Search Results (175)

The Dominican Constanza de Castilla’s exceptional liturgical book, her Libro de devociones y oficios [Book of Devotions and Offices], served devotional and practical purposes in the convent of Santo Domingo el Real in Madrid. The article begins by examining Dominican nuns’ participation in Corpus Christi processions. It then examines Constanza’s liturgy for the Mass of the Incarnation (25 March). A study of liturgical calendars and offices both prior to and contemporary to Constanza reveals that there are no Castilian offices given the title ‘Incarnation of Our Lord’. Comparison of the contents of the office with the same liturgies reveals none with the exact same antiphons or readings. However, Constanza’s choice of the name ‘office of the Incarnation’ is matched to a similar wording in the account book of Franciscan nuns. They also give the name day of the Incarnation to the feast they celebrate on 25 March. The article also summarizes the theological theme of kenosis, Christ’s self-abasement, apparent elsewhere in the Book of Devotions and Offices and which is touched upon in the office of the Incarnation. Finally, it examines the links between Thomas Aquinas’s thinking on the Virgin Birth and where that is echoed by Constanza. This article concludes that, for this short office, Constanza’s Mass shows no signs of having been copied from existing offices, always with the proviso that what remains of fourteenth and fifteenth century liturgies provides an imperfect picture. Full article

This article examines the spiritual, intellectual, and institutional legacy of Caterina Vigri (1413–1463) and the formation of a “school of holiness” within the Poor Clare monastery of Corpus Domini in Bologna. Through the analysis of key texts produced within the monastic milieu—including the Libro devoto (later known as The Seven Spiritual Weapons), the Ordinazioni, the epistolary Formulario, and the Book of Visions and Revelations by Valeria Campanazzi—the study explores how Vigri’s teachings were transmitted, received, and reworked across generations of nuns. Particular attention is devoted to the centrality of obedience as the defining principle of monastic life, which marks a significant shift from earlier Franciscan emphases on poverty. The article highlights the pedagogical dimension of these writings, their grounding in Sacred Scripture, and their role in shaping a collective religious identity within an Observant context. At the same time, it situates Vigri’s spiritual program within broader developments in late medieval and early modern Christianity, including the institutional consolidation of religious life and the circulation of diverse spiritual influences. By tracing both continuity and transformation within the Corpus Domini community, the study demonstrates the existence of a sustained intellectual and devotional tradition that extended well beyond the founder’s lifetime. The “school of Caterina” thus emerges as a dynamic space of female religious authority, literary production, and theological formation. Full article

From the witch-like widow on the edges of civilisation to the retired spinster who, after an active but disappointing sexual past, chooses to continue her single life, the celibate women of Edna O’Brien’s fiction have as much to contribute to the author’s career-long examination of the damage done by Irish patriarchy as any of the miserable housewives, resentful mothers, and abused girls who dominate critical analyses of her work. Unlike the many admirable nun characters in O’Brien’s fiction, the women in this study are not consciously renouncing society or deliberately retreating from the world. While they can be vulnerable characters who risk disapproval and even violence, they can also offer alternative models of Irish womanhood, subtle and complex, alternatives not always recognised when the narrator is a young girl and sometimes appreciated too late by more mature narrators and characters. Full article

This is a study of the nun as a queer archetype of femininity across Kate O’Brien’s fiction and non-fiction. Alongside characters who are actual nuns, the fiction includes characters who can be described as ‘nun-like,’ especially in their renunciation of sexual desire. In the fiction, this secular renunciation is aligned with religious celibacy as actively chosen and ethically purposeful and situated as similar to artistic creativity. The study argues that O’Brien’s nuns are paradoxical and queer figures, undermining the temporality, class politics and models of human subjectivity central to O’Brien’s own ideological commitments. Attending to these nun figures prompts significant questions about the liberal feminist politics underpinning contemporary O’Brien studies and the prevailing critical reception of O’Brien as an exemplary Irish woman writer. Full article

