Devout Laywomen in the Early Modern World ed. by Alison Weber (review)

I have been delighted with the growth in recent decades of scholarly research on women's contributions to Christianity in early modern Europe. This research cultivates a healthy hermeneutics of suspicion vis-à-vis the stories that were and are still being told about women in history. By acknowledging that hagiography often supported a particular theological or ecclesiastical position regarding women, carefully culled archival evidence can offer a more authentic narrative of what women did and did not do in the period. Assumptions and barriers are being dismantled, hard questions are being asked of the data, and the tools of other disciplines are being utilized.

Devout Laywomen in the Early Modern World seeks to answer some important questions: How did the Council of Trent (1545–63) affect women who sought independent lifestyles in the service of the Christian gospel? Did the pre-Tridentine movement of beguines (by their many names) successfully avert yet another ecclesiastical minefield with the Council of Trent after the condemnations of the Council of Vienne in 1312? If so, how? How did devout women relate, formally or informally, to differing power structures in their day? In what ways were these women able to establish relationships with chaplain priests in order to protect and support their inner spiritual lives and ministries? How did these collaborative relationships challenge and upset post-Tridentine structures of power? In what ways were devout women a threat, and how did secular and ecclesiastic authorities respond? In what manner did these communities of women, who once might have been considered beguines, successfully negotiate their entry into apostolic orders of sisters? How were these apostolic communities received by authorities?

Devout Laywomen in the Early Modern World is a skillfully edited collection of articles that examines old binaries of "material and spiritual service, veneration and suspicion, Catholicism and Protestantism, authority and submission" (11–12). For too many centuries historians repeated tired stereotypes regarding women's "roles" and contributions without critical examination of the actual evidence. When determined to do so, women have always found some way forward. The articles in the collection are organized thematically: service (e.g., devout women's efforts to respond to the needs in their area); perceptions of holiness (how society and the Church responded to devout women's expressions of spirituality); confessional crossings (how women responded to the Reformations, maintaining their independent ministry and spiritual lives in the midst of an intentionally divisive movement); and alliances (the many creative lay and religious collaborations across social strata).

I am particularly delighted that Alison Weber has included research on Spanish devout women (beatas), a group that I did not encounter when I researched the phenomenon of beguines across Europe. This collection also makes a significant contribution to our understanding of devout women in Spanish America and the Philippines; of English recusant women who remained independent under religious oppression; and of women apostles in Japan. In this review, I can discuss only several of the very fine contributions.

In her chapter, "Illuminated Islands," Jessica Fowler examines the reach and effect (or lack of effect) of the Spanish Inquisition in the Philippines. Her lens is the (alleged) heresy of alumbradismo and the life of an indigenous Pampanga woman, Luisa de los Reyes, who did not speak Spanish and was identified as a beata. Fowler's exploration reveals that a charge of heresy by a former Jesuit, Francisco de los Rios—and the resulting investigation—educated the Filipino population on a case of alleged heresy about which they had been completely unaware. They learned that charges of heresy should arouse suspicion, as too often the charges are politically motivated, as they were in this case.

The story of de los Reyes in Fowler's essay recalls that of the earlier beguine of the Low Countries, Christina the Astonishing (1150–1224); de los Reyes's spirituality, sanctity and preaching stretch our modern imagination. She resided near one of the Jesuit missions and...