Overview
- Explores how Catholic women and men managed the competing demands of church, family and state by pushing the boundaries of gender and laypeople’s roles
- Focuses on the experiences of individuals across three centuries to reveal patterns of evolving gender and religious norms
- Offers timely historical perspectives on change within the Catholic Church
Part of the book series: Histories of the Sacred and Secular, 1700–2000 (HISASE)
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Table of contents (8 chapters)
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Pushing the Boundaries of Gender
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Pushing the Boundaries of Religion
Keywords
About this book
This book explores changing gender and religious roles for Catholic men and women in the British Isles from Henry VIII’s break with the Catholic Church in 1534 to full emancipation in 1829. Filled with richly detailed stories, such as the suppression of Mary Ward’s Institute of English Ladies, it explores how Catholics created and tested new understandings of women’s and men’s roles in family life, ritual, religious leadership, and vocation through engaging personal narratives, letters, trial records, and other rich primary sources. Using an intersectional approach, it crafts a compelling narrative of three centuries of religious and social experimentation, adaptation, and change as traditional religious and gender norms became flexible during a period of crisis. The conclusions shed new light on the Catholic Church’s long-term, ongoing process of balancing gendered and religious authority during this period while offering insights into the debates on those topics taking place worldwide today.
Reviews
“McClain’s evidence throughout leans heavily on English examples from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, making the book more about early modern English Catholics. … McClain’s work is an important read for scholars of the post-Reformation British Catholic community.” (Jennifer Binczewski, British Catholic History, Vol. 34 (3), May, 2019)
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Lisa McClain is Professor of History and Gender Studies at Boise State University, USA, specializing in the history of Catholicism and the intersections of gender, religion, and popular culture. Her previous works include Lest We Be Damned: Practical Innovation and Lived Experience among Catholics in Protestant England 1559-1642.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Divided Loyalties? Pushing the Boundaries of Gender and Lay Roles in the Catholic Church, 1534-1829
Authors: Lisa McClain
Series Title: Histories of the Sacred and Secular, 1700–2000
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73087-5
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: History, History (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-319-73086-8Published: 09 April 2018
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-10313-2Published: 22 December 2018
eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-73087-5Published: 28 March 2018
Series ISSN: 2946-3351
Series E-ISSN: 2946-336X
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: X, 282
Number of Illustrations: 1 b/w illustrations
Topics: History of Britain and Ireland, History of Religion, Religion and Gender, Social History, Gender Studies