Women and Religion in Old and New Worlds by Debra Meyers & Susan Dinan

Author:Debra Meyers & Susan Dinan [Meyers, Debra & Dinan, Susan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780415930345
Goodreads: 8615766
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2001-07-27T00:00:00+00:00

WOMEN’S AGENCY IN THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

Tensions between prescriptive standards and practical necessity also provided an opening for women in the Roman Catholic Church in the Dutch Republic to extend their institutional influence.36 Political conditions—particularly local ones—determined how rigorously the laws banning Catholicism were enforced. The Vatican placed most of the territory of the Republic under the authority of the “Dutch Mission” (Missio Hollandica) headed by a vicar-general, rather than by a bishop. The Mission was troubled by a chronic shortage of priests, and there were jurisdictional disputes between the vicar-generals and the secular clergy on the one hand and the regular clergy, especially the Jesuits, on the other.37 Under these conditions the Catholic Church became dependent on the laity. Unmarried, affluent laywomen were especially well placed to provide the quarters for the hidden chapels of the Mission, to shelter the itinerant priests, to teach catechism classes, and to provide charity for the Catholic poor. An example of how far that support could conceivably go was described by Arnoldus Buchelius in 1636, when he wrote that the woman who owned a house where officials had stopped a mass offered 20,000 guilders to them if they would promise not to harm the host.38 The survival of Dutch Catholicism was heavily indebted to the work of such women.

Elizabeth Strouven, the foundress of a religious community in Maastricht, provides an example of how central women were to the revival of Catholicism in the Republic. Maastricht was under Spanish rule at the time Strouven was born in 1600, then was retaken by the Dutch in 1632, so that she lived at a pivotal time in the city’s history. After a difficult childhood, she became a Third Order Franciscan, and in 1628 organized a religious community she named Calvariënberg, to emphasize the importance of the suffering of Christ for the spiritual life of the community.39

After the Dutch government took Maastricht in 1639, it demanded that regular clergy take an oath of loyalty to the new, Protestant rulers. When they refused, they were exiled, throwing Catholic ecclesiastical organizations into disarray. Secular priests had remained in Maastricht, since the new government had promised to leave Catholic worship intact, but many had lost their means of support. At this time, two priests asked for permission to join the community, begging Strouven to act as their spiritual leader. The first of these, Walthieu de la Montagne, explained that God had sent him to submit to her since he had mistreated his late wife. The second, Maarten Gielis, believed God called him to regard Strouven as his mother. Strouven hesitated to go along with this departure from canonical practice, however divinely inspired. But ultimately, her confessor approved it. And meanwhile, the new magistrates of Maastricht left the sisters of Calvariënberg alone, since they were proving themselves invaluable to the city. They took over nursing plague victims, struck by the frequent epidemics that descended on Maastricht during the turbulent years of the Thirty Years’ War. Strouven’s rule for Calvariënberg was recognized by

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.