The most thorough examination to date of the landmark decree that mandated strict enclosure of all nuns.

Given in Rome, at Saint Peter's, on 29 June, the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, in the year 2016, the fourth of my Pontificate.FRANCISCUS

A study of women who left their nunneries: their motives and actions, and the consequences for them. To make a vow is a matter of the will, to fulfill one is a matter of necessity, declared late medieval canon law, and religious profession involved the most solemn of those vows. Professed nuns could never renege on their vows and if they did attempt to re-enter secular society, they became apostates. Automatically excommunicated, they could be forcibly returned to their monasteries where, should they remain unrepentant, penalties, including imprisonment, might be imposed. And although the law imposed uniform censures on male and female apostates, the norms regarding the proper sphere of activity for women within the Church would prohibit disaffected nuns from availing themselves of options short of apostasy that were readily available to monks similarly unhappy with the choices that they had made. This book is the first to address the practical and legal problems facing women religious, both in England and in Europe, who chose to reject the terms of their profession as nuns. The women featured in these pages acted, and were acted upon, by the law: the volume shows alleged apostates petitioning for redress and actual apostates seeking to extricate themselves, via self-help and litigation, from the moral and legal consequences of their behaviour. ELIZABETH MAKOWSKI is Emerita Professor of History at Texas State University, San Marcos.

This book provides a thorough examination of the writings of canon lawyers in the late Middle Ages as they come to terms, both in their academic work and also in their roles as judges and advisers, with women who were not, strictly speaking, religious, but who were popularly thought of as such.

Book Review

An account of the feminization of the Church in 17th-century France and as far abroad as New France. This book is intended for students of 17th century France, historians of religion and gender.

This book opens up a new area of research in the history of the institution of the Irish Presentation Sisters and the impact of Vatican II, 1962–1965 on women religious life in Ireland. The challenges offered by the Council were taken on by the Presentation Congregation and resulted in a trans-national structure known today as the ‘Union of Presentation Sisters’. In the latter half of the twentieth century, Vatican II called for the need for ‘adaptation’ and ‘renewal’ of religious life. This involved not just changes within the structures of religious life, but also meant that, psychologically, religious needed to change how and what they thought religious life in the twentieth century should be. The traditions of centuries had to be examined in the context of the ‘modern’ twentieth-century world and had to adapt to this change. However, the scope of the work is wide-ranging as it also examines issues that surrounded the transformation experienced by the Presentation Sisters. These included relations with the Church at both diocesan level and international level. In their efforts to implement change, they were often hampered by the local Bishops in Ireland but were supported by the Church in Rome. This book explores the whole area of women religious life in Ireland in the post-Vatican II period and examines the implications of these changes in relation to women religious and the Church.