Some of our organizers and collaborators were present and speaking at the 138th Annual Meeting of the AHA in New York, thanks to a session organized by Meghan Lescault (who received for the occasion an award from the American Catholic Historical Association); see the abstract below:
AHA Session 98: The Other Sister: Noncloistered Religious Women in the Middle Ages
American Catholic Historical Association 11
Saturday, January 4, 2025: 10:30 AM-12:00 PM
Chair: Kate Bush, College of the Holy Cross
- Katherine Ann Clark Walter, State University of New York, College at Brockport:
- Ashley Tickle Odebiyi, Arizona State University:
- Emma Gabe, University of Toronto:
A Feature, Not a Bug: The Legal Ambiguity of the Secular Chapter of Nivelles
Session Abstract: Throughout the history of Christianity, there have been diverse groups of women who led recognizably religious lives outside of traditional monastic structures. The Middle Ages saw a particular abundance of these forms of non-cloistered life. Despite their great numbers, these women were often met with suspicion, marginalization, and opposition by ecclesiastical figures of authority who considered aspects of their lives to be mutually exclusive, defining the religious and lay realms in complete contrast to each other. While we might have expected modern scholars to transcend these strict categories imposed by medieval clerics, it remains the case that non-cloistered religious women receive inadequate treatment in the scholarly literature despite the fascinating insights they offer in the areas of religious, social, cultural, economic, intellectual, legal, and material history. This is at least in part due to a historiographical tradition that imposes a monastic model on female religious life—the “good” religious woman was the cloistered nun. It is now time, however, to give these non-cloistered women their proper place in the historical record.
This session aims to fill this gap by drawing attention to the numerous forms of medieval female religious life and highlighting a few in particular. In featuring different kinds of non-cloistered women in different regions, it will display the great diversity found among these women while recalling their basic similarities. Moreover, the broad thematic range of the session will reflect the great variety of activities, lifestyles, and networks of non-cloistered religious women in the Middle Ages.
Non-Cloistered Religious Women 1100-1800