front cover of Canon Law and Cloistered Women
Canon Law and Cloistered Women
Periculoso and Its Commentators, 1298–1545 (Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Canon Law, Volume 5)
Elizabeth Makowski
Catholic University of America Press, 1997
Pope Boniface VIII (1294-1303) published a decree in 1298 that transformed long-standing attitudes toward nuns into universal Church law. Referred to as Periculoso, the first word of the Latin text, this decree announced that all nuns, no matter what rule they observed and no matter where their monasteries were located, were to be perpetually cloistered. With the exception of those who were contagiously ill, nuns were under no circumstances to break the law of enclosure, either by leaving their monasteries or by inviting unauthorized persons into them. Ultimately, the decree altered the lives of nuns, while indirectly abetting the move toward alternatives to the cloister. Although historians of women religious have frequently cited Periculoso as a milestone, the text of the law and the legal comment that its publication occasioned have never before been exhaustively studied. Canon Law and Cloistered Women provides the most thorough examination to date of the landmark decree. Elizabeth Makowski surveys precedents for Periculoso as well as some of the problems Boniface VIII hoped to solve with his legislation. She further analyzes the commentary on Periculoso, much of it written by practicing lawyers, which unveils late medieval attitudes toward nuns and their male counterparts. Finally, she concludes with a discussion of the attempts to enforce the legislation. Makowski's analysis illustrates not only the contribution that similar investigations of local efforts on the Continent might make to our understanding of conventual life, but also the difficulties—so often alluded to by medieval canonists—of making the "ideal" real.



ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Elizabeth Makowski is associate professor of history at Southwest Texas State University. She is the coauthor of Wykked Wyves and the Woes of Marriage: Misogamous Literature from Juvenal to Chaucer (SUNY Press, 1989) and the author of numerous articles and book reviews. PRAISE FOR THE BOOK: "This is a significant contribution to the study of female monasticism. . . . Makowski's work is a welcome effort to understand the monastic discipline of enclosure and its application to convents. . . . What Makowski does in this fine study is to help scholars understand what [Periculoso] meant, both in the context in which it was fashioned and in the world of subsequent commentary. . . . An important book that should be required reading for all scholars of male and female monasticism."—Sixteenth Century Journal



"This is a clearly written survey of the decree and of medieval commentaries on it up to the Council of Trent. It will be of interest to historians both of legal and social history as well as throwing light upon the background of a much debated topic among religious orders."—English Historical Review "[The] work is well-written, contains helpful information on the topic in context, and should be a useful resource for those interested in this historical era as well as for those intrigued by the institutional Church's less than even-handed treatment of cloistered contemplative women through the centuries."—Studia Canonica "The clearly written survey of legal commentary on Periculoso is this book's greatest contribution. Even technical points of law are explained with sufficient clarity, so that the matters at issue can be understood even by one who is not a specialist in mediaeval canon law."—Ecclesiastical Law Journal



"This study provides insight into the way in which the leaders of the late medieval Church dealt with what they saw as the threat that women's spirituality posed to the Church and how to control it. To that extent alone, it is a valuable contribution to scholarship."—Catholic Historical Review



"Makowski has explored the comment
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front cover of Convents and the Body Politic in Late Renaissance Venice
Convents and the Body Politic in Late Renaissance Venice
Jutta Gisela Sperling
University of Chicago Press, 2000
In late sixteenth-century Venice, nearly 60 percent of all patrician women joined convents, and only a minority of these women did so voluntarily. In trying to explain why unprecedented numbers of patrician women did not marry, historians have claimed that dowries became too expensive. However, Jutta Gisela Sperling debunks this myth and argues that the rise of forced vocations happened within the context of aristocratic culture and society.

