By Force and Fear (English, Anne Jacobson Schutte)

About the Book

An unwilling, desperate nun trapped in the cloister, unable to gain release: such is the image that endures today of monastic life in early modern Europe. In By Force and Fear , Anne Jacobson Schutte demonstrates that this and other common stereotypes of involuntary consignment to religious houses--shaped by literary sources such as Manzoni's The Betrothed--are badly off the mark. Drawing on records of the Congregation of the Council, held in the…

ISBN: 9780801449772