From Goddesses to Anabaptists: Christian and Pagan Women in Premodern Europe

From Goddesses to Anabaptists: Christian and Pagan Women in Premodem Europe Sandra Billington and Miranda Green, eds. The Concept of the Goddess. London: Routledge, 1996. xiv +192 pp.; ill.; map. ISBN 0-415-14421-3 (cl). Jenny Jochens. Old Norse Images of Women. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996. xv + 326 pp. ISBN 0-8122-3358-1 (cl). Margaret Y. MacDonald. Early Christian Women and Pagan Opinion: The Power of the Hysterical Woman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. xiv + 276 pp. ISBN 0-521-56174-4 (cl); 0-521-56728-9 (pb). Jo Ann McNamara. Sisters in Arms: Catholic Nuns through Two Millennia. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996. xi + 751 pp. ISBN 0-674-80984-X (cl). C. Arnold Snyder and Linda A. Huebert Hecht, eds. Profiles of Anabaptist Women: Sixteenth-Century Reforming Pioneers. Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1996. xxi + 438 pp.; ill. ISBN 0-88920-277-X (pb). Bruce L.Venarde. Women's Monasticism and Medieval Society: Nunneries in France and England, 890-1215. Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press, 1997. xix + 243 pp.; ill.; maps. ISBN 0-8014-3203-0 (cl). Jeryldene Wood. Women, Art, and Spirituality: The Poor Clares of Early Modern Italy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. xiv + 272 pp.; ill.; maps. ISBN 0-524-49602-0 (pb). Lisa M. Bitel Inclusion. Equality. Difference. Separatism. Sexuality. Womantalk. These concepts have driven feminist practice and theory for the last two centuries . Today, daughters write nostalgically about theU mothers' great feminist achievements in the 1960s and 1970s in order to repeat their mothers' successes, while neofeminists bash those same mothers in the name of postfeminist individualism and sexual freedom. Second-wave feminists have moved past activism to personal reflection, and have settled down to writing memoirs. Meanwhile, young women across America are rebuilding the feminist wheel, trying to remember how to orgardze and practice consciousness-raising. Among religious groups, the same old arguments persist as well. Last © 1998 Journal of Women's History, Vol. 10 No. 3 (Autumn) _____________ 1998 Review Essay: Lisa M. Bitel 193 March, Pope John Paul told Catholics that the Church was in need of a woman's touch, but he did not mean a touch on the eucharist. Although he endorsed women's participation in Catholicism, his views reinforce limits on traditional roles for nuns and laywomen. According to John Paul, it is women's responsibility to promote a type of feminism that does not imitate models of male domination and which surmounts all discrimination , violence, and exploitation. Elsewhere in the Western world, the concepts of inclusion, equality, difference, separatism, and womantalk still set limits for debates among religious groups over women's participation in institutionalized religion. Should women be full participants in ecclesiastical hierarchies? Should they be priests and rabbis? What about religious canons that denigrate women and reduce them to secondary roles? Should there be woman-only religious congregations and church groups? Lesbian ministers? Do women have a separate and distinct religious voice that will never precisely echo men's? This same range of concepts defines the historiography of women's roles and representations in Western religious traditions. In fact, neither scholars nor students seem able to move beyond these basic feminist issues . Every year I teach a course called "From Goddesses to Witches: Women in Premodem Europe." When my students come to discuss our readings, they bring to the texts the same immediate concerns as their feminist predecessors: inclusion, equality, difference, separatism, sexuality , and womantalk. How did women of classical antiquity participate in formal religions organized by men? Was the Irish Brigit as great a saint as Patrick? Did women mystics perceive themselves as privy to an exclusively feminine spirituality? Why did women withdraw from society, and what kinds of solidarities did they form? How can institutionalized religion within patriarchy ever accomodate women; how can women ever speak to god/dess from within patriarchy? The students strongly believe in a golden age of goddess-worshipping and gender symmetry, destroyed by the Fall—that is, by the intrusion of men's societies and religions which at first completely oppressed women. Lately, they insist, things have gotten much better for spiritual women, and they are going to get even...