As Villanova University students navigate campus life, ghost stories tied to specific buildings, paths, and rituals circulate as grassroots spatial narratives. This article argues that these stories involving haunted halls, underground tunnels, and ritualized practices surrounding seals, arches, and fountains, function as forms of Radical Placemaking, through which students collectively reinterpret, appropriate, and sometimes resist the university’s officially sanctioned spatial order. Drawing on 162 student testimonies collected in 2019, translated into Spanish, and analyzed using topic modeling, co-occurrence mapping, and GIS visualization, the study demonstrates how vernacular stories encode lived experiences, informal knowledge, and alternative claims to campus space. Nine thematic clusters emerge, organized into three narrative domains: supernatural encounters anchored to institutional buildings (including Alumni Hall’s Civil War history, the St. Mary’s nun legend, and Tolentine Hall hauntings), ritual and tradition practices that reinscribe or subvert formal authority (the Corr Chapel arch, the Driscoll Hall seal ritual, and student ceremonies), and hidden-space narratives that imagine infrastructures beyond official visibility (such as underground tunnels linking campus buildings). Analysis of narrative transmission reveals uneven power relations: institutional channels circulate curated traditions aligned with university identity. Peer networks and personal experiences generate counter-mappings that privilege exploration, embodiment, and affect. Villanova’s ghost stories constitute spatial perceptions that enable students to assert belonging, contest institutional narratives, and produce place through collective storytelling within an evolving and hierarchically governed campus landscape. Full article

This qualitative research examines the systemic dynamics of the abuse of consecrated women in the Loyola Community, analyzing the allegations against the influential sacral artist and theologian Marko Ivan Rupnik within broader scholarly debates on abuse in Catholic ecclesial contexts. Drawing on survivor testimonies, the study explores how clericalism and forms of spiritual authority were instrumentalized within this specific community to produce a sequential chain of harm encompassing sexual, psychological, and spiritual violence against consecrated women. The analysis demonstrates how vulnerance—the systemic capacity to produce harm—is engineered through institutional configurations and theological distortions. This condition normalizes exploitation and silences survivors over extended periods. Moving beyond individual pathology, the study critically examines systemic power asymmetries, hermeneutical injustice, and forms of institutional betrayal that emerge when the protection of religious reputation takes precedence over accountability and human dignity. Finally, the article highlights the significance of public testimony and digital movements such as #NunsToo in disrupting cultures of silence and contributing to the restoration of epistemic justice for survivors. Full article

Background and Objectives: Anatomical staging alone insufficiently explains survival heterogeneity in patients with resected non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Although inflammation-based biomarkers have demonstrated prognostic value, the clinical relevance of erythrocyte-derived indices—particularly mean corpuscular volume (MCV)—remains poorly characterized in this setting. This study evaluated the prognostic significance of preoperative MCV and examined whether its integration with the Noble and Underwood (NUn) score improves survival prediction. Methods: We retrospectively analyzed patients with stage I–IIIA NSCLC who underwent complete surgical resection. Associations between clinicopathological variables and overall survival (OS) were assessed using Cox proportional hazards models. Prognostic performance was evaluated using the concordance index and the integrated time-dependent area under the curve. Continuous variables were modeled on their original scale without dichotomization. Results: Model comparison using the Akaike Information Criterion indicated that incorporation of the composite NUn–MCV index into the intermediate model—comprising age, basal metabolic rate, American Society of Anesthesiologists physical status, pleural invasion, and pathological stage—provided a superior model fit compared with inclusion of the NUn score and MCV as separate covariates. On this basis, the composite NUn–MCV model was selected as the full model. Across all evaluations, the full model demonstrated consistently greater discriminative ability for survival prediction than both the intermediate model and the baseline model based solely on pathological stage. Conclusions: Preoperative MCV independently predicts OS in patients with resected stage I–IIIA NSCLC. Integration of MCV with the NUn score into a composite index provides incremental prognostic value beyond anatomical staging and established clinical factors, supporting its use as a complementary tool for postoperative risk stratification. Full article

The complex fabric of global cultures, shaped by multireligious, multicultural, and multilingual exchanges, encourages cross-cultural involvement and interchange among many groups. This diversity encourages shared appreciation and the pursuit of universal human goals, thereby promoting harmonious interactions. The Indian Christian women religious, specifically, embody such a dynamic, as their vocational duties frequently involve movement and subsequent integration into multiple contexts of culture, fostering cross-border interactions and exchanges. This qualitative research examines the transcultural encounters of Christian women religious from Karnataka, India, who frequently move within the country as well as overseas, in fulfillment of their pastoral responsibilities. Utilizing the transcultural framework, the study employs dialogical narrative analysis approach to identify the voices of Christian women religious situated in the in-depth interviews with six Roman Catholic nuns and Protestant women priests. The findings demonstrate how the Christian women religious actively negotiate their cultural identities, adopt coping mechanisms, and integrate into the society at large. The study reveals the transformational effects of cross-cultural contacts in multicultural, multilingual, and multireligious settings, allowing for a deeper understanding of the intricate intersection between culture, mobility, and identity. It divulges how mobility further contributes to the negotiation of cultural identities and fosters transculturality, highlighting how adaptable and dynamic cultural identities are when relocation occurs. Full article

