Women, the sacred and the Inquisition 1678-1710 : a study on female religious perceptions, values and behaviour

Abstract

This dissertation focuses on the religious beliefs and mentality of lower class women in the years 1678-1710. The criminal proceedings of the Inquisition tribunal are analysed in order to throw light on this aspect of women's life. The Holy Office was the meeting place between high and low culture. In the Holy Office Inquisitors schooled in canon law and assisted by a coterie of doctors, exorcists and notaries faced the illiterate masses. This is an ideal set-up to investigate the relationship between the ideology of the Church and the popular beliefs of the subordinate classes. The central hypothesis of this dissertation is that the Catholic Reformation Church prescribed a new sort of behaviour for early modern women, that of the 'devout wife'. Ideally women had to conform to both patriarchal and ecclesiastical hierarchies. In order to achieve this, the Church censored the activity of all those women who refused to submit to these hierarchies. Yet the Church understood the socio-economic conditions of the age and was tolerant towards those women combining magic with devotion in order to overcome their powerlessness. On the ott1er hand it used the repressive apparatus of the Holy Office against the unrepentant 'witch' and the 'living saint' who used their charismatic power to build an autonomous following.