Written fragments of a dispute : enclosing monastic spaces in early modern Malta

Abstract

This article examines the written fragments of a dispute of the 1620s between a group of nuns at St Peter's Monastery in Mdina, Malta, and a priest who served at their monastery. Oppositions in male-female relations were intensified by the shift towards stricter monastic enclosure, as was then being insisted upon by the Maltese episcopal authorities in line with the Catholic Reformation. Female paradigms of gender and images of womanhood in early modern society are reflected in the reform of monastic life throughout seventeenth-century Europe.