Female Mystics Research Articles

Medieval Female Mysticism and Weber’s Charismatic Authority: The Case of Angela of Foligno

Medieval Female Mysticism and Weber’s Charismatic Authority: The Case of Angela of Foligno

Мистика любви Хадевейх Брабантской и Мехтильды Магдебургской

The Christian worldview of the late Middle Ages was quite diverse, but at the same time extremely contradictory. Northern France, Flanders, and the German towns in the Rhine Valley were fi lled with various spiritual movements and beliefs that largely determined the spiritual climate of medieval Europe. One such spiritual current was the Beguine movement, which was condemned by the Catholic Church, as were many other religious sects during this period of European history. Nevertheless, the reasons for the persecution of the representatives of female semi-monastic communities are still not clear enough for us. On the one hand, we know that the condemnation of the Beguine’s is directly related to their social activities, because they created serious competition to the Catholic Church. But on the other hand, limiting ourselves exclusively to social reasons, we miss the fact that the Beguine movement was largely mystical and many representatives of women’s communities experienced extremely intense extraordinary experiences. Therefore, turning to the problem of the condemnation of the female mystics, we fi nd that the root of these persecutions lay in their reinterpretation of religious ecstasy, rather than their social activities. To substantiate this position, we examine in detail the representation of love-mystical cognition in two of the most infl uential beguines, Hadewijch of Brabant and Mechthild of Magdeburg. We observe that they not only express their extraordinary experience, but they also theorize it. The mystics abandon the notion of love-mystical cognition as a passive process of perceiving God. Instead, they turn to an active kind of love and justify a form of vita activa. This allows them to bridge the gulf between God and man, and to move independently beyond their own female bodies, burdened by medieval patriarchal norms. The female mystics, as we show, change the very relationship between woman and the world, thereby endowing her with greater autonomy in relation to medieval society and divine reality.

Purgatory and Hell in Medieval Female Mystics’ Visions

Death and the afterlife have always evoked both fear and hope among people. Consequently, they have endeavoured to gain a deeper understanding of what lies beyond life’s earthly realm. Christian teachings and the official doctrine of the Church offer a broad overview of this reality, leaving room for an expectation of a more detailed explanation of the fate that awaits individuals after death. Female mystics, particularly those who lived during the late Middle Ages, played significant roles in elucidating these destinies. Their visions and subsequent writings contain a wealth of details concerning the nature of eternal life, providing meticulous descriptions of the places and events that unfold after death. This article delves into their visions of purgatory and hell, examining their relationship with the official Catholic doctrine.

Die Middeleeus-mistieke en Kaaps-piëtistiese Kontekstualisering van Dorothea Magdalena Goosen (c.1774–c.1840) se Uitdrukkings van Liefdesnumineuse in haar Outobiografiese Aantekeninge en Poësie

Cape Pietism is a hybrid, transnational and transconfessional form of spirituality, emanating from the Pietistic movement in Germany, with its emphasis on medieval mysticism, piety and spiritual devotion to Christ, and Dutch Second Reformation influences. Feminine Pietists in South African frontier communities were the practitioners of this form of spirituality, analogous to similar trends in the mystical cultures in German and Dutch Medieval mysticism. In addition to the influence of religious literature of German and Dutch Pietists, the marginalisation and isolation of feminine believers on the South African frontier cultivated tendencies similar to those in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Pietism in Europe. Lay feminine spirituality in Cape frontier communities reflects forms of Pietistic mysticism parallel to the Beguines, the Dominican penitent women and female mystics elsewhere in Europe. Common to the diverse mystical cultures in Europe and the Cape frontier communities, is the expression of numinous experiences through mystical love metaphors—a legacy of Dionysius the Areopagite and other Neoplatonic Christian believers. Dorothea Magdalena Goosen is an exponent of Cape Pietistic tendencies with a strong undercurrent of melancholy and a feeling of spiritual abandonment. Her autobiographical ego-text and self-composed verses testify to her finding consolation in the grace of God through the inpouring of Christ’s love in her heart. Typical to female exponents of Cape Pietism, she longs for the heavenly rejoicing with Christ and the sweet elation of the heart following the embrace of the Bridegroom and restored consolation. Her numinous mystical experiences are recorded in Pietistic outpourings of love and bridal metaphors—mostly in an erotic form. A study of her mystical spirituality adds to broaden the corpus of knowledge of Cape Pietistic mysticism by tracing the roots of her love mysticism to the Neoplatonic legacy of German and Dutch female spirituality. The conclusion provides a clearer view of the mystical profile of feminine members of the petit bourgeoisie and their efforts at spiritual self-empowerment in their isolated living conditions in South African pioneering communities.

