Liise Lehtsalu | University of East Anglia (original) (raw)

Papers by Liise Lehtsalu

Journal of Early Modern History , 2018

Proposing activity as a useful category of analysis, this special issue considers Catholic and Pr... more Proposing activity as a useful category of analysis, this special issue considers Catholic and Protestant women in Europe and the Americas in the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. We examine women in religious communities, which include both monastic communities as well as confessional communities. A close analysis of the social, economic, and cultural actions of these women religious challenges historiographical assumptions about monastic cloister and domestic space in the early modern period. In fact, we revisit monastic and domestic spaces to reveal them as stages for previously unexamined activity. This cross-denominational and transnational special issue highlights new spheres of women’s religious activity and raises new questions for the study of early modern women’s lives and their capacity to act in early modern society, economy, and culture.

Journal of Early Modern History, 2018

Third order women religious actively participated in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Italian ... more Third order women religious actively participated in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Italian society. Scholars have argued that the introduction of monastic enclosure for all women religious after the Council of Trent crushed non-enclosed forms of female monasticism in Italy and Europe. The study of third orders reveals, however, that non-enclosed monastic communities survived the Tridentine reforms and met specific social needs in the early modern society. Third order women religious provided education, care, and companionship to women of all ages and socioeconomic ranks. They thus filled a gap left by other monastic and custodial institutions. Ecclesiastical and secular authorities as well as neighbors considered women’s third orders an asset to local communities. Drawing on examples from Bergamo and Bologna, this article examines the social activities of tertiary women and shows activity to be a useful category of analysis for recovering the place of women religious in early modern society.

Women's History Review, 2016

Female religious communities and individual women religious confronted the monastic suppressions ... more Female religious communities and individual women religious confronted the monastic suppressions in late eighteenth and early nineteenth century Italy by actively negotiating with authorities both during and after the suppression decrees. The lack of the voices of the suppressed women religious in current scholarship has led scholars to argue for top-down, predetermined reorganization and destruction of religious life in revolutionary and Napoleonic Italy. A comparison of the three main suppression decrees reveals, instead, an evolving approach to religious institutions during this period. The petitions by women religious underscore how compromise and accommodation characterized the interactions between female communities and local and central authorities. The suppression of monasteries was not imposed on monastic women unilaterally; rather, these women actively negotiated the suppressions to optimize the outcome for their communities and for themselves.

The Historical Journal , Dec 2012

Eighteenth-century convents are little studied, and women's third order houses even less so, desp... more Eighteenth-century convents are little studied, and women's third order houses even less so, despite the growing numbers of the latter. Through a case-study, this article explores the origins and functions of one eighteenth-century third order house in an Italian urban community. Relying on the rich meeting minutes of Santa Maria Egiziaca in Bologna, the article analyses the everyday realities and the changing perceptions of women's religious institutions among the urban elites connected to the house. Santa Maria Egiziaca emerges as neither only a convent nor a shelter, the two institutional types recognized in current scholarship, but rather as both. The diverse goals of the house's administrators and benefactors suggest why third order houses thrived in the eighteenth century when more traditional convents came under increasing criticism and declined.

Book Reviews by Liise Lehtsalu

Renaissance Studies, 2018

European History Quarterly, 2018

European History Quaterly, 2016

European History Quarterly, 2015

Geschichte und Region / Storia e regione , 2014

Conference Presentations by Liise Lehtsalu

Early modern convents are often imagined as isolated islands in urban landscapes, separated from ... more Early modern convents are often imagined as isolated islands in urban landscapes, separated from the rest of the city by high walls, blind windows, and closed gates. Such physical separation was part of the monastic enclosure that, scholars argue, came to define female monastic life after the Council of Trent (1545-1563). But not all early modern women religious lived in enclosure.

Third order monastic communities brought together women of middling ranks who clothed the religious habit but remained actively involved in the urban society around them. The dwellings of third order communities were converted urban houses that were closely integrated in the urban fabric, sharing space and amenities with neighbors. The women religious of such small communities necessarily led lives that were part of the life of the neighborhoods that surrounded them.

Drawing on sources from the archives of third orders in eighteenth-century Bologna and on a partial census of Bologna from 1796, my paper examines the place of third order women religious in one early modern urban society. Third order women religious were closely integrated in the physical and social structures of their neighborhoods, and both neighbors and the women religious themselves recognized their belonging in these neighborhoods. My paper reconsiders the figure of early modern Catholic woman religious dominant in current scholarship: not necessarily hidden behind high walls, an early modern woman religious was also a central and ever-present figure in the social and economic life of her neighborhood.

The current English-language historiography of early modern Italy is largely a history of major c... more The current English-language historiography of early modern Italy is largely a history of major cities, with studies of Venice, Rome, Florence, and Naples dominating the scholarship. Studies of a single location highlight local particularisms; they obscure overarching cultural and social unities of a wider region. Yet, early modern Italy “was also a cultural unity that transcended its pronounced regionalism,” to borrow Paula Findlen’s words. In my Ph.D. dissertation “Negotiated Lives: Third Order Women Religious and Their Communities in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Italy”, I take the history from below approach to study women’s religious institutions in Bergamo and Bologna. These two towns lay in the peripheries of two early modern Italian states (the Republic of Venice and the Papal States). However, studying third order communities in these two disparate towns side-by-side has allowed me to piece together the multilayered social function of these institutions in the early modern Italian society. Comparing and contrasting two local histories has evidenced the institutional flexibility of third order communities, their dialectical relationship with the societies that surrounded them, which the study of a single town would not have revealed. In my presentation, I discuss how the comparative study of institutions in two towns allows to investigate the role of these institutions within a broader social and cultural region, such as early modern Italy. I reflect on the relationship between local and regional histories.

