This study of English Benedictine nuns is based upon a wide variety of original manuscripts, including chronicles, death notices, clerical instructions, texts of spiritual guidance, but also the nuns' own collections of notes. It highlights the tensions between the contemplative ideal and the nuns' personal experiences, illustrating the tensions between theory and practice in the ideal of being dead to the world. It shows how Benedictine convents were both cut-off and enclosed yet very much in touch with the religious and political developments at home, but also proposes a different approach to the history of nuns, with a study of emotions and the senses in the cloister, delving into the textual analysis of the nuns' personal and communal documents to explore aspect of a lived spirituality, when the body which so often hindered the spirit, at times enabled spiritual experience.
Autorentext
Laurence Lux-Sterritt is Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History at Aix-Marseille University, France and a member of the Research Centre on the English-Speaking World (LERMA)
Klappentext
This book focuses on the Catholic women who became Benedictines in the seventeenth century, choosing exile in order to pursue their vocation for an enclosed life, within England or across the Continent. It uncovers previously unknown details about English conventual life and highlights the tensions between the contemplative ideal and the nuns' personal experiences. The study makes use of a wide variety of original manuscripts, including chronicles, death notices, clerical instructions and texts of spiritual guidance, but also the nuns' own collections of notes. The first four chapters of this volume adopt a traditional historical approach, to illustrate the tensions between theory and practice in the ideal of being 'dead to the world'. It offers a prosopographical study of Benedictine convents in exile and shows how those houses were both cut-off and enclosed yet very much in touch with the religious and political developments at home. The next four chapters propose a different point of entry into the history of nuns, with a study of emotions and the senses in the cloister, delving into the textual analysis of the nuns' personal and communal documents to explore aspects of a lived spirituality when the body, which so often hindered the spirit, at times enabled spiritual experience. This monograph will appeal to scholars in the academic fields of early modern British history and literature, religion, Catholicism, and early modern women. It will also hold interest for academics studying emotions and the senses.
Inhalt
Introduction 1 The contemplative ideal of dying to the world 2 When spiritual and secular families overlap 3 The secular concerns of contemplatives 4 The missionary spirit of enclosed nuns 5 Taming worldly emotions and appetites 6 Divine love, an emotional panacea? 7 What place for the senses in contemplative life? 8 Illness, death and beyond: the body as witness Conclusion Index