Apophasis, agency, and ecstasy: reading mysticism and madness in The Book of Margery Kempe

ABSTRACT This paper argues for a reinterpretation of madness and mysticism through an apophatic lens. By using Wouter Kusters' theo-philosophical definition of madness, I argue for a re-evaluation of female mysticism which rethinks ecstatic and ascetic devotion as a form of agency. Focusing on The Book of Margery Kempe, I reconsider theological passion and ground Kempe’s madness within the historical tradition of affective piety, which expresses a desire to join with the humanity of Christ. Within modern readership, there has been an impulse to label Kempe and other mystics with specific psychiatric diagnoses. In resisting this urge, I instead argue for a convergence of madness and mysticism which enables a paradoxical agency through negation of thought and language. This apophatic agency is precisely what imbues female mysticism with the potential for radical, queer social resistance. In extending this discussion to issues of fasting and abstinence, I then consider the role eucharistic devotion plays in enabling women control over the gastronomical and sexual parameters of their bodies. The denial of food and sex becomes integral to Kempe’s mysticism in asserting agency over the psychosexual self. Finally, I end with some reflections on how Kempe’s mysticism might influence contemporary discussions of mental health.

Бог-шар в немецкой мистике позднего Средневековья

The article deals with the phenomenon of mystical experiences inspired by pictorial images and literary texts within the framework of female mysticism in Germany at the end of the 13th — first half of the 14th centuries. The article consists of a preface and two parts. The preface briefly discusses the influence of local speech practices and particular image systems, developed and existing in everyday monastic life, on the content of ecstatic contemplations described by medieval charismatics. In part one, this influence is demonstrated through the example of one of the nocturnal ecstasies of Margaret Ebner, a nun of the Dominican convent of Maria-Medingen on the Danube (1330s-1340s). In part two, we consider the Beguine Mechthild of Magdeburg’s (last third of the 13th century) vision of God in the form of a sphere: it was by, inspired by the anonymous “Book of the XXIV Philosophers” (second half of the 12th century), very popular among German mystics and philosophers of the late Middle Ages. At the end of the article, the author raises the question of how the specificity and status of the literary and pictorial image, which had become a fact of mystical experience, was changing. At the same time, the new spiritual practice of self-determination, opposed by charismatics to traditional church piety, is briefly touched upon.

Twenty-first-century Galician food femininities in Lorena Conde’s Santa Inés and Oliver Laxe’s O que arde

Food metaphors and symbols are found everywhere in contemporary cultural production in Galicia, where food constitutes a key identity marker. Given the close connections between food and gender, the artistic representation of food is an excellent field to investigate Galician food femininities. This article examines two such examples. The play Santa Inés (), written and directed by Lorena Conde, and produced by A Feroz Teatro, is a feminist response, rich in food symbolism, to the Judeo-Christian metaphor of woman as sacrificial lamb. Drawing on the historical figure St Agnes of Rome (CE 291–304) and the childhood memories visiting a local convent of Inés Salvado, who plays the only characters onstage, the play discusses bodily autonomy and female mysticism. The film O que arde (2019) by Oliver Laxe, a key filmmaker of the Novo Cinema Galego, is a spiritually oriented work about middle-aged Amador who returns home to his elderly mother, Benedicta, after serving an arson sentence for burning a forest down. In the film, food, constantly present but in a subtle way, is both an earthly and a spiritual element that plays a key role in the construction of Benedicta’s gendered ageing identity.

