Elite Women in Early Modern Catholic Europe offers a new look at early modern Catholic Europe through the lens of the diverse experiences of elite women, using a historiographical approach to analyze women’s roles through changing political, social, and cultural contexts.
Through novel practices and broad social networks, distinguished women assumed prominent roles, from queens and princesses, to aristocrats and great nobles, to women of faith and religion. As the Counter-Reformation and the transition toward Enlightenment ideology swept France, Spain, and Italy, literacy and education became more accessible to upper-class women, who began to create new traditions in place of the old ways that were falling short. The case studies in this volume, ranging from the seventeenth to early nineteenth centuries, uncover the ways in which women were developing leadership skills and preserving status through participation in historical processes that affected real estate, the Church, and the social and family organization across Catholic Europe.
This book is an ideal resource for students and researchers studying early modern women and Catholic Europe.
This collection offers a new look at early modern Catholic Europe through the lens of the diverse experiences of elite women, using a historiographical approach to analyse women’s roles through changing political, social, and cultural contexts.
Introduction
1. Naples 1536, or Rather of Nobility, Politics and
Noblewomen
2. Building memory: Margherita of Austria and Her Dynastic History
en femenino
3. Chocolate, Masses and Spiritual Heritage: Female Networks in
Early Modern Turin around the Compagnia dell Umiltà (Company of Humility):
17th-18th Centuries
4. In the distressing circumstances: Female Resolve and
Resistance of Rank. Marguerite-Louise dOrléans and Anna Maria Franziska of
Saxe-Lauenburg in Diplomatic Records
5. Women in the Family and Political
Strategies of the High Aristocracy in the Late 17th Century
6. Educating a
Future Queen of France. The case of Princess Marie Adelaide of Savoy and
Madame de Maintenon, Royal Educator
7. Noblewomen and the Management of
Family Wealth in Sicily at the End of the 18th century: the Case of Anna
Morso, Princess of Biscari
8. Family and Female Power: The Wills of
Aristocratic Women in Spain at the End of the Ancien Régime
9. A Place for
Sentiments and Feelings Among Spanish Aristocratic Women (1760-1820)
10.
Considering the merits of your late husband. How Women Received a Title in
Early Nineteenth-century Spain (1808-1854)
Cinzia Recca is reader in Early Modern History in the Department of Education at the University of Catania, Italy. Her main field of research includes the European Enlightenment, especially court studies and women's roles. In recent years, she has initiated a demanding research activity focused on the figure of Queen Maria Carolina of Naples through the analysis of unpublished sources (diary and correspondence). She is the author of The Diary of Maria Carolina of Naples, 17811785: New evidence of Queenship at Court (2017).
Francisco Precioso Izquierdo is reader in Modern History at the University of Murcia, Spain. His field of research integrates the analysis of the noble elites of the Hispanic world at the end of the seventeenth century from a family, political, and cultural perspective. In recent years, his research has been oriented toward the study of the idea of nobility in Spanish society in the eighteenth century. He is the author of Melchor Macanaz. La derrota de un héroe. Poder político y movilidad familiar en la España Moderna (2017).
Lisainfo e-raamatute kohta