The English Convents in Exile, 1600-1800: Communities, Culture and Identity

Description

First published 2013 by Ashgate Publishing. In 1598, the first English convent was established in Brussels and was to be followed by a further 21 enclosed convents across Flanders and France with more than 4,000 women entering them over a 200-year period. In theory they were cut off from the outside world; however, in practice the nuns were not isolated and their contacts and networks spread widely, and their communal culture was sophisticated. Not only were the nuns influenced by continental intellectual culture but they in turn contributed to a developing English Catholic identity moulded by their experience in exile. During this time, these nuns and the Mary Ward sisters found outlets for female expression often unavailable to their secular counterparts, until the French Revolution and its associated violence forced the convents back to England. This interdisciplinary collection demonstrates the cultural importance of the English convents in exile from 1600 to 1800 and is the first collection to focus solely on the English convents. List of Plates vii List of Tables xi Notes on Contributors xiii Series Editor’s Preface xvii Acknowledgements xix Note on the Text xxi Introduction / Caroline Bowden, James E. Kelly and Michael C. Questier 1 Part I. Communities 1. From Community to Convent: The Collective Spiritual Life of Post-Reformation Englishwomen in Dorothy Arundell’s Biography of John Cornelius / Elizabeth Patton 19 2. Essex Girls Abroad: Family Patronage and the Politicization of Convent Recruitment in the Seventeenth Century / James E. Kelly 33 3. Missing Members: Selection and Governance in the English Convents in Exile / Caroline Bowden 53 Part II. Culture: Authorship and Authority 4. The Literary Lives of Nuns: Crafting Identities Through Exile / Jenna D. Lay 71 5. Naming Names: Chroniclers, Scribes and Editors of St. Monica’s Convent, Louvain, 1631–1906 / Victoria Van Hyning 87 6. Translating Lady Mary Percy: Authorship and Authority among the Brussels Benedictines / Jaime Goodrich 109 7. Barbara Constable’s 'Advice for Confessors' and the Tradition of Medieval Holy Women / Genelle Gertz 123 8. Shakespeare’s Sisters: Anon and the Authors in Early Modern Convents / Nicky Hallett 139 Part III. Culture: Patronage and Visual Culture 9. Petitioning for Patronage: An Illuminated Tale of Exile from Syon Abbey, Lisbon / Elizabeth Perry 159 10. Parlour, Court and Cloister: Musical Culture in English Convents during the Seventeenth Century / Andrew Cichy 175 11. Cloistered Images: Representations of English Nuns, 1600–1800 / Geoffrey Scott 191 Part IV. Identity 12. Archipelagic Identities in Europe: Irish Nuns in English Convents / Marie-Louise Coolahan 211 13. Divine Love and the Negotiation of Emotions in Early Modern English Convents / Laurence Lux-Sterritt 229 14. Avoiding 'Rash and Imprudent Measures': English Nuns in Revolutionary Paris, 1789–1801 / Carmen M. Mangion 247 Select Bibliography of Secondary Sources 265 Index 273