The Heterodoxy of Female Mysticism Before and During State Socialism: Vasilica Barbu and the Vladimireşti Convent

Abstract Vasilica Barbu, also known as Mother Veronica, a seer and then an abbess in mid-twentieth century Romania, had visions of Jesus, Mary, and a variety of angels and saints, beginning in 1937. Supported by her parish priest and other local believers, she published an account of her visions and founded a convent for adolescent girls. The Vladimireşti convent proved to be very successful, but the Securitate (secret police) decided to close it down on the grounds that it was harbouring fascist fugitives. A close reading of how Barbu navigated the challenges of poverty, patriarchy, and the rise of state socialism reveals not only a story of incredible tenacity in the face of adversity but also how fundamentally religious values changed following the Second World War. Whereas in the late 1930s Barbu’s visions enabled her to bring together a strong community of supporters and to attract the attention of the most powerful men in the country, in the early 1950s both Church leaders and the Securitate attacked “mysticism” as heterodox and socially deviant.

Review: Black Utopias: Speculative Life and the Music of Other Worlds, by Jayna Brown

Review: <i>Black Utopias: Speculative Life and the Music of Other Worlds</i>, by Jayna Brown

The Life of Christina of Hane

The Life of Christina of Hane

Raptus en die ‘vorm van die wil’: ’n Transgressiewe lesing van Foucault se Augustinus-interpretasie in Les aveux de la chair

Raptus and the ‘form of the will’: A transgressive reading of Foucault’s interpretation of Augustine in Les aveux de la chair . This article presents a reading of Michel Foucault’s (1926–1984) interpretation of Augustine of Hippo’s (354–430) views on sex in Histoire de la sexualité 4 ( Les aveux de la chair ), published in February 2018 at Gallimard in Paris under editorship of Frédéric Gros. The article contributes to the reception and ongoing analyses of Les aveux de la chair by presenting a transgressive reading of the Augustinian prioritisation of the will, and Foucault’s emphasis on the Augustinian notion of sexual desire as the ‘form of the will’. Raptus or ‘divine orgasm’ is presented from the texts of several female mystics from the central Middle Ages as an example of a sexual context in which the will is unable to claim the pinnacle position Augustine attributed to it, precisely as a form of identity – and language transgressing eroticism in the ‘mystical presence of God’. Foucault’s reading of John Cassian’s (ca.360–435) ‘battle for chastity’ is presented as the discursive background of his interpretation of Augustine, followed by a presentation of raptus as a resource to reconsider Augustine’s prioritisation of the will (and the ‘problem of the libido’) in sexual contexts. Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: Foucault’s reading of the church and desert fathers in Histoire de la sexualité 4 ( Les aveux de la chair ) impacts early Medieval philosophy, early Medieval history, church history, patristics, philosophy of religion and sociology of religion. Since these proximate disciplines are affected by Foucault’s text, they may well take note of the ongoing examinations of this recently edited work.

The Economics of Female Piety in Early Sufism

This paper examines the economics of female piety between the third/ninth and sixth/twelfth centuries. It traces Sufi approaches to poverty and working for a living (kasb) as well as kasb’s intersection with marriage and women. Rereading Sufi and non-Sufi biographies and historiographies reveals that there were wealthy women who initiated marriage with renowned Sufis to gain spiritual blessings, and others who financially supported their husbands. While the piety of male Sufis was usually asserted through material poverty, the piety of female mystics was asserted through wealth and almsgiving. This paper examines this piety through different female kinships—whether mothers, wives or sisters. Similar to the spousal support of wives for their husbands, sisters very often acted as an impressive backup system for their Sufi brothers. Mothers, however, effected a great socio-religious impact through the cherished principles of a mother’s right to control her son and a son’s duty to venerate his mother. This devotion was often constraining financially and Sufis needed to pay attention to the financial implications while still pursuing progress on the Sufi path.

