Apostate Nuns in the Later Middle Ages
Regular price
€92.99
14 days return policy
Shipping & Delivery
A01=Elizabeth Makowski
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
Author_Elizabeth Makowski
automatic-update
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=HRAX
Category=QRAX
convent
COP=United Kingdom
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
Language_English
nunneries
Nuns
PA=Available
Price_€50 to €100
PS=Active
softlaunch
Product details
- ISBN 9781783274260
- Weight: 442g
- Dimensions: 138 x 216mm
- Publication Date: 16 Aug 2019
- Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
A study of women who left their nunneries: their motives and actions, and the consequences for them.
To make a vow is a matter of the will, to fulfill one is a matter of necessity, declared late medieval canon law, and religious profession involved the most solemn of those vows. Professed nuns could never renege on their vows and if they did attempt to re-enter secular society, they became apostates. Automatically excommunicated, they could be forcibly returned to their monasteries where, should they remain unrepentant, penalties, including imprisonment, might be imposed. And although the law imposed uniform censures on male and female apostates, the norms regarding the proper sphere of activity for women within the Church would prohibit disaffected nuns from availing themselves of options short of apostasy that were readily available to monks similarly unhappy with the choices that they had made.
This book is the first to address the practical and legal problems facing women religious, both in England and in Europe, who chose to reject the terms of their profession as nuns. The women featured in these pages acted, and were acted upon, by the law: the volume shows alleged apostates petitioning for redress and actual apostates seeking to extricate themselves, via self-help and litigation, from the moral and legal consequences of their behaviour.
ELIZABETH MAKOWSKI is Emerita Professor of History at Texas State University, San Marcos.
