What Caused Women's Roles To Change In The Catholic Church During And After The Counter Reformation

Women and the Reformation

Tryntje Helfferich

Final MODIFIED: 24 September 2020

DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780195399301-0455

Introduction

The historiography of the Reformation era, roughly 1517–1650, was long dominated by scholarship that focused on theological developments, religious debates, and major reformers, such as Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Ignatius Loyola. The belatedly 20th century, however, saw an expansion in areas of scholarly inquiry, with many new works on the period'southward extraordinary cultural, social, economic, and political transformations and conflicts. Scholars increasingly argued, moreover, that the era had weathered not a single, traumatic "Reformation," but multiple and diverse "Reformations," whose impacts had rippled throughout early mod society in a variety of means. Function of this historiographical shift involved the exploration of new perspectives and voices, which included a growing interest in the role of women as active participants in and contributors to historical change. Scholars thus began to investigate the means in which women had experienced the Reformation, mayhap differently from men, and how the Reformation had influenced women's social roles, marriages, family lives, faith and religious expressions, and all other aspects of their everyday lives. In the process, there emerged what became a long-running controversy, often with confessional overtones, over whether the Reformation was "good" or "bad" for women. This has thankfully now died down, since partisans on both sides have mainly accepted that the question was not only overly simplistic, simply also tended to lump together all women equally an undifferentiated mass. All the same, readers cannot fail to detect signs of the old boxing everywhere they look. To explain information technology briefly, therefore, the argument on the one side was that Protestants, and particularly radical reformers, had benefited women by elevating them as equal to men in spiritual worth, introducing a more egalitarian class of marriage, which they had praised as a noble establishment, and freeing from their bondage the nuns previously forced into involuntary celibacy and enclosure. The statement on the other side, however, was that Protestants had, on the contrary, harmed women by toppling the Virgin Mary from her seat every bit Queen of Heaven and frowning on her veneration, and by discouraging women from turning to Mary or the female saints equally intercessors and models of strong and influential women. By closing the monasteries and emphasizing wedlock and maternity as women'southward highest calling, moreover, Protestants had limited the independence and freedom formerly enjoyed by women religious, ended the political and social power of abbesses, and removed women's ability to choose the single life.

General Overviews

Many very good general overviews that survey the lives of women in the Reformation catamenia are now bachelor. Some works, such every bit Bainton 1971–1977, Marshall 1989, Wiesner-Hanks 2005, and Stjerna 2009, focus particularly on how women engaged with or were affected past the religious changes of the era, with Bainton 1971–1977 and Stjerna 2009, and to a lesser extent Becker-Cantarino 1987, offer biographical sketches of important women leaders and reformers, such as Marguerite de Navarre and Argula Grumbach. Other works, including Becker-Cantarino 1987; Poska, et al. 2013; Capern 2020; and Wiesner-Hanks 2019, provide a broader outlook, highlighting not just religious topics, just also the enormous variety of experiences amid European women of the entire Early on Modernistic era (roughly 1450–1750). Most of these overviews besides hash out gimmicky ideas about gender roles and identities, taking into account such variables as regional divergence, socioeconomic condition or position, marital status, historic period, and, of grade, religious confession. The carve up Oxford Bibliographies in Renaissance and Reformation article "The Reformation" may also be of interest.

Bainton, Roland. Women of the Reformation. 3 vols. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1971–1977.

Pioneering multivolume piece of work that offers generally glowing biographical sketches of of import women reformers, writers, rulers, and more, showcasing their Reformation-era activities. Suggests that the Reformation brought religious equality for women (an idea now more often than not rejected by scholars). Volume 1 surveys women in Frg and Italy, Volume 2 those in France and England, and Volume 3 women elsewhere across Europe. Now somewhat dated, but still of interest as an introduction.
Becker-Cantarino, Barbara. Der lange Weg zur Mündigkeit: Frau und Literatur, 1500–1800. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1987.