Sacerdotes, apropiación del discurso médico y experiencia mística en la Francia del siglo XIX

This article explores the appropriation of psychiatric terminology by French theologians and priests, within the context of the pathologizations of religion in the nineteenth century. This appropriation allowed the clergy to differentiate "authentic" mystical experience from feigned or "deviant" ones. Firstly, it analyzes medical and theological manuals that sought to create an opposition between hysteria and saintliness, which was useful from the ecclesiastical point of view. Secondly, it presents the reports of three priests on supposed female mystics with stigmata. It concludes that the appropriation of medical rhetoric by the clergy could be used to define the limits of religious experience approved by the Catholic church.

Black Utopias: Speculative Life and the Music of Other Worlds by Jayna Brown

570 SCIENCE FICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 48 (2021) BOOKS IN REVIEW Listen to Mad Souls. Jayna Brown. Black Utopias: Speculative Life and the Music of Other Worlds. Duke UP, 2021. ix+212 pp. $99.95 hc, $25.95 pbk. Jayna Brown’s Black Utopias: Speculative Life and the Music of Other Worlds is an innovative interdisciplinary text that brilliantly uncovers a rich current of radical otherworldly utopianism within Black life, thought, and expressive culture. She argues that the eclectic dreaming and practice of Black thinkers, itinerant preachers, musicians, and prophets provide an alternative ontology of being that works against prevailing concepts of liberation, progress, futurity, and personhood. In the vein of recent monographs such as Kara Keeling’s Queer Times, Black Futures (2019) and Zakiyah Jackson’s Becoming Human: Matter and Meaning in an Antiblack World (2020), Jayna Brown turns to speculative fiction and practice as a primary archive through which to query the Western human and the ways that Black imagination destabilizes and exceeds its logics. But Brown departs from any attempts, including those of foundational critical-humanist theorist Sylvia Wynter, to recoup the human. Rather, she focuses on how “black mystics and mad souls” who believed that they were “chosen” to lead others into “alternative dimensions of existence” have envisioned ways of being that are completely outside of the human (11). Incorporating and contributing to Black studies, feminist studies, philosophy, science studies, music criticism, and sf studies, Brown’s text advances a more critical interrogation of the radical potentialities (and problematics) of texts often gathered under the rubric of Afrofuturism. Deftly combining archival methods, critical theory, science studies, and literary and music criticism, Black Utopias assembles thinkers and creators such as Sojourner Truth, Sun-Ra, Alice Coltrane, Octavia Butler, and Samuel R. Delany within a tradition of dreaming beyond this “bleak and bloody dimension we are taught to call reality” (2). By claiming this diverse archive as speculative practice, Brown challenges the masculinism and linearity of Afrofuturism and Afrofuturism studies (16). Rather than Afrofuturism, she uses the language of utopia to describe the kinds of thought and practice that she traces—a term that resists the notions of class, progress, and heteronormativity that are often bound up with concepts of futurity. Rather, she prioritizes “possibilities for coeval otherworlds that instead require a complete break with time as we know it” (15). Throughout the study she explicates under-examined or misread dimensions of her subjects, warning against practices of selective memory in scholarship that minimize troubling aspects of intellectual and cultural producers’ lives and work in order to recoup them within fields’ and audiences’ political imperatives. Rather, she unflinchingly engages in problematics, tensions, and contradictions, gleaning important insights from an assembly of complex and sometimes contradictory voices in sf, scientific, and utopian thought. Black Utopias is divided into three parts with two chapters each: “Ecstasy,” “Evolution,” and “Sense and Matter.” The first chapter, “Along the Psychic Highway: Black Women Mystics and Utopias of the Ecstatic,” reads the lives, 571 BOOKS IN REVIEW travels, thought, and practice of nineteenth-century Black female spiritualists and mystics Sojourner Truth, Jarena Lee, Zilpha Elaw, and Rebecca Cox Jackson within a tradition of Black speculation and utopianism that cannot be siloed off from the radical utopian and spiritual movements of the nineteenth century. Brown argues that Black female mystics enacted a “spiritual theater” of preaching, worship, dreams, and visions to achieve, if briefly, states of ecstasy that suspend the boundaries among time, selves, and materiality. This ecstatic practice produces a “collective sense of self” that refuses liberalhumanist discourses of personhood and natural rights (25). This chapter does the urgent, paradigm-shifting work of recouping Sojourner Truth from the popular but false image of an always-old, Southern, long-suffering, faithfully Christian suffragist. Critically examining Truth’s involvement in communal and sexually radical utopian experiments and her complex relationship to the whites she lived among for much of her life, Brown probes the aspects of Truth’s life that are not easily enlisted in the politics of Black liberation or feminism that seek to claim her. In the second chapter, “Lovely Sky Boat: Alice Coltrane and the Metaphysics of Sound,” Brown places Coltrane in the company...

