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By Force and Fear: Taking and Breaking Monastic Vows in Early Modern Europe

Online ISBN:
9780801463174
Print ISBN:
9780801449772
Publisher:
Cornell University Press
Book

By Force and Fear: Taking and Breaking Monastic Vows in Early Modern Europe

Anne Jacobson Schutte
Anne Jacobson Schutte
University of Virginia
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Published online:
18 August 2016
Published in print:
7 July 2011
Online ISBN:
9780801463174
Print ISBN:
9780801449772
Publisher:
Cornell University Press

Abstract

An unwilling, desperate nun trapped in the cloister, unable to gain release: such is the image that endures today of monastic life in early modern Europe. This book demonstrates that this and other common stereotypes of involuntary consignment to religious houses—shaped by literary sources such as Manzoni’s The Betrothed—are badly off the mark. Drawing on records of the Congregation of the Council, held in the Vatican, the book examines nearly one thousand petitions for annulment of monastic vows submitted to the Pope and adjudicated by the Council during a 125-year period, from 1668 to 1793. It considers petitions from Roman Catholic regions across Europe and a few from Latin America and finds that, in about half these cases, the congregation reached a decision. Many women and a smaller proportion of men got what they asked for: decrees nullifying their monastic profession and releasing them from religious houses. It also reaches important conclusions about relations between elders and offspring in early modern families. Contrary to the picture historians have painted of increasingly less patriarchal and more egalitarian families, the book finds numerous instances of fathers, mothers, and other relatives (including older siblings) employing physical violence and psychological pressure to compel adolescents into “entering religion.” Dramatic tales from the archives show that many victims of such violence remained so intimidated that they dared not petition the pope until the agents of force and fear had died, by which time they themselves were middle-aged.

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