Alison Weber is Professor of Spanish with a joint appointment in the Corcoran Department of History at the University of Virginia, USA.

• List of IllustrationsContributorsA Note on Texts and TranslationsIntroduction Devout Laywomen in the Early Modern Catholic World: The Historiographic Challenge Alison WeberPART I Service1 Community, Conflict, and Local Authority: The Basque Seroras Amanda Scott2 The Company of St. Ursula in Italy in Counter-Reformation Italy Querciolo Mazzonis3 Nursing as a Vocation or a Profession? Women’s Status and the Meaning of Healing in Early Modern France and England Susan DinanPart II Perceptions of Holiness4 Historicizing the Beatas: The Figures behind Reformation and Counter-Reformation Conflicts María Laura Giordano5 Ecco la santa! Printed Italian Biographies of Devout Laywomen, Seventeenth-Eighteenth Centuries Anne Jacobson Schutte6 Flying in Formation: Subjectivity and Collectivity in Luisa de Melgarejo de Soto’s Mystical PracticesStacey Schlau7 Illuminated Islands: Luisa de los Reyes and the Inquisition in Manila Jessica FowlerPART III Confessional Crossings8 Elastic Institutions: Beguine Communities in Early Modern Germany Jennifer Kolpacoff Deane9 Neither Nun nor Laywoman: Entering Lutheran Convents during the Reformation of Female Religious Communities in the Duchy of Braunschweig, 1542-1655Marjorie Elizabeth Plummer10 Marina de Saavedra: A Devout Laywomen on a Confessional Frontier (Zamora, 1558-1559) Doris Moreno Martínez11 Devout Recusant Women, Advice Manuals, and the Creation of Holy Households "under Siege" Ellen A. MacekPART IV Alliances12 Convent Alternatives for Rich and Poor Girls in Seventeenth-Century Florence: The Lay Conservatories of Eleonora Ramirez di Montalvo (1602-59) Jennifer Haraguchi13 Anne Line: Vowed Laywoman, Recusant Martyr, and Elizabethan Saint Robert E. Scully, S. J.14 Letters, Books, and Relics: Material and Spiritual Networks in the Life of Luisa de Carvajal y Mendoza (1564-1614) María J. Pando-Canteli15 Women Apostles in Early Modern Japan, 1549-1650 Haruko Nawata Ward16 Jesuit Apologias for Laywomen’s Spirituality Alison WeberGlossaryIndex

'... a very strong collection of important essays about interesting women who had previously fallen through the cracks of history, brought to light in effective work with riveting primary sources. The range of the content is most impressive, and it is interesting to read not only about the women but the men who hovered over them ... unique and important in the way it prioritizes Spanish religious women in the European context.' Elizabeth Rhodes, Boston College, USA