Abstract
This chapter provides a brief historical overview of religious reforms and gendered traditions in the British Isles between Henry VIII’s break with Rome in 1534 and full Catholic Emancipation in the British Isles in 1829. It reveals the challenges faced by Catholics worshiping in an illegal, underground faith who would do what they had to do to be good women and men AND good Catholics. The Catholic Church was on board … to a point.
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Notes
- 1.
The quality of histories of Ward varies between enthusiastic hagiographical accounts and rigorous scholarship wherein authors interpret critically the primary sources written by Ward and her supporters that were clearly biased in her favor. The full texts, many of them translated, of primary documents by and relating to Ward contained within Chambers (1882) are authoritative and invaluable. Only recently has a full body of documentation relative to Ward and her Institute become easily accessible to scholars, most notably in Dirmeier (2007), some of which duplicates texts provided by Chambers. Both resources are used throughout this book. Other important materials include the English Vita, or the Briefe Relation, a biography written shortly after Ward’s death, most likely by Winifred Wigmore and/or Mary Poyntz, two of Ward’s closest companions; an Italian Vita, possibly also by Poyntz or Elizabeth Cotton at a later date from Rome; and Ward’s incomplete Italian Autobiography. I will be using Kenworthy-Browne’s reprint and edited versions (2008). A biography/autobiography of 50 painted images known as The Painted Life is extant and displayed at www.congregatiojesu.org/en/maryward_painted_life.asp and the Convent of the Congregation of Jesus in Augsburg, Germany. Letters and other documents have been preserved in archives of the Congregation of Jesus at the Bar Convent, York; Munich; Nymphenburg; and Bamburg. Vatican archival material reflecting the Roman Church’s attitudes toward Ward and the Institute became available with the opening of Inquisition archives in 1998.
- 2.
Irish recusants were subject to the same penalties as English recusants (Burton et al. 1911).
- 3.
A Jesuit Irish mission was officially begun in 1598 and lasted until the suppression of the Society of Jesus in 1773. Ireland was not raised to provincial status until 1860, after the re-establishment of the order.
- 4.
By 1900, approximately 6000 followers were educating 70,000 girls in 200 schools worldwide without credit to Ward. Leo XIII’s Constitution Conditae of 1900 and subsequent Regulations of Canon Law in 1901 finally made it possible for women to live as religious under simple vows, paving the way for more diverse forms of religious life for women.
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McClain, L. (2018). The New Normal. In: Divided Loyalties? Pushing the Boundaries of Gender and Lay Roles in the Catholic Church, 1534-1829. Histories of the Sacred and Secular, 1700-2000. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73087-5_2
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