Anne Jacobson Schutte has produced a beautifully written and clearly argued volume. The rich stories she culls from the archives give her readers glimpses into tensions within families and communities in early modern Europe. Hers is an exceptionally interesting and engaging book to read.
Schutte is interested in better understanding the reality of those forced into religious vocations across Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (1668–1793). This is a topic that has not been well studied, and previous accounts of forced profession are anecdotal and often examine an individual case. Schutte uses the archives of the Holy Congregation of the Council and examines 978 petitions for release from religious orders. In 1563 the Council of Trent changed the process for appealing for release from monastic vows, without sufficient consideration according to Schutte. Supplicants had to prove that the rules for profession established at Trent had been violated. For instance, petitioners had to prove that they were too young when making a profession, had the novitiate interrupted, or were forced into religious life by family members of others. Moreover, men could not have deformities or incurable diseases that were not revealed when they took their orders. The process to request release from religious vows was complex, cumbersome, and very lengthy. To open a case one needed a petition, a transcript made by a delegate of the bishop, depositions and affidavits from witnesses, and a cover letter from the bishop. This material went to the Pope who sent it to the Council where canon lawyers drafted a summary, examined the case, and ultimately pronounced a verdict. Schutte reads these cases, fifty-two percent of which are complete and contain the Council's verdict.
Schutte finds considerable evidence that adolescents were coerced into religious life. The Council of Trent demanded that all people professing religious vocations do so of their own volition. However, this requirement on the part of the church, contradicted the assumptions of fathers who, following a tradition of patria potestas, believed that they were solely responsible for the life trajectories of their children. Schutte sees clear economic motivations behind the decisions of parents. In most cases parents sought to consolidate their wealth for the benefit of one or a few children and encouraged or forced the others to enter religious life. For women, monastic dowries cost much less than marriage dowries, and for men, there was no cost in becoming a monk or friar, but there were considerable costs to prepare for the secular priesthood.
In 43.2 percent of the cases the Council ruled in favor of the petitioners. Women had a much higher success rate than men, with 70.8 percent of women being released from their vows, and 37.6 percent of men being released from theirs. Schutte suggested that it was much harder for women to get their cases to Rome, so their requests tended to be very compelling if they made it to the Pope.
Schutte convincingly challenges four erroneous assumptions about forced monachization. First, she explains that this was not exclusively or even predominantly a female problem. 82.5 percent of the Council's petitioners for release from religious vows were men. She explains that petitioning the Council required knowledge of the system and considerable resources, which were more readily available to men. The legal process for requesting release, but one had to know about this option, be courageous enough to make the request, be able to pay for the appeal, and be patient and wait for years for a response. She asks why the literary evidence show mostly women imprisoned in convents. Schutte speculates that the legal subordination of women and assumptions that they were physically, intellectually, morally, and legally weak made them more plausible victims than men.
Schutte's second point is that it was not just younger siblings who were unwillingly placed into monasteries. In blended families older offspring were sometimes consigned to religious life so the younger children of the new union could marry. Families tended to have their own reasons for assigning children, male or female, older or younger to monastic life. In the cases she studied parents of guardians used violence, threats, and intimidation to force their wards into monastic life.
Readers of Diderot's The Nun (Paris: Gallimard, 1972) might consider the early modern convent a prison for miserable and sexually repressed women. While Schutte finds ample evidence of forced vocations and miserable nuns, monks, and friars, few of them vocalize on their sexual frustrations. The author argues that sexual desires were not the main reason member of religious communities wanted to leave. More often petitioners believed their souls were damned because they were not living monastic lives in their hearts. Sex does not appear to have been a significant issue; for more lurid stories we need to read literary sources, not court documents.
Finally, Schutte relates her book to the broad question of the transformation of the family in medieval and early modern Europe. She reviews the arguments of Philippe Aries and Lawrence Stone that families became more egalitarian in the early modern period, however, she concludes that the modern family did not emerge in eighteenth-century Europe. Her evidence does not indicate that relations between spouses became more equitable or parents became more affectionate toward children. The stories in this book are of elite families that were violent and dysfunctional, in which men demonstrated a decided lack of affection toward their children and often bullied their wives.
Schutte's work has added to our growing understanding of lives of men and women in early modern religious institutions, the complicated dynamics of family lives, and perhaps offers some insights into what made religious communities so anathema to early modern religious reformers.