Sperling explains how women were not allowed to marry beneath their social status while men could, especially if their brides were wealthy. Faced with a shortage of suitable partners, patrician women were forced to offer themselves as "a gift not only to God, but to their fatherland," as Patriarch Giovanni Tiepolo told the Senate of Venice in 1619. Noting the declining birth rate among patrician women, Sperling explores the paradox of a marriage system that preserved the nobility at the price of its physical extinction. And on a more individual level, she tells the fascinating stories of these women. Some became scholars or advocates of women's rights, some took lovers, and others escaped only to survive as servants, prostitutes, or thieves.



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front cover of Equal in Monastic Profession
Equal in Monastic Profession
Religious Women in Medieval France
Penelope D. Johnson
University of Chicago Press, 1991
In this study of the manner in which medieval nuns lived, Penelope Johnson challenges facile stereotypes of nuns living passively under monastic rule, finding instead that collectively they were empowered by their communal privileges and status to think and act without many of the subordinate attitudes of secular women. In the words of one abbess comparing nuns with monks, they were "different as to their sex but equal in their monastic profession."

Johnson researched more than two dozen nunneries in northern France from the eleventh century through the thirteenth century, balancing a qualitative reading of medieval monastic documents with a quantitative analysis of a lengthy thirteenth-century visitation record which allows an important comparison of nuns and monks. A fascinating look at the world of medieval spirituality, this work enriches our understanding of women's role in premodern Europe and in church history.



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Guide to the Catholic Sisterhoods in the United States, Fifth Edition
Thomas P. McCarthy, C.S.V.
Catholic University of America Press, 2002
In this edition, the communities of sisters have been arranged according to their general apostolic work, viz., contemplative, domestic, foreign and home missions, nursing, retreat and social work, teaching, and writing and publications.
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Out of the Cloister
A Study of Organizational Dilemmas
By Helen Rose Fuchs Ebaugh
University of Texas Press, 1977

Since Vatican Council II, convent walls have crumbled. and the structures that once separated nuns from the world are gone. Out of the Cloister is an organizational analysis of the structural and ideological changes that took place in Catholic religious orders of women in the United States. Many nuns today dress in street clothes, choose their own jobs, have a degree of financial independence from the larger order, and may not be recognized by their coworkers as nuns. What might once have been defined as a "total institution" has become, within the span of a few years, a type of voluntary organization where members join together loosely to achieve a common purpose.

Helen Rose Fuchs Ebaugh approaches religious orders as utopian communities and examines how contact with the larger society has affected the distinctiveness and solidarity that hold such groups together. She analyzes the patterns occurring within orders with particular focus on the relationship between organizational change and membership loss. Since changes have been introduced into religious orders at different rates, and since orders vary in such characteristics as size and educational level of members, it is possible to analyze relationships between exit rates and other organizational variables. The complex interplay of education and membership loss is one of the organizational dilemmas the author examines.

Although she is no longer a part of organized religious life, Ebaugh spent ten years as a nun and during that time collected much of the data presented in this book. As a nun she also helped conduct a number of self-studies and evaluations involved with the post-Vatican II reform and renewal efforts. She is therefore in the unique position of a researcher who collected data as an insider and analyzed it as an outsider.

This book is one of the first systematic, empirical studies of religious orders in the United States and one of the few sociological investigations of convents and the changes occurring within them.

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The Solitary Self
Individuality in the Ancrene Wisse
Linda Georgianna
Harvard University Press, 1981

The Ancrene Wisse is a spiritual guide for female recluses, written at the request of three young anchoresses who were voluntarily enclosed for life within small cells. With rare sensitivity and discernment, Linda Georgianna analyzes this complex and skillfully composed treatise and examines its detailed portrayal of the rich, sometimes rewarding and sometimes frustrating inner life of the solitary. Georgianna sees in the author’s practical and spiritual counsel, ranging from advice on owning a cat to the confession of sin, an assumption that exterior and interior realities are inextricably bound in the solitary life, which becomes a highly self-conscious journey through human experience.

The Solitary Self offers both a reading of this linguistically difficult text and a study of those contemporary intellectual and cultural concerns—particularly the widespread interest in the psychology of sin, confession, and repentance—which help to explain the Ancrene Wisse author’s insistence upon self-awareness and individuality in the solitary life.

