Female preaching in the English Catholic community, 16 ^th–17^th centuries

Abstract

The article is focused on the preaching and missionary work of the English Catholic woman in the 16th — 17th cc., as it was represented in a wide range of texts: biographies of pious Catholic Englishwomen written by their secretaries, chaplains and the nuns of the English convents in the Netherlands and France, chronicles and registers of these convents, conversion stories and letters by Catholic women. A study of these sources makes the author conclude that references to female preaching appeared only in manuscript texts that existed within private space and were intended for female audience — for the nuns and their female relatives in England and abroad. The texts were linked to English Jesuits. The descriptions of the episodes of female preaching followed some general rules. The Catholic Englishwomen taught or preached to only those below them in social standing: children, relatives, or servants, but never to the men of the status, which equaled theirs, because it was thought that to convert a man a preacher or a teacher needed to produce rational arguments, and women were not considered to be capable of this. It is shown that this view reflected the gender stereotypes of the time, not the reality of female missionary work.