Women in the Christian Tradition: Paradigms and Expressions of Religious Life in Early Modern Western Contexts

Dear Colleagues,

The increasing scholarly attention devoted to women’s religious life, challenging their long-standing historiographical invisibility, has enabled a deeper understanding of its complexity and richness across multiple dimensions, as well as a reconsideration of its relationship with society at large and with established institutional powers.

In line with the spirit and trajectories of this stimulating field of enquiry, we invite contributions to this Special Issue, which will foster a comprehensive reflection on the diversity and heterogeneity of the forms and paradigms through which women’s religious life was expressed in Western early modernity. 

This initiative is grounded, on one hand, in a critical questioning of the assumed homogenisation of women’s consecrated life resulting from the decrees of the Council of Trent, which universally imposed enclosure upon religious women and the adoption of an exclusively contemplative paradigm, thereby precipitating the decline and even the effacement of the diverse forms of religiosity that had emerged from the religious effervescence of the early modern period—a context that entrusted women with moral and social protagonism and rendered them active agents of evangelisation, apostolate, and preaching.

On the other hand, it recognises that the female religious landscape of the early modern period, although standardised by the monastic ideal of strict enclosure, nonetheless exhibited a polyhedral character that resists any notion of absolute uniformity. Indeed, the persistence of female branches of the military orders can be observed, alongside the survival of beaterio-type arrangements of medieval origin. Equally, one witnesses the flourishing of Third Orders and various forms of ‘para-religious’ or ‘proto-monastic’ life, institutionally associated with houses of simple vows, conservatories for beatas exempt from canonical vows, non-religious houses of an assistential character yet structured along claustral lines, and other institutes bearing varied and occasionally ambiguous designations, corresponding to canonical formularies that were themselves imprecise, if not overtly equivocal.

This panorama, which characterised Western early modernity, displayed marked variations and region-specific developments across European nations and their respective colonial territories, enhancing its richness and theoretical potential. By highlighting the complexity of forms of women’s religious life across diverse geographies in the early modern period and by deepening reflection on the broader theme of women in the Christian tradition, this Special Issue welcomes original research articles and reviews addressing, but not limited to, the following topics:

• Religious configurations and their diversity: institutional aspects, canonical frameworks, nature of vows, relationships with the ecclesiastical hierarchy, and foundation processes;
• Paradigms of religious life: active life (charitable work, education, evangelisation, etc.) and contemplative life, intersections between mysticism and apostolate;
• The world of strict enclosure: variety and deviations, enclosed orders with apostolic functions, diversity of statutes, community composition, and the presence of laywomen within the enclosure;
• Positions and discourses of ecclesiastical authority regarding forms of religious life;
• Spiritual lineages, models of sanctity, and devotional, liturgical, and cultural practices;
• Architecture and material culture: the monastic model and its multiple interpretations;
• Religious women in the colonial world and the reinterpretation of the Tridentine model.

We request that, prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and an abstract of 200-300 words summarizing their intended contribution. Please send it to the Guest Editor, Prof. Dr. Maria Luisa Jacquinet (mljacquinet@autonoma.pt), and CC the Assistant Editor, Katarina Antonic (katarina.antonic@mdpi.com), of Religions. Abstracts will be reviewed by the Guest Editor for ensuring proper fit within the scope of the Special Issue. Full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer review. 

A tentative timeline:

Deadline for Abstract Submission: 27 February 2026
Deadline for Full Manuscript Submission: 1 September 2026

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Prof. Dr. Maria Luisa Jacquinet
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Religions is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.