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Transformation of American Catholic Sisters
Lora Quinonez
Temple University Press, 1993
"Lora Ann Quiñonez and Mary Daniel Turner once again serve American religious women well. Although their book focuses on the development of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, it...is also an account of the thought development of American women religious.... Besides describing areas of change, Quiñonez and Turner analyze and interpret them thoroughly and objectively and also compassionately, courageously, and readably." --Review for Religious During the past four decades, radical changes have occurred in the personal and corporate lives of Roman Catholic nuns in the United States; in their institutions and ministries; in their relations with laity, clergy, and hierarchy; and in their presence in the public sphere. In this book, Lora Ann Quiñonez and Mary Daniel Turner explore this transformation: the experiences that marked these changes, their effects on the women, and the future suggested by the nature of the reforms. The movement for change picked up speed in the decade after Vatican Council 11, which mandated the adaptation of religious communities to contemporary milieu. The impact of American culture on the sisters generated a struggle to reconcile American belonging and religious commitment into one identity. The Women's Movement caused a gradual awakening to the reality of gender as an element of personal and corporate identity. It made American nuns confront the structural questions that occur to awakened women and also confront the male Church hierarchy. This book is the first comprehensive analysis of the forces that directed the process by which American sisters have redefined themselves. "[Quiñonez and Turner ] offer a privileged perspective on the transitions that have taken place in the past 25 years.... [This] is an important work that will enlighten and challenge. It contains pieces of the ongoing transformation that are not found in the many other books on American women's religious life today. American sisters will appreciate this splendid effort to synthesize their experience. Others in the church will find that the experience of American sisters has much resonance with their own." --National Catholic Reporter "This well-written and well-documented book shows the energy, creativity, and highly organized response of these women to Vatican Council II and to the momentum which they themselves created. It is a testimony to the dynamism and creativity of the women in religious life in the past forty years. The book is a work of love and a tribute to all those women who have suffered and celebrated the transition thus far." --Marie J. Giblin, Maryknoll School of Theology
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Unequal Partners
In Search of Transnational Catholic Sisterhood
Casey Ritchie Clevenger
University of Chicago Press, 2020
When we think of Catholicism, we think of Europe and the United States as the seats of its power. But while much of Catholicism remains headquartered in the West, the Church’s center of gravity has shifted to Africa, Latin America, and developing Asia. Focused on the transnational Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, Unequal Partners explores the ways gender, race, economic inequality, and colonial history play out in religious organizations, revealing how their members are constantly negotiating and reworking the frameworks within which they operate.

Taking us from Belgium and the United States to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, sociologist Casey Clevenger offers rare insight into how the sisters of this order work across national boundaries, shedding light on the complex relationships among individuals, social groups, and formal organizations. Throughout, Clevenger skillfully weaves the sisters’ own voices into her narrative, helping us understand how the order has remained whole over time. A thoughtful analysis of the ties that bind—and divide—the sisters, Unequal Partners is a rich look at transnationalism’s ongoing impact on Catholicism.
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front cover of UNLIKELY ENTREPRENEURS
UNLIKELY ENTREPRENEURS
CATHOLIC SISTERS & THE HOSPITAL MARKETPLACE, 1865-1925
BARBARA MANN WALL
The Ohio State University Press, 2005

In Unlikely Entrepreneurs, Barbra Mann Wall looks at the development of religious hospitals in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the entrepreneurial influence Catholic sisters held in this process. When immigrant nuns came to the United States in the late nineteenth century, they encountered a market economy that structured the way they developed their hospitals. Sisters enthusiastically engaged in the market as entrepreneurs, but they used a set of tools and understanding that were counter to the market. Their entrepreneurship was not to expand earnings but rather to advance Catholic spirituality.

