Women And Religion in Sixteenth-century France

"This work considers how French women participated in Christian religious practice during the sixteenth century, with their words and by their actions. Using extensive original and archival sources, it provides a comprehensive study of how women contributed to institutional, theological, devotional and political religious matters. Susan Broomhall explores women's involvement in institutional hierarchies and regulation, their ideas about religious doctrine and the divine and diabolical, how they shaped meanings of active spiritual expression, and how they contributed to political and military aspects of religious life. Significantly, the work shifts focus from what men said about women's religious participation to what women themselves said about their contributions to religion. Challenging the view that religious reform and ideas were imposed by male authorities upon women, this study argues instead that women, Catholic and Calvinist, lay and monastic, were deeply involved in the culture, meanings and development of contemporary religious practices."--BOOK JACKET.

Susan Broomhall is Senior Lecturer in Early Modern European History at the University of Western Australia.