Nuns, Tertiaries, and Quasi-Religious: The Religious Identities of Late Medieval Holy Women
By Catherine M. Mooney
Medieval Feminist Forum, Vol.42 (2006)
Introduction: In her landmark essay, ‘Creating and Recreating Communities of Women: The Case of Corpus Domini, Ferrara, 1406-1452,’ Mary Martin McLaughlin recounts the creation and early histrory of a community of pious laywomen, and its eventual – and contested – reorganization into two enclosed monastic communities. Each accepted an approved religious rule which associated it with a major religious order, the Augustinians in one case, and the Order of Saint Clare in the other. The community of Corpus Domini proved a singularly useful case for historical analysis because a rich cache of documents allowed McLaughlin to trace its fortunes with a degree of detail often impossible for other women’s communities. Although published in 1989, McLaughlin’s essay still stands as the most exciting piece of scholarship I can think of chronicling the transformation of a group of pious laywoman, who possessed a relative degree of freedom, into regularized nuns subject to formal ecclesiastical supervision.
Click here to read this article from Medieval Feminist Forum
By Catherine M. Mooney
Medieval Feminist Forum, Vol.42 (2006)
Introduction: In her landmark essay, ‘Creating and Recreating Communities of Women: The Case of Corpus Domini, Ferrara, 1406-1452,’ Mary Martin McLaughlin recounts the creation and early histrory of a community of pious laywomen, and its eventual – and contested – reorganization into two enclosed monastic communities. Each accepted an approved religious rule which associated it with a major religious order, the Augustinians in one case, and the Order of Saint Clare in the other. The community of Corpus Domini proved a singularly useful case for historical analysis because a rich cache of documents allowed McLaughlin to trace its fortunes with a degree of detail often impossible for other women’s communities. Although published in 1989, McLaughlin’s essay still stands as the most exciting piece of scholarship I can think of chronicling the transformation of a group of pious laywoman, who possessed a relative degree of freedom, into regularized nuns subject to formal ecclesiastical supervision.
Click here to read this article from Medieval Feminist Forum
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