Following on from an illuminating 2004 article in Renaissance Studies, Mazzonis here offers an expanded though similar account of the activities, aims and ideals of Angela Merici, the foundress of the Company of St Ursula (the Ursulines). Research on the Ursulines has until now tended to avoid the early history of the Company, instead concentrating on the period after its reordering by Carlo Borromeo in the 1560s; this study on that early period thus fills a significant gap. Mazzonis's focus is particularly on Merici's spirituality: that is how she perceived religious perfection and one's relationship with God. This is uncovered by an in-depth examination of the Rule, Advice and Testament that Merici herself wrote for the Company. By taking this focus, the common assumption that Merici founded a group of teachers and charity-workers is unravelled and shown as a later development. Merici's texts demonstrate that she was in fact not at all prescriptive of what activities the Ursulines should engage in. Although many of her followers were involved in charity work, there is no specific evidence that Merici herself was and her own words suggest that she defined ‘charity’ more as concern for fellow Ursulines than as caring for the poor in society at large. Mazzonis's study presents Merici as fairly typical of the many holy women (‘sante vive’) of Renaissance Italy and compares the Ursulines with medieval women tertiaries and pinzochere. Like them, her spirituality emphasised the interior relationship with God, but she was thoroughly original in codifying this and other ideas into a rule for a religious company. Furthermore, she was rigid in specifying that only virgins would be admitted as full members, although widows were allowed to have a maternal, supervisory role as matrone. Merici's foundation was an alternative space to the convent, permitting virgin women to live in open society as ‘brides of Christ’ and with a marked degree of individual freedom. The Company's ethos focused on individuality rather than overt community life; eschewing rigid hierarchies, these ‘brides’ were encouraged to develop an unmediated relationship with God. Merici's ideas were lost, however, when Borromeo established the Company in Milan in 1561 and reorganised it along conventual lines. This is a thoroughly researched first book and, whilst there is a marked sense of repetition, Mazzonis has succeeded in placing Merici and the early Ursulines within an admirably broad discussion of pre-Tridentine Italy.