The history of female religious in the early modern period has become a hot topic in the last couple of decades. Scholars have moved away from presenting repressive enclosure introduced in the wake of the Council of Trent and towards the rich opportunities that convents offered to women within their walls; nuns were more than prisoners, as Van Wyhe's collection amply demonstrates. This volume is very much the product of the growth in scholarship and offers, as the title suggests, a series of essays from renowned scholars spanning various disciplines. The book clearly benefits from the conference structure from whence it springs, dividing the twelve chapters into four broad themes: femininity and sanctity; convent theatre and music-making; spiritual directorship; and community and conflict.

What binds these essays together is the degree to which nuns were grasping hold of spiritual authority, be that as individuals or communities. In the wake of focusing on Tridentine enclosure and its impact on convents, this book offers a welcome move towards looking at nuns and their spiritual experiences felt across many areas. Take Barbe Acarie, the laywoman whose visions of Teresa of Avila led to the foundation of the Discalced Carmelites in France: a mystic, yes, but as Barbara Diefendorf persuasively argues, we need to look beyond that and we will then see a practical and active woman who displayed astonishing administrative skills. On the same theme of spiritual direction, Jodi Bilinkoff takes the most far-reaching comparative approach in a chapter based on one from her book Related lives (Ithaca, NY 2005). Exploring friendships between nuns and their confessors principally in Iberia, but also in Italy, France and the New World, she makes it plain that these were two-way relationships that gave both the women and the men opportunities to exercise spiritual authority.

As Helen Hills shows, these quests for spiritual authority involved whole communities attempting to gain spiritual prestige through the use of relics; she mixes observations on architecture with the tactics of the Neapolitan monastery of Santa Patrizia in their use of relics to extend their spiritual prestige into the city and back to the convent itself as a reliquary. Elissa Weaver demonstrates that convent theatre was not always a question of repressed nuns providing entertainment, licit or not, but could well be a means of pious education and developing community relations. Meanwhile, Claire Walker examines a dispute between different groupings within the English Benedictine community in Brussels in the 1620s precisely about spiritual governance. The dispute was fuelled by community gossip about their abbess's failure to govern according to the statutes, which served to encourage a collective identity against the abbess which was based on values and morals thought essential to the convent's spiritual health.

There are some notable imbalances, particularly the specific emphasis on music and theatre over other forms of artistic expression, and variations in the extent to which archival sources are cited in full in their original language. The attention paid to the Discalced Carmelites is striking and it is telling that whilst the editor overtly tried to correct the previous over-emphasis on Italy, there is no such claim for Spain. That said, we are treated to essays which collectively pack a geographic punch: yes, Italy and Spain, but also France, Germany and the Low Countries (including the English convents). Indeed, Van Wyhe's collection makes an admirable and fascinating contribution to the field, most of all in trying to remove geographic and disciplinary bounds. The book fills an important gap by providing a fascinating and broad introduction to female monasticism. With many of the chapters drawing on images and objects, the potential for good illustration within the bounds of practicality has been realised. The contributors are to be congratulated on producing what is very accessible work, each making their points clearly and setting their specific topics into the broader themes; it is precisely for this reason that this book should be on the reading lists of all early modern courses looking at women and Catholic religious reform.

Jeffrey Watt's study of the Clarissan nuns of Santa Chiara, Carpi, reflects an equal openness to broad approaches and the question of spiritual authority. The Clarissans provide riveting material: in the midst of the 1630s, in a small town near Modena, no fewer than fourteen nuns and women connected with the monastery succumbed to illnesses attributed by those around them to demonic possession. Spread over nearly two years, their actions were certainly dramatic: screaming, demonstrating unnatural strength, falling suddenly into deep sleeps, and all in full view of their community.

Though much less famous than the alleged attacks in Loudun in the same period, this adept study (the first as a whole book) now presents the events in Carpi as a well-researched point of comparison. What makes the Carpi case so fascinating is the interplay both between the nuns of the community, and the nuns and clergy. Vincenzo Lavenia's work on the subject had made heavy going of the political intrigues involved, claiming the possessions as the product of a power struggle over the governance of the convent. The case is relevant to numerous fields of study, not just the Roman inquisition, witchcraft and possession, but also – and importantly – the history of women religious; Watt has made confident use of the rich historiographies of all of these and has succeeded in finally placing the nuns' experiences in their full context. He ultimately shows that the central organs of the inquisition responded with scepticism to local enthusiasm in attributing the nuns' afflictions to witchcraft, and with criticism over the considerable use of exorcists. Moreover, we see that the nuns were not simply manipulated by those around them, but instead played a very active role. Watt has provided an expert and comprehensive study of one important case, presented as a laudably compelling read.