Authority and Power in the Medieval Church, c. 1000–c. 1500 ed. by Thomas W. Smith

Reviewed by: Authority and Power in the Medieval Church, c. 1000–c. 1500 ed. by Thomas W. Smith Beth C. Spacey Smith, Thomas W., ed., Authority and Power in the Medieval Church, c. 1000–c. 1500, Brepols, Turnhout, 2020; hardback; pp. 412; 19 b/w illustrations, 2 b/w tables; R.R.P. €100.00; ISBN 9782503585291. This is a superb and substantial collection. Thomas Smith has successfully marshalled twenty-two chapters in this interdisciplinary exploration of power and authority in the medieval Church, curating a varied yet coherent compilation. While some of the chapters are more explicitly linked to the book's central themes than others, the collection nonetheless succeeds in demonstrating how enormously variable Church power and authority was in form, justification, and expression over time and space. A key issue that emerges across the contributions concerns the Church's ability to move beyond claims to authority to act upon those claims, and how often those mechanisms of power were dependent upon local cooperation. The range of disciplines and approaches represented in this collection is commendable and highlights that much important research continues to be undertaken in what remains a vigorous field, and that many fruitful avenues of inquiry remain. Part I explores ideas of papal authority. Ian Robinson examines how eleventh-century ecclesiasts drew on fifth- and ninth-century ideas of judicial supremacy in their own discussions of papal primacy. Benedict Wiedemann explores how letters from the papal curia of Innocent III drew upon different methods to legitimize the Pope's authority as regent of the Kingdom of Sicily during the minority of Frederick II, while Rebecca Rist addresses the question of whether the popes of the eleventh to thirteenth centuries were anti-Judaic or anti-Semitic. Laura Cleaver examines how the genealogical diagrams contained in four thirteenth-century English manuscripts portrayed papal power and authority through the positioning of depictions of popes and their contemporaries. Part II looks to the authority of papal representatives. Smith uses the case study of thirteenth-century Languedoc to examine how the absence of local support could affect papal legates' ability to wield power, while Gábor Barabás outlines the varied fortunes of legates in thirteenth-century Hungary, from cooperation to incarceration. Philippa Mesiano uses the case of thirteenth-century papal nuncio Master Rostand Masson to consider how papal representatives exercised power [End Page 262] in their diplomatic destinations. Finally, Jean Dunbabin identifies how papal representatives could respond pragmatically to the local diplomatic landscape, by exploring a case of dual secular-ecclesial rulership in late thirteenth-century Sicily. Part III considers relations between the papacy and the Eastern Churches. The chapter by the late Bernard Hamilton examines papal attitudes towards the separated Eastern Churches in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and the papacy's prioritization of 'corporate' over 'individual' conversion. James Hill analyses the entanglement of papal power and its ability to achieve unity with and reform of the Byzantine and Armenian Churches respectively, while Mike Carr argues that the Avignon papacy did wield authority in its regulation of Latin trade with Muslims, as evidenced by trade licences. Part IV examines the cultural history of ecclesiastical authority and power. Matthew Ross traces cultural life at the medieval curia through the examination of the papal chapel. Jan Vanderburie analyses the symbolism of the Oignies treasures associated with Jacques de Vitry, arguing that Jacques deliberately drew on specific imagery in his self-fashioning. Catherine Lawless uses two images from the Florentine Franciscan context to explore the relationship between the power of female mysticism and the authority of friars, the latter of which recognized the devotional power of the former and acted as mediators with the realm of male ecclesiastical power. Kirsty Day demonstrates how examples of royal and noble women associated with female Franciscan communities in Bohemia and the Polish duchies challenge the narrative of women religious as defiers of male ecclesiastical authority. Part V discusses ecclesiastical communities. Nicholas Vincent considers how secular authorities exercised power over bishops, examining the conventions for the ordering of bishops in the witness lists of Henry II's charters. Maroula Perisanidi considers how Eustathios of Thessalonike offers an alternative model of spiritual and moral authority in...

