no obviously coherent Vice figure is present, but in which possibilities of such an allegory are important. It would be impractical to present this argument across the range of dramatic examples it deserves, particularly since substantial contextual argument will be necessary if the article’s conclusions are to have any weight. It is partly for this reason that an examination of Shakespeare’s Hamlet concludes the paper, a play needing no introduction. It will be suggested that the play’s issue of conscience was mediated in important ways by the actor’s potentially Vice-like presence, defined as such by Tudor legislation as well as by a variety of anti-theatrical religious writings.

‘Y Ganrif Fawr’? Piety, Literature and Patronage in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Wales

2012 ◽  
Vol 48 ◽  
pp. 107-123
Author(s):  
Katharine K. Olson
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Religious Change ◽  
Native Culture ◽  
Manuscript Tradition ◽  
Lay Piety ◽  
History Of ◽  
Welsh Literature ◽  
Medieval Ireland

This essay offers a reconsideration of the idea of ‘The Great Century’ of Welsh literature (1435–1535) and related assumptions of periodization for understanding the development of lay piety and literature in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Wales. It focuses on the origins of these ideas in (and their debt to) modern Welsh nationalist and Protestant and Catholic confessional thought, and their significance for the interpretation of Welsh literature and history. In addition, it questions their accuracy and usefulness in the light of contemporary patterns of manuscript production, patronage and devotional content of Welsh books of poetry and prose produced by the laity during and after this ‘golden age’ of literature. Despite the existence of over a hundred printed works in Welsh by 1660, the vernacular manuscript tradition remained robust; indeed, ‘native culture for the most part continued to be transmitted as it had been transmitted for centuries, orally or in manuscript’ until the eighteenth century. Bardic poetry’s value as a fundamental source for the history of medieval Ireland and Wales has been rightly acknowledged. However, more generally, Welsh manuscripts of both poetry and prose must be seen as a crucial historical source. They tell us much about contemporary views, interests and priorities, and offer a significant window onto the devotional world of medieval and early modern Welsh men and women. Drawing on recent work on Welsh literature, this paper explores the production and patronage of such books and the dynamics of cultural and religious change. Utilizing National Library of Wales Llanstephan MS 117D as a case study, it also examines their significance and implications for broader trends in lay piety and the nature of religious change in Wales.

scholarly journals Rural Seigneurs and the Counter Reformation: Parishes, Patrons, and Religious Reform in France, 1550–1700

2018 ◽  
Vol 87 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Tingle
Keyword(s):  
National Level ◽  
Religious Change ◽  
Catholic Reformation ◽  
Building Projects ◽  
Religious Reform ◽  
Parish Church ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
Devotional Practices ◽  
Clergy Support

This article examines the role of lay seigneurs in religious change in the French countryside in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, during the Catholic Reformation and a period of socioeconomic change in land ownership and exploitation. The focus here is on middling and lesser lords—the rough equivalent of the English gentry, who held land in a single province or evenpaysand had a frequent presence in their parishes—rather than the great nobles who operated at a national level. Brittany is used as a case study, for it was a province rich in rural lords and because relatively good source material survives. It is argued that seigneurs were important patrons of religious innovation in the countryside, particularly in the parish church. They were rarely innovators themselves, but they lent support and resources to the introduction and maintenance of new devotional practices. Lords worked closely with clergy, sharing their aspirations and ideas. Four areas were particularly prominent in eliciting their support: appointment of clergy, support of missionaries, new devotional practices, and funding of building projects and liturgies in parish churches. These combined family strategies of enhancing social status and individual means to salvation which were indivisible in the world of the lay rural nobility. It was from a traditional understanding of lordship that patronage of religious reform stemmed.

The Modern Reconception of the Early Modern Venetian Adriatic

2011 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
pp. 52-55
Author(s):  
Larry Wolff
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
East Coast ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Cultural Influence ◽  
Commercial Activity ◽  
Italian Culture ◽  
Cultural Sphere ◽  
Sphere Of Influence ◽  
Fernand Braudel

For Fernand Braudel, the early modern adriatic appeared, as it did on Venetian maps, as the Golfo di Venezia. Venice, ruling also over the Dalmatian coast and the Ionian Islands, controlled shipping on the Adriatic and made the Adriatic into the Venetian basis for commercial activity all over the eastern Mediterranean. Braudel also credited to Venice the establishment of an Italian cultural sphere of influence around the Adriatic: “The gulf was Venetian, of course, but in the sixteenth century it was more than this; it was the sphere of a triumphant Italian culture. The civilization of the peninsula wove a brilliant, concentrated web along the east coast of the sea.” Braudel, carrying out his research in the 1930s and publishing in 1949, might have been well aware that the Italian trans-Adriatic presence, even when triumphant—as in the case of Mussolini's occupation of Dalmatia—might not be something to celebrate as brilliant. Furthermore, reconsidering the early modern Adriatic, one might today wonder whether the term “Italian”—with its modern national meaning—should be used with caution in describing early modern cultural influence. Indeed, one might simply suggest that Venetian power on the Adriatic was the vehicle of Venetian culture—not Italian culture—on the Adriatic, an early modern imperial rather than a modern national idiom, and present even at Ragusa, which was independent of Venice.

The Invention of the Unbeliever

2018 ◽  
pp. 98-128
Author(s):  
Ethan H. Shagan
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Limited Success ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Christian Society

This chapter analyzes how generations of scholars have trawled through several materials for evidence of “real” atheism, with limited success. More recently, a number of scholars have demonstrated that early modern atheism was a coherent concept with its own contours and meanings rather than simply a derogatory slur. As seen before, the Reformation and Counter-Reformation collaborated to transform belief into a principle of exclusion, making belief hard. The effect of this confessional logic is the discovery that a supposedly Christian society was in fact populated by legions of unbelievers. The chapter shows how the invention of the unbeliever was both a major component of the sixteenth-century revolution in belief and an important reason on why that revolution failed.

Fiona J. Griffiths, Nuns’ Priests’ Tales: Men and Salvation in Medieval Women’s Monastic Life. The Middle Ages Series. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018, pp. 360, 29 illus.

Mediaevistik ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 286-288
Author(s):  
Therese Martin
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Paradigm Shift ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Family Members ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
University Of Pennsylvania ◽  
Medieval Studies ◽  
Monastic Life ◽  
Multiple Levels

The year 2018 saw the publication of two important monographs, each with groundbreaking scholarship on complementary aspects of monasticism; together they offer a clear path forward for Medieval Studies as a whole. While Fiona Griffiths’s Nuns’ Priests’ Tales and Steven Vanderputten’s Dark Age Nunneries approach the essentially interrelated natures of men’s and women’s medieval monasticism from different perspectives, it is by reading them in concert that one becomes aware of the paradigm shift they signal. In a welcome change from a traditional consideration of so-called “double” monasteries as neither fish nor fowl, Griffiths and Vanderputten offer a feast of evidence for the multiple levels of interactions between the genders—including priests and nuns, students and teachers, patrons, family members, and rulers, as well as the conventionally understood mixed religious communities of monks and nuns—at majority female monasteries in Western Christendom from the early through central Middle Ages. Vanderputten starts at the beginning of the ninth century and carries his investigation forward to the mid-eleventh, at which point Griffiths launches her study, moving the matter on from the late eleventh century into the early thirteenth.

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