Although Paegam Sŏngch’ong 栢庵性聰 (1631–1700) received orthodox transmission in Sŏn Buddhism in the Puhyu lineage 浮休係 (deriving from Puhyu Sŏnsu 浮休善修, 1543–1615), he is remembered as an important advocate of Huayan 華嚴 doctrinal learning in the mid-Chosŏn period. He collected Buddhist works from the Chinese Jia-xing Canon 嘉興藏 that had washed ashore on Imja Island 荏子島 in Chŏlla Province and published them in more than 190 volumes. In 1686, the first work produced in this endeavor was Precious Writings on the Pure Land (Chŏngt’o posŏ 淨土寶書), in one volume. It is a compilation, in fourteen sections (including the preface), of excerpts and summaries of Pure Land writings and stories published in the supplementary canon section 續藏 of the Jiaxing Canon. The core and longest section of the work is chapter thirteen: “Efficacy of the Fruit of the Pure Land” (Chŏngt’o kwahŏm 淨土果驗). This chapter comprises devotional narratives on cases of rebirth in the Pure Land classified according to the social or birth status of the main figures: monks, kings and ministers, nobles and commoners, nuns, women, evildoers, animals, and so forth. The primary purpose of these narratives is to underscore to virtue of chanting the name of the Buddha Amitābha (yŏmbul, Ch. nianfo 念佛) as a means of rebirth in Sukhāvatī. This work is significant because it demonstrates the value and function of Chinese Pure Land literature in the popularization of Pure Land practice in the mid and late Chosŏn period. Full article

Threats to forest ecosystems from pest insects are supposed to become more severe due to climate change. Therefore, understanding the dynamics of forest pest insects and the mechanisms of their outbreaks is going to be of even greater importance. To understand these phenomena and cope with the consequences, the question of which patterns show meta-populations of pest insects before and after outbreaks is of high interest. Therefore, long-term studies have been carried out in two research areas in North-West Poland with the aim of studying the fluctuations of meta-populations of the Nun moth (Lymantria monacha L.) (Lepidoptera: Erebidae) using pheromone traps. Synchronization of the fluctuations at the individual study plots was tested for correlations with the numbers of the Nun moth per trap, changes in the numbers of the Nun moth per trap, and the growth factors. The studied Nun moth meta-populations showed a certain pattern in fluctuations of their sub-populations (interaction groups) with phases of asynchronous and synchronous fluctuations; the latter seem to be important when it comes to distinctive peaks in Nun moth numbers in the meta-populations. We conclude that predicting population dynamics of the Nun moth demands long-term studies, including research on both density-dependent factors and stochastic processes. Full article

Climate dynamics on our planet drive range border movements for many species. Insects, being ectothermic animals, significantly respond to changes in these conditions. We recently demonstrated northward expansion for important invasive pest species such as Lymantria dispar in central Asia. In the current study, we combined historical data and our modern data, using very sensitive pheromone trapping, to estimate the dynamics of the northern range border of Lymantria dispar. Full article

The article describes the sociocultural change under the sacred canopy in a country with a deep Catholic tradition in Europe, focusing on the indicators of secularization in Italy, drawn from the most recent national surveys. One of the most significant results is the increase in nuns and spiritual but not religious people, especially among the younger generations. Nonetheless, for the majority of Italians, Catholicism is still part of the social framework of collective memory. At the same time, immigration is contributing to a changing religious geography: Italian society is transitioning from a monopoly regime (a dominant church-based religion) to one characterized by the pluralism of faiths. Full article

