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X-ORIGINAL-URL:https://www.historikertag.de/Bonn2025/en/programm/power-and-gender-female-religious-communities-in-a-european-perspective/
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UID:historikertag-2025-4344
DTSTAMP:20250324T100150Z
DTSTART:20250917T140000Z
DTEND:20250917T154000Z
SUMMARY:[Historikertag 2025] Power and Gender. Female Religious Communities in a European Perspective
DESCRIPTION:The study of religious women in the premodern period is not new. However, especially in the late medieval and early modern periods religious women are often viewed through a national lens. In the past, different conceptual traditions about religious women have often hindered international cooperation. German scholars have worked with the binary of monasteries (Klöster) and houses of canonesses (Stifte), seeing the latter as a phenomenon of the Holy Roman Empire alone. Anglo-American works prefer the concepts of “(un)reformed communities”, “(un)regulated communities” or “monasteries with/out enclosure”. A look at the sources and international studies casts doubt on German exceptionalism. 
The panel will bring together the different academic traditions and subject female communities to a European perspective. First, the individual contributions analyse the specific religious lifestyle in female religious communities in different European regions (Spain, France, Holy Roman Empire). In doing so, they try to overcome the binary of two different types of women’s religious life and to see religious life as fluid and on a wider spectrum. Secondly, the papers examine the interdependence between religious lifestyle, gender and the power of religious women. Regulated and unregulated monasteries were affected differently by gendered dynamics that influenced the power of religious women. Confinement to a strict enclosure or its lack determined whether abbesses of religious communities could rule directly over their properties and people. Here, the papers challenge the still prevalent assumption in German early modern studies of religious princesses of the Empire as being less powerful than their male counterparts (mindermächtig). Enclosed religious women often had a different kind of authority which derived from their religious function and offices inside the community. In turn, canonesses were confronted with specific gendered expectations due to their proximity to secular society.  
The panel will consist of a brief introduction, three presentations followed by a discussion of 35 minutes. 
Der Beitrag Power and Gender. Female Religious Communities in a European Perspective erschien zuerst auf Historikertag 2025.
LOCATION:Festsaal
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