Women, Religion and Charity

Abstract

The special hopes which the Church pinned on feminine assistance in the furtherance of its cause and work were recalled in the seventeenth century by a multitude of references to its bestowal upon women of the engaging title of ‘the devout sex’.¹ Hopes were not disappointed, though their realisation caused a certain amount of embarrassment to the establishment that cherished them. Convents bulged with new recruits, but disturbing incidents within sacred precincts gave rise to questions about the soundness of vocations. Houses of God ushered into their portals gratifying numbers of female communicants, penitents and pilgrims, but observers discerned and castigated impure motives behind the outward regularity. Charitable institutions mushroomed, but the morals of the ladies who cultivated them were sometimes such as to spell danger for the physically and spiritually destitute. The zeal with which women propagated, suffered and even died for their religion was on everyone’s lips, but the religion concerned had often been pronounced heretical. The devout sex showed a touching desire to merit its accolade, only it did not always proceed along the strictly orthodox lines that pious ecclesiastics envisaged.