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In a popular English text of 1658 an anonymous author railed against the Jesuits who were, in his mind, taking over the western world. The author warned that “most of the Noble Families about Europe” had been in¤ltrated by this hated Roman Catholic order, for few families were “without one or more of them.” These spies relayed important information to the pope as they “intermedle[d] in matters of State” from their elevated positions within in®uential families instead of busying themselves with the “safety of their own & others souls, having to that purpose retired from the world.” According to this author there were “four sorts of Jesuits” strategically positioned to take over the western world: the wealthy “Citizens and rich Merchants” acting on Jesuit orders; Jesuit priests posing as laypeople and in®uencing wealthy and noble families;the Jesuit clergy; and the dreaded “Jesuits-Polititians” bent on advancing “their Company to a perfect Monarcy .” Members of the “¤rst sort” were by far the most insidious, because the Jesuits controlled large numbers of laypeople through the manipulation of the daughters, wives, and widows of high-ranking families. The author was convinced that these women were “under a blind obedience, governing themselves in their particular actions, by the counsel and advice of the father Jesuits.” The Jesuits sought to undermine the patriarchal order of the household by manipulating female family members. They also threatened the very fabric of society when they “usurpt the sustenance of Widows, leaving the kindred in very great misery, by enticing and alluring to their fellowship, those of the greatest families that frequent their School and Col101 4  Women and Religion ledge.” For this author, women played a prominent role in the popish threat to the political and social order. Wealthy females—young and old—in®uenced their male kin to carry out the Jesuits’ “evill” plans and, worse yet, they funded the Jesuits’militant attempt to reconquer Europe by relinquishing family property that had been left to them in their widowhood. Consequently , these women turned the patriarchal social order on its head when they acted as historical agents ushering in a popish revolution. The author concluded with a warning that the western world faced the “most dangerous and evill consequence” if governments did not recognize this immediate threat and initiate a “speedy and powerfull remedy” before all was lost to the Roman monarchy.1 Another author shared this anxiety about women’s penchant for destroying the known social order in his The Life of Donna Olimpia Maldachini , Who Governed the Church, during the time of Innocent the X, which was from the Year 1644–1655, an English translation of an Italian original. Here the author (or the translator) argued that Pope Innocent X allowed his sister-in-law to make his decisions for him and in so doing paved the way for her to control the entire Roman Catholic Church for more than a decade. Indeed, the pope “never entered upon any affair publick or private, but ¤rst acquainted his Sister-in-law with it; whose advice he took his measure by.” The author summed up the story with advice that “the Churchmen [i.e., clergy] of the Roman Faith, will do any thing with a Woman, but Marry her.”2 The natural order of things, in this author’s view, placed women as obedient wives under the direct control of male patriarchs. Roman Catholics , however, did not conform to the natural order of the world when they allowed a female to dictate church policy and other “publick or private” papal matters. This potent anti-Catholic rhetoric, emphasizing the folly and ineptitude of the church’s most revered leader, drew at least some of its power from the male fear of women controlling men and their spheres of in®uence. These conspiracy-minded authors were not alone in their concern over the extent to which women participated in religious affairs in early modern England. In 1641 another anonymous English author was morti¤ed to discover “Six women preachers in Middlesex, Kent, Cambridgshire and Salisbury.” Faced with an inadequate supply of quali¤ed male preachers, Anne Hempstall, Mary Bilbrow, Joane Bauford, Susan May, Elizabeth Bancroft , and Arabella Thomas—all self-proclaimed “vertuous women”—took it upon themselves to preach to female gatherings “such things as the spirit should move them.”3 The author was horri¤ed by these unschooled women interpreting and disseminating important religious doctrine. In this author ’s view, it was better to forego...

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