Stagel, E. (2019). &lt;i&gt;Lives of the nuns of Töss&lt;/i&gt;. Ed. by M. Reutin. Moscow: Ladomir, Nauka. (In Russ.)

The book comprises manuscripts written by female mystics in Middle High German and Latin in the 1200s–1300s. The works are created in the genres of sister-books, revelations, Gnaden-vita (‘blessed lives’), and private epistles. In the comments to the collection, its translator and compiler examines various aspects of the origin and existence of medieval mysticism, reconstructing its historical and cultural context, and explores everyday behaviour and distinctive psychological traits of Dominican nuns and the Beguines. Based on the stylistic and verbal characteristics of the works, the scholar reveals the meaning of the metaphors employed and considers the utilized text-generation models and their connection with behavioural ones. This method appears highly relevant in the light of contemporary research into the performative character of medieval culture.

Catholic Patriotism and Suffering in the Wartime Letters of the Belgian Mystic Berthe Petit

Abstract This article focuses on the use of patriotic feelings and shared experiences of suffering to promote a new devotion. Studying her wartime letter-writing campaign, we examine the strategies that the Belgian mystic Berthe Petit (1870-1943) adopted to promote the devotion of the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary. By examining the letter writing of Petit and her father confessor during the Great War, we will show how, in 1909, the campaign initially focused on her own mystical experiences and corporeal suffering, but shifted during the war to emphasize that the future of Belgium, France and Britain, was linked to their consecration to the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary. Stressing the historicity of the mystic, we show how the war (1) provided new opportunities for mystically inspired, non-approved devotions; and (2) how the uncertainties and sorrows of the Great War offered female mystics new openings and lines of thought to explore.

Ciało mistyczne

This article proposes to include in the literary studies the body of texts written by the Christian female mystics, whose accounts have so far been the domain of theological discourse. The perspective offered here focuses on the bodily categories contained in the works of women mystics from the 19th and 20th c. such as: Leonia Nastał, Faustyna Kowalska, Zofia Nosko, Roberta Babiak, Rozalia Celakówna, all of whom qualify under the category of experiential or affective mysticism. The present articles focuses on two notions, i.e. on the one hand, the typology of describing the bodily experience in the mystical text, and on the other, the biographical features. The latter opens up a path towards the anthropological and cultural dimension in the analysis of mystical writings with a particular focus on the issue of illness, self-mortification and exhumation.

