One of the achievements of Silvia Evangelisti's book on nuns in the early modern era is that readers will come away with a sense of the complexity of convent life. In this work of synthesis, Evangelisti draws on a wide array of scholarship on monastic women to examine both the interior dynamics of nunneries and the interaction between cloistered nuns and the world around them.

A particular strength of the book is the impressive amount of geographical and chronological territory that it covers—the stated historical scope is the fifteenth through the seventeenth centuries, but Evangelisti also draws on literature from the high Middle Ages that helps provide a sense of continuity and change in nuns' lives. Her study spans much of Western Europe and also integrates recent scholarship on Catholic nuns and nunneries in the Americas. Though specialists in the study of women's monasticism may be familiar with much of the literature on which Evangelisti draws, it is a useful overview of current scholarship.

The seven chapters of the book can be grouped into three areas of inquiry. The first two chapters deal with the rules, customs, and structures that defined everyday life for nuns. The next three chapters treat the cultural life of nuns and nunneries. Finally, the remaining two chapters cover the expansion of nuns' sphere of influence—first in the attempts of some groups to maintain active and open communities and second in the expansion of new orders within Europe and in colonies in the Americas.

A strong thread that ties these themes together is the impact of the Counter-Reformation and the increased emphasis on enclosure in this period. In keeping with her overall approach of presenting the complexity of monastic life, she argues that Tridentine reforms were part of “a … continuous tension between enclosure and the push towards a more open model of religious life” (6).

The first two chapters, “On Nuns and Nunneries” and “Cloistered Life,” explore the everyday lives of nuns. Chapter 1 describes who nuns were and what they did, paying attention to ideals and realities of convent life. This includes a discussion of the social background of nuns and the stratified nature of convents, as well as the varying degrees of volition in religious professions. Evangelisti explores the diversity of attitudes toward the enforcement of enclosure in Catholic areas and the disbanding of nunneries in Protestant lands, giving examples of communities and individuals who welcomed changes along with those who fought for the status quo. Chapter 2 focuses on the buildings that defined monastic life for women—the structures that were meant to keep them secluded from the world, but that did not prevent interaction with family members and patrons. Religious women remained integrated into family and other social networks.

Chapters 3 (“Voices from the Cloister”), 4 (“Theatre and Music”), and 5 (“The Visual Arts”) focus on expressive and creative works by religious women. In chapter 3, Evangelisti discusses nuns' writing, including visionary literature, chronicles of their own convents or of the world beyond, works of poetry or literature, and treatises on a wide range of matters. Chapter 4 treats performing arts, including the role that plays served in educating nuns as well as the audience who sometimes watched through the grille. Plays and musical compositions demonstrate exchange between nuns and the outside world. Nuns published their works or performed them for an audience; composers wrote music for nuns. Similarly, some religious women displayed an awareness of trends in visual art. In addition to their own artistic endeavors, nuns hired prominent craftsmen to build additions to their convents, to create furniture for them, and to adorn their walls with pious and not-so-pious images. Some commissioned art to show acceptance of reform; others used images of powerful and devout women to protest Tridentine decrees.

Chapters 6 and 7 investigate the efforts of some nuns to expand their influence, whether this involved missionary activity in Europe and the Americas, or pressing to maintain open communities that would allow them to engage in teaching or ministering to the poor and sick. Chapter 6 (“Expansion: Nuns Across the Globe”) discusses the foundation of new orders, such as the Discalced Carmelites and the Ursulines in Spain and Italy, respectively. These orders expanded throughout Catholic Europe, then to French, Spanish, and Portuguese colonies in the Americas. In chapter 7 (“Open Communities for Women”), Evangelisti examines the attempts of some groups to maintain open communities by organizing as lay sisters with simple vows. These efforts had varying degrees of success depending on the social status of women in the communities and the mission in which they were engaged. Moreover, attempts to enforce enclosure waned in the seventeenth century due to an increased need for the social services these nuns could provide to areas devastated by the Thirty Years' War.

A work of this scope presents organizational challenges. This is particularly the case in the first two chapters. For example, though Evangelisti describes the ideal of communal monastic life without private property in the first chapter (28 ff.), in the second chapter she discusses the allocation of cells of varying sizes as private property within the monastery, adorned with family items that reinforced divisions in social status. This seems an appropriate subject in a chapter on the physical cloister, but a brief reference to such practical matters also might have informed the discussion of the daily lives of nuns in ideal and reality.

Perhaps the main missed opportunity in this book is the lack of a conclusion—the last chapter is an epilogue that provides a quick bridge from the eighteenth century to the present. Given Evangelisti's wide-ranging and thorough exploration of current research on early modern nuns in the Catholic world, a conclusion that could bring together threads of the various chapters of this work and highlight a few research areas the author considers to be understudied would be extremely useful.