Fictive Orders and Feminine Religious Identities, 1200-1600 by Alison More (review)

Alison More, Inaugural Holder of the Comper Professorship in Medieval Studies at the University of St. Michael's College in the University of Toronto, deserves to be warmly congratulated on the publication of her outstanding research on the changing devotional climate of the late Middle Ages, in particular the new religious movements that emerged during this period. Her study focuses on the extraordinary late medieval and early modern women who, desiring not to live as traditional religious, were known as anchoresses, beguines, klopjes ("spiritual virgins" or "spiritual daughters" living in the Reformed Netherlands), recluses, and tertiaries, and who enjoyed a deep influence on both their religious and secular worlds.

More has drawn on an impressive variety of sources, ranging from rules and sermons to books of personal reflection and vitae, in order to construct and support her argument, uncovering the groundbreaking roles the women played, often bringing to the surface for the first time in centuries their hitherto fictive or hidden histories. Previously a Fellow at Harvard Divinity School, where she researched women's studies, More has also held research fellowships at the University of Edinburgh and Radboud University. Since 2017 Professor More has organized the Annual Medieval Women's Writers Workshop at the Pontifical Institute for Medieval Studies and regularly hosts symposia on medieval women writers. A passionate Latinist, she studied Latin in Rome with Reginald Foster, the Pope's Latinist and the most important Latin teacher of the past half-century, and taught core courses on Latin and paleography at the Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies at the University of Kent.

Fictive Orders is in six chapters—most with a summarizing conclusion—with a helpful introduction, stating the book's aims and structure, and an epilogue, bringing the book up at least to the years of Vatican II. There is also a generous 30-page bibliography, which will serve as a first port of call for new researchers in the field, and a detailed index.

Chapter 1, "Penitents and the Institutionalization of Penitential Life in the Thirteenth Century," examines tertiary, Clarissan, and quasi-religious orders and the question of "foundation." The controversial issues surrounding traditional and new orders clearly explained in this chapter continue to be explored in the following one, "After Supra montem: The 'Spread' of an Order?" (Supra montem was the bull of Nicholas IV issued in 1289, which set out a rule for the "order of penitents"). This chapter details the problems of female saints and communities of nonmonastic women who "still did not fit comfortably into the ecclesiastical landscape" and churchmen, "who were uncomfortable with the irregular and extra-regular lifestyles of these women," and "instituted more rigorous constraints on their way of life" (40).

To my mind, "The Western Schism, Observant Reform, and Institutionalization," the third chapter, contains some of More's finest writing, correcting the very many misconceptions concerning the identities of houses of religious women that still dog modern research. The ways in which communities of nonmonastic women were portrayed from the late fourteenth century onward were subject to considerable change, with a return to following the ideals of their "founders" more closely, rather than experimenting with new ideas. As More describes, "Increased regulation was often misunderstood … contribut[ing] still further to a growing climate of suspicion" (85). Problems of begging, the theological problem of the concept of a via media, and conformity on the one hand, and the adoption of external signs of religious life or affiliation on the other—veritable minefields for the inexperienced historian—are painstakingly unraveled by More in a fascinating portrayal of the lives led by these women.

Chapter 4 looks at "Creating a Textual Identity? Pastoralia and Models of Tertiary Life." By the beginning of the fifteenth century the "institutional framework for distinct order identities" (87) was more established, and pastoralia recognizing the devotional practices associated with a specific order begin to give a clearer understanding of the spirituality of each. These themes are followed through in the...