Mary Ward broke the law, and she knew it. She and her companionsâknown as the English Ladies âwere Catholics.1 Together, they practiced an illegal faith in the Protestant British Isles in the seventeenth century, during the religious conflict and violence of the Reformation era. However, the English Ladies did more than worship behind closed doors. They deceived the authorities. They disguised themselves to evade arrest. They taught and encouraged others to practice an outlawed religion. They assisted renegade priests working underground on behalf of the Roman Church. In doing so, these women risked imprisonment and even execution.
Yet it was not only the laws of England that Ward transgressed. Ward and the English Ladies sought to serve the Catholic Church in a new way, a way not yet approved by the papacy. Similar to nuns , these devout women understood themselves as called to a religious vocation. Unlike nuns, they wanted to live and work free from the cloister so they could care for the spiritual needs of Catholics worshiping covertly in their homeland. Despite such seemingly good intentions, the papacy suppressed Ward âs Institute of English Ladies , bringing the organization to an abrupt, unpleasant end. With his 1631 papal bull, Pastoralis Romani Pontificis , Pope Urban VIII not only suppressed the Institute but gave it âsharper censureâ than was usual because of the serious dangers posed to Christians by these womenâs activities. He declared the Institute null, void and of âno authority or importance.â The English Ladies were âextinguished,â âremoved entirely from the Church of God. We destroy and annul them, and we wish and command all the Christian faithful to consider them and think of them as suppressed, extinct, rooted out, destroyed and abolishedâ (Wetter 2006, 213â18; also 129â37). 2 The papacy even imprisoned Ward briefly for heresy and kept her under surveillance for years after her release (67â103). She and the English Ladies were devout outlaws.
Considering such scathing language, it is surprising to find Urban VIII , less than a decade later, assuring Mary that she was not a heretic and providing her a pension. He communicated secretly to keep Wardâs Institute house in Munich open although her Institute no longer existed (Rapley 1990, 213â14n35). Urban asked his nephew, Cardinal Francesco Barberini, to provide a letter of introduction for Ward and her companions to Queen Henrietta Maria of England. Ward was going back to Protestant England to work for the Catholic cause but this time with papal knowledge and support. Barberiniâs 1638 letter praised Ward as âmuch esteemed in Rome both for her well known qualities and piety.â He encouraged Henrietta Maria to receive Ward, showing âall kindness she can to her and her companyâ (Chambers 1882, 2:452). Urbanâs envoy in England, Count Carlo Rossetti, welcomed Ward enthusiastically, reporting that he had been commanded to âserve her in all he couldâ (Kenworthy-Browne 2008, 65). What was simultaneously so objectionable and yet so laudable about Ward and her Ladies that would explain such an âabout faceâ?
On the surface, it seems obvious that these unmarried womenâs attempts to serve God and the Church without being enclosed in a convent forced Urbanâs hand. Ward and the English Ladies clearly appeared to violate church law. Moreover, accusations coming out of England portrayed these women as driving a contentious wedge between Catholics who differed in their opinions of the women and their work. Women disguising themselves, traveling and living independently, and interacting with virtual strangers âit was scandalous, almost unthinkable. At best, critics found the womenâs efforts vain and useless. At worst, naysayers gossiped about these âwhoresâ and âgalloping nuns â (Godfatherâs Information 1623; Dirmeier 2007, 1:763â64; Chambers 1882, 1:318â19, 2:169â70, 183â87). The social conventions of gender did not support women who assumed the freedom that these English Ladies did.
Some scholars view Ward as a proto-feminist pioneer for refusing to be enclosed in a convent, while others prefer to see her as a conservative Catholic woman whose attempts to avoid enclosure unintentionally challenged gender biases (Wetter 2006; Strasser 2004; Lux-Sterritt 2011; Ellis 2007; Harriss 2010; Rapley 1990, 3â9, 28â34). Neither of these interpretations of Ward quite unravel the puzzle posed by Wardâs unusual status. If this womanâs unconventional activities were so divisive among English Catholic clergy and laity, Urban VIII should not have been so willing to smooth the way for her return to England. Her gender hadnât changed. She and her companions still lived together outside a convent. The pope clearly intended them to work among prominent Catholics, serving Catholic interests. If the original objections to Ward and the English Ladies were truly grounded in disagreements over these womenâs lack of enclosure, their adoption of non-traditional gender roles, or the types of public, pious works that the women performed, why encourage Wardâs return, where she would presumably continue to cause divisions among Catholics? What was really going on here?