Seventeenth-century Bergamo and Bologna saw the foundation of numerous women’s third order commun... more Seventeenth-century Bergamo and Bologna saw the foundation of numerous women’s third order communities. These communities included women from a range of socio-economic backgrounds and of both urban and rural origins, and no two institutions were founded the same way. Some foundations were the result of the spiritual expression of a single female founder; others were inspired by the sermons of a male preacher. There were tertiary communities that grew out of sibling groups living together and those founded by groups of men to house their own female relatives.

A multilayered story of the needs (and wants) of women in seventeenth-century Italy emerges from the study of these communities. This paper offers a comparative perspective on women’s tertiary communities in north-central Italy, seeking to analyze the social and economic factors that led to their foundations and shaped their early institutional development.

"The Papal Legate to Bologna ordered a census of the city’s families in 1796. The inhabitants of ... more "The Papal Legate to Bologna ordered a census of the city’s families in 1796. The inhabitants of nine parishes were recorded before the French troops arrived in the city. Despite being partial, the collected data allows for rich analysis. The censimento records the name, age, profession, and place of birth of each inhabitant (male and female), and includes notes on illnesses and children. It thus resembles the annual stati delle anime conducted on the Italian peninsula after the Council of Trent. Social historians have used the 1796 census to discuss labor and residential patterns. In my talk, I wish to explore the census as a source for urban environmental history.

Studying one of the parishes for which the censimento was completed, I will consider the social construction of the physical environment of the city. How does the census – a counting of bodies and souls – construct and represent the city? What can we infer from the physical construction of the city about social relations in the city? How do social relations reflect on the urban environment?

The recent literature that combines environmental history and social history focuses on the social differentiation of urban space, mostly in the 19th and 20th centuries. Such scholarship is still limited in European historiography, however, as scholars of the European urban environment tend to focus on crisis management (disease, pollution, natural disasters), urban technical networks, and urban ecosystems. For the writing of a social urban environmental history of Europe, early censuses and stati delle anime may prove an interesting source. This would also bring premodern voices to a field focused largely on modern and contemporary history. "

A rich trail of archival evidence attests to the flourishing of women’s third order religious com... more A rich trail of archival evidence attests to the flourishing of women’s third order religious communities in eighteenth-century Italy. This evidence contradicts the scholars who describe the eighteenth century either as a “closing of an epoch” in monasticism (Giorgio Penco) or as a period devoid of new institutional development (Gabriella Zarri). In my talk, I will examine the various roles third order communities fulfilled in eighteenth-century Bologna and Bergamo. In surveying the multitude of third order societal functions, I suggest that the generalist character of third order communities contributed to their continued vitality in face of societal, cultural, and political pressure to suppression. The generalist character allowed third order communities to remain relevant in societies that surrounded them well into the nineteenth century.

In my paper, I will discuss interactions between religious women and their local authorities in e... more In my paper, I will discuss interactions between religious women and their local authorities in eighteenth-century Northern Italy. I will focus on how these interactions were conditioned by changing gender roles in Enlightenment Italy that shaped both the local authorities’ perceptions of religious women and the religious women’s own response to the local authorities. I argue that it was this subtle negotiation of gender that allowed some religious institutions to survive and even thrive when the majority of Italian women’s religious institutions faced extinction.

Journal of Early Modern History , 2018

Journal of Early Modern History, 2018

Women's History Review, 2016

The Historical Journal , Dec 2012

Women’s religious institutions in the eighteenth century have received little attention from hist... more Women’s religious institutions in the eighteenth century have received little attention from historians. Through a case study of a third order religious community in Bologna, Santa Maria Egiziaca, this paper looks beyond the prescriptive sources typically used by scholars of such institutions. Relying on the richly detailed meeting minutes of the community’s administrators, the article analyses the day-to-day realities in Santa Maria Egiziaca and the changing perceptions of women’s religious institutions among the urban elites connected to the house. These urban elites brought different governing and patronizing approaches to bear on Santa Maria
Egiziaca. In the midst of their negotiations, Santa Maria Egiziaca emerged as neither a monastic institution nor a custodial shelter exclusively but rather remained a hybrid space. The study of Santa Maria Egiziaca, consequently, also reflects on the limits of the current histories of women’s institutions which, for earlier centuries, have been explored in terms of binary categories: either as monastic houses or as custodial shelters. This article, therefore, explores the neglected history of eighteenth-century
women’s institutions in Italy and illuminates the continued relevance of religious institutions in an eighteenth-century city.

Third order women religious actively participated in the society and economy of seventeenth- and ... more Third order women religious actively participated in the society and economy of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Italy. Even though scholars have argued that the re-introduction of monastic enclosure for all women religious after the Council of Trent crushed non-enclosed forms of female monasticism in Italy and Europe, the study of women’s third orders reveals that non-enclosed communities not only survived the Tridentine reforms but responded to the specific social and economic needs of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century societies. Third order women religious provided education, care, and companionship to women of all ages and socioeconomic ranks. Moreover, third order women religious actively engaged in local economic lives, where their charitable and economic interests intertwined. Ecclesiastical and secular authorities as well as neighbors considered women’s third order communities an asset to local societies. This talk offers a brief overview of the activities of third order women religious in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Italy, drawing on examples from Bergamo and Bologna.