Holy Week, the most significant period of the Christian liturgical year, was marked by solemn and complex rituals enacted within the sacred spaces of medieval religious communities. In the case of Cistercian female monasteries, scholarly attention has largely centered on Easter dramatic representations such as the Depositio or the Visitatio Sepulchri, while the official liturgy—Hours, Masses, processions, and the official rituals of the Easter Triduum—has remained comparatively understudied. This article addresses that gap by examining the Holy Week liturgy as performed by the Cistercian nuns of Lichtenthal (Baden-Baden, Germany), on the basis of an exceptional and understudied source: the original Ecclesiastica Officia (mid-13th century, Karlsruhe, Badisches Generallandesarchiv, 65/323). Containing comprehensive normative prescriptions for the Easter liturgy adapted for the Lichtenthal community, this manuscript enables a detailed reconstruction of the nuns’ primary collective experiences during these days. The study brings together evidence from architecture, works of art, and liturgical books, while integrating insights from sensory studies, in order to underscore the bodily and multi-sensory dimensions of the rituals. In doing so, it highlights the implications of the nuns’ active participation in Holy Week ceremonies and contributes to a deeper understanding of medieval female religious ritual experience, challenging conventional notions of enclosure and liturgical practice. Full article

Background: Vitamin D supplementation may influence oxidative stress, but evidence in populations following specific dietary patterns is limited. Methods: In this non-randomized, two-group exploratory study, 50 Orthodox nuns received vitamin D supplementation (2000 IU/day orally) for 16 weeks, whereas 50 age-matched women following time-restricted eating (TRE) served as controls receiving no supplementation. Anthropometric parameters, serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D], and oxidative stress markers—total antioxidant capacity (TAC), glutathione (GSH), and thiobarbituric acid reactive substances—were measured at baseline and post-intervention. Results: At baseline, both groups were comparable in anthropometric and oxidative stress markers, except for serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D], which was lower in the intervention group. Following supplementation, serum 25(OH)D increased from 15.77 ± 5.21 to 31.24 ± 7.87 ng/mL (p = 0.031) in Orthodox nuns. No significant changes were observed for TAC (0.93 ± 0.11 to 0.97 ± 0.09, p = 0.081) and GSH (6.01 ± 1.55 to 5.81 ± 1.41, p = 0.069), whereas TBARS decreased significantly (7.32 ± 1.31 to 6.94 ± 1.21, p = 0.041). No significant changes were observed in controls under TRE. Changes (Δ) in all variables represented the post–pre difference over the 16-week period. Pearson correlations showed no significant associations between Δ25(OH)D and ΔTAC (r = −0.244, p = 0.346), ΔGSH (r = 0.110, p = 0.675), or ΔTBARS (r = −0.116, p = 0.657). In multivariable regression adjusted for age, weight, body fat percentage, and baseline 25(OH)D, Δ25(OH)D was not an independent predictor of oxidative stress marker changes; however, weight (β = 0.08, p = 0.011) and body fat percentage (β = −0.13, p = 0.014) were associated with reductions in TBARS. Conclusions: In conclusion, sixteen weeks of vitamin D supplementation in women adhering to Orthodox fasting produced no consistent improvements in oxidative stress markers. While a small reduction in TBARS was observed, this effect was modest and appeared indirect, being more closely associated with decreases in body weight and fat mass than with vitamin D status itself. Taken together, our findings indicate an overall neutral impact of vitamin D on redox balance, suggesting that any antioxidant benefit is likely secondary to metabolic or adiposity-related changes. Full article

This study examines the performative, spatial, and affective dimensions of Marian devotion in two early modern women’s prayerbooks from Vorarlberg: the Valduna Prayerbook (Freiburg i. Br., UB Hs. 1500,30) and the Thalbach Prayerbook (Bregenz, VLB Hs. 17). Both manuscripts demonstrate that prayer was not a purely mental act but a choreographed devotional performance shaped by posture, gesture, and gaze. Rubrics repeatedly direct the devotee to pray before an image of the Virgin, transforming the image into a locus of embodied interaction that engaged sight, movement, and emotion. Analysis of sixteen such image-based prayers reveals how spatial instructions, somatic cues, and affective language converge to produce a physically enacted piety. Quantitative assessment of affective vocabulary shows that gaze-based prayers concentrate emotional language—especially of joy, sorrow, and distress—at twice the density of other texts in the same manuscripts, underscoring their heightened emotional charge. These prayerbooks thus construct a devotional choreography in which the devotee’s body becomes both instrument and interpreter of spiritual meaning. By situating image, word, and motion within the convent environment, the study reveals how female religious communities enacted Marian devotion as lived performance, where space, gesture, and affect generated spiritual presence. Full article