Communities of Catholic Virgins in the Late Ming and Early Qing Dynasties

Abstract

In the late Ming and Early Qing periods, as Catholicism entered China, young women who kept chaste and abstained from marriage came to be known as “virgins” in some regions of the country. These virgins mostly came from homes that had observed Catholicism for multiple generations and therefore shared familial relations. Naturally, because they were located in different regions, the reasons for their chastity varied. For a woman to cultivate purity by keeping chaste and abstaining from marriage was counter to traditional Chinese moral notions, so these virgins were reproached by people outside of the faith at the time. During the one hundred years that Catholicism was prohibited in China, some virgins gradually began to leave home and began to engage in church work.