... career as it intersected with the city's evolving religious life. In a process similar to that experienced by Dutch Reformed and Scottish Presbyterian traditionalists, devotees of Whitefield's brand of Christianity overcame ingrained habits and embraced novel religious ideas. During his seven-week...

...This chapter discusses the lay female religious life in the early modern world. Simultaneously ignored, sanctified, suspected of heresy, lauded, and targeted for reform, devout laywomen presented both obstacles and inspiration in the milieu of early modern European religious life. The seroría...

... and for local purposes. Seroras occupied a central place within local religious life; yet the vocation was not static, nor was it immune to challenge. In the postreform years, conflict involving seroras and their communities provided a crucial opportunity for localities to engage with the practical aspects...

..., especially outside of large cities. Pivoting between the materiality of texts and the sociocultural contexts of an overlooked manuscript tradition, the book offers fresh insights into the role of parish priests, the pastoral manual genre, and late medieval religious life....

... experiences in the broader context of developments in female monasticism and religious life in Russia, as well as in Europe and North America over the same period. The book follows a Russian convent through all the stages of its life—from its origins in the eighteenth century to its flourishing at the turn...

...This chapter engages with commentaries on the commandments (or “hestis”) of God’s law across their full extent, as formal systems each of which attempts to find a balance amid the tensions involved in the lollard attempt to center the religious life of a community on the commandments—love versus...

...For too long, the study of religious life in Late Antiquity has relied on the premise that Jews, pagans, and Christians were largely discrete groups divided by clear markers of belief, ritual, and social practice. More recently, however, a growing body of scholarship is revealing the degree...

...This introductory chapter provides an overview of the book’s main themes. This book demonstrates how theatrical music from the late fifteenth to the early seventeenth centuries contributed to contemporary discourses on the power and morality of music and its proper role in religious life, shaping...

... music to evoke the feeling, if not always the reality, of social harmony. The book demonstrates how theatrical music from the late fifteenth to the early seventeenth centuries contributed to contemporary discourses on the power and morality of music and its proper role in religious life, shaping...

... reform program, and everything else was secondary. Other aspects of local religious life that did not mesh with official Tridentine reform ideals were allowed to slide to make way for more urgent reforms. In this context, the diocese judged that licensing the seroras was the easiest way to control...

..., the Bourbon reforms led to a drastic reorganization of local religious life. Some initiatives championed under the Bourbon reforms were well underway through regional reorganization and local initiative well before they were issued by official proclamation. In these cases, the Bourbon reforms merely expedited...

... religious life in the West expressed itself in relation to Benedict's Rule. Not having been able to implement her own rule during her lifetime, Clare of Assisi assumed the direction and government of the sisters of San Damiano as a Benedictine abbess. Cardinal Hugolino's Constitutions, followed by Clare's...

...William Shakespeare lived at a time when England was undergoing the revolution in ritual theory and practice we know as the English Reformation. With it came an unprecedented transformation in the language of religious life. Whereas priests had once acted as mediators between God and men through...

... to celebrating her Franciscan-identified sanctity—was the creation of a new model of an ideal lay life: the lay visionary. Giunta stakes his most powerful claims for Margaret's sanctity on the content, fervor, and results of her internal religious life. affiliation institutional construction of sanctity...

...This chapter traces the concept of forced monachization through treatments in imaginative literature from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries and then in historical writing. It shows how the incorrect assumption that only women were coerced into religious life developed, solidified, and has...

... young men to enter religious life—in essence, to prepare them for seminary—the college practiced religious tolerance and admitted students from a variety of Christian denominations. Consequently, few graduates entered the priesthood. As for the institution's educational purpose, the first prospectus...

... attendant with poverty and leprosy. Providing for and living with the poor, leprous, and suffering marked a pivotal moment of progress within the religious life. By the mid-thirteenth century active charity, manual labor, and service for those who suffered in this world became fundamental components...

...This book brings together a distinguished international group of historians to provide a sweeping introduction to Christian religious life and institutions in medieval Italy. Each chapter treats a single theme as broadly as possible, highlighting both the unique aspects of medieval Christianity...

..., Julian of Norwich, and Margery Kempe. This book offers the first comprehensive history of English medieval mysticism in decades—one that will appeal to anyone fascinated by mysticism as a phenomenon of religious life. The book begins in the twelfth century with the revival of eremitical mysticism...

... religious doctrine beyond the Rhineland, showing the impact it had on both women and men in professed religious life....