Religious Houses

Abstract

Abstract This chapter focuses upon the devotional lives of British and Irish Catholics between 1641 and 1745, paying particular attention to the women who went on to become nuns. Specific examples illustrate how the spiritual experiences of the cloisters were intricately linked to those of the Catholic communities at home, where the faithful adapted their worship to compensate for the scarcity of priests, sacralizing domestic time and space, investing traditional rituals with new militancy, and imbuing holy objects with supernatural powers. Whilst some of these customs were universally sanctioned by the Church, others were more local or even highly individual, sometimes exceeding the guidelines defined by the Council of Trent. The integration of the idiosyncrasies of domestic devotions to monastic practices reconciled continuity and change. It bridged the traditional gap between lay and religious life, overcame the geographical distance between the British Isles and the Continent, and brought together a glorified past, a sanctified present, and a future return of the four nations to the Roman faith, thus questioning the validity of the paradigm of separation in religious life.