The Bigger Issue
Wardâs tussle with Urban VIII illuminates more than one womanâs failed attempt to found a new form of womenâs religious life. Her story opens a window through which to examine the ongoing process by which societies balance gender and religious priorities. Historically, across societies, across faiths, and across continents, groups and individuals have been willing to alter their traditional gender expectations and gendered economic, social, and religious roles to meet pressing, immediate needs. From craftswomen who stepped up to fill labor shortages after the Black Death to female citizens who took up arms during the French Revolution, times of instability and change are often associated with re-negotiations of gender roles. One of the best-known recent examples is the U.S. and Great Britainâs use of womenâs labor outside the home in World War II, in fields as diverse as manufacturing (Rosie the Riveter) and intelligence gathering and analysis (the code breakers at Bletchley Park). Although most individuals had been socialized to believe that women were not supposed to fill such roles (in fact, were incapable of doing such work), the times seemed to demand it. Governments needed womenâs labor because they had recruited the majority of able-bodied men to fight. At warâs end, however, employers and governments dismissed the majority of these women. It was not because their work had been unsatisfactory. Women had proven themselves capable and invaluable. Instead, it was because the need evaporated. The war was over.
Once crises end, the presumption is that men and women return to traditional gender rolesââthe way things used to beââin home, society, and work force, even if some individuals prefer the new roles. Surely everyone understood that the violation of gender norms was a temporary measure, acceptable only to address a short-term, emergency situation? But what of women who had been challenged, even fulfilled, through their higher status, highly valued efforts and wished to continue?
Of late, tensions between gender norms and religious needs are rising, and not only within Christian denominations. For example, many fundamentalist Islamist groups such as ISIS and Boko Haram have traditionally appealed to particular interpretations of sharia law and nature (kodrat) as restricting womenâs work and movements to the private, domestic sphere (Shehadeh 2007). Despite these oft-stated values, these same organizations have reportedly been recruiting and training Muslim women for public and militant roles, such as Boko Haramâs use of female suicide bombers in Cameroon in 2015. This is likely because women are less likely than men to attract the suspicion of authorities and more likely to be allowed to pass through security checkpoints with a minimum search (Bloom 2007). Groups of individuals, both large and small, male and female, prove willing to transgress customary gender norms and religious roles to meet a perceived greater need.
As such examples indicate, our assignment of individuals into gender roles has never been set in stone. Numerous times, gender roles based upon social, cultural, legal, or religious mores or divine or natural laws have been overturned by the very political, social, and religious authorities that created them; and this raises many questions and concerns. Under what circumstances is it acceptable to transgress gender norms? Are there limits, and if so, what are they and who determines them? How do the majority accept what was previously taught as improper and insupportable (if not unnatural and sinful) as suddenly palatable, even admirable? And, after the greater immediate need is satisfied, what next? The gendered and patriarchal structures imbedded within societies, religions, and cultures do not change simply because womenâs efforts were used to bridge temporary gaps in labor, religion, or service to the state in times of necessity. The memory of womenâs achievements and capacities will likely fuel future efforts to expand gender opportunities for both men and women, but the duration of these conflicts is typically too short (often less than a decade) to produce long-term changes to institutions and widely shared societal attitudes and practices.
In contrast, we have a historical anomaly in Mary Ward âs world. The religious clashes of her lifetime were part of larger Catholic-Protestant conflicts in the British Isles that officially lasted almost 300 years and arguably much longer. As a result, any changes to gender and religious roles undertaken in response to the needs of the times had sufficient time to gain a foothold among Catholics in the British Isles. Many generations passed between Henry VIIIâs break with the Roman Catholic Church in 1534 and the Roman Catholic Relief Act of 1829 which legally ended the long process of Catholic emancipation in the British Isles. Catholics had time to test balances and boundaries between gender norms and religious needs in different situations. Catholics had time to set limits or loosen them.
By the nineteenth century, when the government officially lifted restrictions on Catholicism, Catholics had lived with their new gender and religious roles for generations. Turning back the clock to embrace earlier attitudes and practices would not have been easy or automatic. Yet these cultural changes were evolutionary rather than revolutionary. They took place as a result of the struggle of Catholic leaders to meet the needs of a beleaguered religious population and of individual Catholics to reconcile themselves to the demands of their situations. This meant that it did not require a conscious effort on anyoneâs part to reshape ideas about religion and gender.
By integrating the puzzle of Pope Urban VIII âs harsher-than-usual suppression of Ward âs Institute into this much larger story about broader, overlapping gendered and religious concerns, the contours of almost three centuries of gender and religious change emerge, a change precipitated as a largely unintentional byproduct of Catholic efforts to reclaim the British Isles for Rome and sustain an illegal minority faith. The first part of this book examines changing gender roles and the many ways in which both womenâs and menâs understandings of what was appropriate, natural, and divinely created for each sex transformed as they struggled to practice Catholicism in a Protestant state. A brief historical overview of religious reforms and gendered traditions in the British Isles is provided in Chap. 2. Chapter 3 explores how Catholic women, traditionally taught to be quiet, modest, and obedient, carved out new roles for themselves as leaders and lawbreakers as they struggled to uphold an underground faith in their homes and beyond. Chapter 4 investigates how Catholic menâmany of whom occasionally bowed their heads before Protestant priests to avoid impoverishmentâunderstood and re-created their masculinity in new ways under these circumstances. Chapter 5 continues by scrutinizing Catholic women and men in relationship with one another to discover the subtle adjustments in gender and religious r...