Embodying the Sacred: Women Mystics in Seventeenth-Century Lima

In this rigorously researched analysis of the lives of holy women in colonial Lima, Nancy van Deusen offers an exploration of female networks and their particular relationship to embodied holiness. She uses women's engagement with material objects as a primary focus to link a series of case studies, as such objects had both spiritual and didactic potential. As religious women moved in and out of spaces that were exclusively feminine, they communicated theological, devotional, and spiritual knowledge to each other. The monograph argues that women used such knowledge to gain greater autonomy and power.Part 1, “Material and Immaterial Embodiment,” focuses on material objects and their crucial role in early modern spiritual practice. It is divided into three chapters, each of which discusses the ways in which religious objects—such as sacred art, devotional books, and relics of living saints—became animated through the process of devotional focus. It further demonstrates how the objects activated multiple sensorial experiences that heightened women's access to the divine.Chapter 1 centers on Lima's most famous holy woman, Saint Rose of Lima, and her relationship with her female disciples. Rose, van Deusen demonstrates, taught her disciples through her own engagement with statues, print engravings, and cloth. Rose's example communicated how touch in particular could act as a conduit to the divine. In chapter 2, van Deusen expands the theme of materiality and the senses by focusing on the bodies of female mystics and their embodied experience of divine union. Here she connects mysticism with the practice of reading, arguing that holy women transformed into a kind of text that could be read. Seventeenth-century beata Ángela de Carranza, the subject of chapter 3, promoted herself as a living saint through distribution of her body parts (hair, nails, etc.) as though they were relics, highlighting how pieces of bodies could act as evidence for holiness. Taken together, these three chapters reveal how gendered activities connected to wider Catholic beliefs about the divine power of material objects.Part 2, “The Relational Self,” shifts to a discussion of how holy women constructed self-identities in relationship to others—specifically within communities of women and their networks of sociability. Chapter 4 addresses the vocations of women of color as donadas in Limeño convents. Donadas were essentially servants who had been “donated” to convents, usually beginning as slaves to well-to-do nuns (p. 96). Van Deusen looks at large-scale patterns by analyzing the applications of nearly 500 women to take vows as donadas, arguing that their lowly status in the convent did not bar them from spiritual and social networks and that many were able to achieve meaningful spiritual lives.In chapter 5, the author turns to María Jacinta Montoya, who toiled for years on behalf of beatification of her husband, Nicolás de Ayllón. Nicolás was a rare example of a holy person who was at once of low social status (a tailor), married, and indigenous. María Jacinta's efforts were complicated by her support of the controversial beata Ángela de Carranza (the focus of chapter 3) and her entanglement with the Inquisition. But the chapter focuses on María Jacinta's efforts to position her husband's holiness in relationship to herself in a kind of mirroring, contrasting her sinfulness with his saintliness. The last chapter discusses a civil suit that erupted between an affluent mother and her daughter, Josefa Portocarrero Laso de la Vega, over whether the daughter could take vows as a nun instead of getting married as her mother desired. The conflict between the two revolved around how each understood the application of the theological concept of free will. The chapter demonstrates how the relationship between Josefa and her mother shaped important discussions about adult women and freedom of conscience in eighteenth-century Lima.In the conclusion, van Deusen draws together the main themes of the book's case studies and argues that networks of women played crucial roles in the spread of information about the divine among women. The first and second parts of the book could be connected a bit more clearly, as they occasionally felt like different books, particularly with the strong focus on theoretical frameworks in the first part and the employment of social history methodologies in the second. Nevertheless, van Deusen is deft at uncovering fascinating and little-known women whose lives reveal a spectrum of behaviors, beliefs, and activities that shed new light on early modern devotional practices. While the focus here is on Lima, it is easy to see how van Deusen's female religious culture reverberated throughout the Catholic world.

Caleidoscopios de amor en la mística femenina medieval: Beatrijs van Nazareth y Hadewijch

This paper aims to show, through the analysis of two texts by two Dutch mystics of the thirteenth century, Beatrijs van Nazareth and Hadewijch, the beguine from Ambers, the new paths undertaken by thirteenth-century female mysticism. These paths lead to the fusion of the stairway of virtues, the itineraries of perfection, and the ways of amorous encounter with the divinity. Confronting a fundamentally ascensional topography that goes through a certain number of levels, which is typical of the traditional imagery of the stairway, this paper turns to the image of the kaleidoscope to understand the circular character of these new approaches and the need to understand the itineraries of perfection in concordance with the new spiritual practices of amorous mysticism.