Introduction to early modern women's literary production that focuses on where and how women lived. Chapters consider such topics as the theological understandings of women and marriage, the legal status of wives, women and the church, education, and the theater. The emphasis is on elite or exemplary women, and strong criticisms are made of the role of Protestant ideology in enclosing women within a private domestic sphere.
Capern, Amanda Fifty. The Routledge History of Women in Early Modern Europe. New York: Routledge, 2020.

Expansive survey of women's lives in Europe from 1450 to 1750. Includes discussions of such varied topics as educational activity and intellectual lives of women; work and material life; the arts and sciences; spirituality and emotion; bodies and sexuality; women'due south social lives, legal status, and political activities; and women's wellness and well-beingness. A few chapters deal specifically with Reformation themes such as Catholic piety and Protestant spirituality.
Marshall, Sherrin, ed. Women in Reformation and Counter-Reformation Europe: Public and Private Worlds. Bloomington: Indiana Academy Press, 1989.

Drove of essays by leading scholars that focuses on how the religious changes of the Protestant and Catholic Reformations influenced women'due south lives, the family, and women's piece of work. Well-nigh suggest that women experienced the era differently from men, and that its changes disadvantaged, or at to the lowest degree did not profoundly do good, women. Chapters embrace women of France, England, Federal republic of germany, the Nordic lands, Espana, Republic of hungary, holland, and Italy.
Poska, Allyson M., Jane Couchman, and Katherine A. McIver, eds. The Ashgate Enquiry Companion to Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe. Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2013.

Indispensable multidisciplinary overview of current research, written by leading scholars. Chapters examine women's daily lives and gender norms, and also stress the demand for scholars to embrace complexity by including multiple categories of analysis when analyzing women's experiences. Essays in Part i are specifically dedicated to religion and the Reformation itself, but essays in the other ii sections too impact issues important for understanding women'southward lives during the era.
Stjerna, Kirsi. Women and the Reformation. Oxford: Blackwell, 2009.

Later an overview of the major problems, including a discussion of female person mystics, controversies over endmost convents, marriage and motherhood, and education, the majority of the book provides introductions to the lives and ideas of ten leading women European reformers, leaders, and teachers. Practiced counter to more traditional male person-centered studies of Reformation-era thought. Points to the cryptic benefits the Reformation brought women. All-encompassing bibliography.
Wiesner-Hanks, Merry. "Women and the Reformations: Reflections on Recent Research." History Compass 2.1 (December 2005).

DOI: 10.1111/j.1478-0542.00073x

Extremely useful and thorough survey and assessment of scholarship from the concluding twenty-5 years on women in the Protestant and Catholic Reformations. Traces shifts in topics and methodologies and outlines areas for further research. Extensive bibliography. The best place to start for those seeking a historiographical survey of pre-2005 works.
Wiesner-Hanks, Merry. Women and Gender in Early Mod Europe. 4th ed. New Approaches to European History 41. Cambridge, Great britain: Cambridge Academy Printing, 2019.

The best and most outgoing general survey of the topic, nicely updated to reflect electric current scholarship. The book is organized thematically into 3 sections focusing in turn on women'due south body, mind, and spirit. Besides includes an excellent and clear introduction to women and gender history, with an explanation of the major historiographical debates and issues, too as a companion website with additional suggestions for reading and primary sources.
Wyntjes, Sherrin Marshall. "Women in the Reformation Era." In Condign Visible: Women in European History. Edited by Renate Bridenthal and Claudia Koonz, 165–191. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977.

Early effort to tease out the meaning of the Reformation for women, written as a contribution to a pioneering book of women's history (updated 1998 to a tertiary edition). Argues that Protestant ideas and shifts in attitudes toward marriage were positive developments in improving women's lives, and that the radical Reformation, in particular, eliminated distinctions based on sex, both ideas that take since been overtaken by far more than mixed assessments.

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