Arabic Women Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Creators and Custodians of Religious Worship. Women in search of a special existence A brief documentation of the history of the little known Arabic nuns: the Mariamettes, tracing their origins and evolution in the nineteenth century... more

Creators and Custodians of Religious Worship. Women in search of a special existence

A brief documentation of the history of the little known Arabic nuns: the Mariamettes, tracing their origins and evolution in the nineteenth century through the words of R.P. Paolo M. Riccadonna SJ to the Jesuit Father General, Jan P. Rothaan. Father Riccadonna assisted a group of Arabic women who had been completely abandoned by their society assuring them shelter and spiritual guidance. The description of this event was a marginal part of his history of the Jesuit's severe difficulties in their encounter with a local reality which had strong archaic traits, the Near East, and in which education was a luxury reserved to an elite, yet the cultural and linguistic mediation provided by these pious women was of vital importance to the Jesuit's first contacts with the local community. At the same time, in an Orient characterized by wide spread poverty, the convent provided women with an alternative to the only two possibilities offered them by their own society: the Harem or the street.
Marisa Patulli Trythall