Wall places the development of Catholic hospital systems (located in Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Texas, and Utah) owned and operated by Catholic sisters within the larger social, economic, and medical history of the time. In the modern health care climate, with the influences of corporations, federal laws, spiraling costs, managed care, and medical practices that rely less on human judgments and more on technological innovations, the “modern” hospital reflects a dim memory of the past. This book will inform future debates on who will provide health care as the sisters depart, how costs will be met, who will receive care, and who will be denied access to health services.

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front cover of Women and Religion in Medieval and Renaissance Italy
Women and Religion in Medieval and Renaissance Italy
Edited by Daniel Bornstein and Roberto Rusconi
University of Chicago Press, 1996
Between the twelfth and the sixteenth centuries, women assumed public roles of unprecedented prominence in Italian religious culture. Legally subordinated, politically excluded, socially limited, and ideologically disdained, women's active participation in religious life offered them access to power in all its forms.

These essays explore the involvement of women in religious life throughout northern and central Italy and trace the evolution of communities of pious women as they tried to achieve their devotional goals despite the strictures of the ecclesiastical hierarchy. The contributors examine relations between holy women, their devout followers, and society at large.

Including contributions from leading figures in a new generation of Italian historians of religion, this book shows how women were able to carve out broad areas of influence by carefully exploiting the institutional church and by astutely manipulating religious percepts.
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front cover of Women, Art and Observant Franciscan Piety
Women, Art and Observant Franciscan Piety
Caterina Vigri and the Poor Clares in Early Modern Ferrara
Kathleen Giles Arthur
Amsterdam University Press, 2018
Caterina Vigri (later Saint Catherine of Bologna) was a mystic, writer, teacher and nun-artist. Her first home, Corpus Domini, Ferrara, was a house of semi-religious women that became a Poor Clare convent and model of Franciscan Observant piety. Vigri's intensely spiritual decoration of her breviary, as well as convent altarpieces that formed a visual program of adoration for the Body of Christ, exemplify the Franciscan Observant visual culture. After Vigri's departure, it was transformed by d'Este women patrons, including Isabella da Aragona, Isabella d'Este and Lucrezia Borgia. While still preserving Observant ideals, it became a more elite noblewomen's retreat.Grounded in archival research and extant paintings, drawings, prints and art objects from Corpus Domini, this volume explores the art, visual culture, and social history of an early modern Franciscan women's community.
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Women in the Vanishing Cloister
Organizational Decline in Catholic Religious Orders in the United States
Ebaugh, Helen Rose Fuchs
Rutgers University Press, 1993
Religious orders for women have existed for fifteen centuries, but their future in this century is bleak. In 1966, 180,000 women belonged to Catholic orders; by 1986 that number had decreased to 126,000. Helen Rose Ebaugh tells the story of the decline of these orders, set against the back drop of rapid social change and religious reform.
To illustrate the problem, Ebaugh takes us into a declining order, here named the Sisters of Service.  In 1990, only one candidate sought admission to the order, and the median age of members reached 70. While these demographic changes were occurring, the sisters adapted themselves to the reforms of Vatican II. The concept of a cloistered life faded. Nuns sought college degrees, gave up their habits, moved into apartments, and began to identify with the outside world. Vatican II further encouraged the nuns to democratize and decentralize.  Many nuns accepted jobs that paid poorly but were consistent with their goal of social service. They identified with the feminist movement and in turn influenced it.  
Ebaugh shows how declining orders have not followed the sociological model of organizational decline, one typically marked by centralized authority, a fear of risk taking, lack of direction, internal conflicts over turf, and low morale. Rather, they have established democratic structures, reduced internal positions in favor of committing resources to empowering the poor, abandoned security in favor of diversity in jobs and missions, minimized conflicts over scarce resources, and exhibited a sense of freedom rather than poor morale.   
Although Ebaugh is convinced that Catholic orders in the U.S. will not continue for long, non-canonical communities of women and associate programs are growing. Dedicated women can perpetuate the mission and spirit of the order without becoming vowed members.

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