Keitt_Inventing the Sacred.pdf

Gender <html_ent glyph="@amp;" ascii="&amp;"/> History, 2002

The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 2016

This chapter concerns the contradiction in modern Catholicism that women can be God-like but not priest-like. Drawing on research into the Roman Catholic Women Priest movement, it explores how this contradiction persists through the manipulation of metaphors of contagion and containment in relation to notions of sin and virtue. Just as the sins of the one couple (Adam and Eve) contaminate the many and for generations thereafter, the moral failures of any one individual, by analogy, can be applied metaphorically to all of humankind. Yet grace, too, can be contagious, spreading among persons (underlying certain Catholic models of religious practice). Problems arise when some people’s sins turn out to be more contagious than others. Through a mixture of ethnographic and historical sources, the discussion traces how sin and grace are differently containable or contagious according to gender. The infinite manipulability of this sin/grace complex helps to illuminate how opposition to the ordination of women remains institutionally entrenched even as male sex-abuser priests have come to dominate the media. The chapter concludes that Catholicism’s multiform problems with gender are reproduced via this politics of contagion and containment, and that radical repercussions are at stake in sin’s containment.

1996

AJS Review, 2004

In this paper I will examine the rabbinic exemption of women from the obligation to perform any “positive time-bound commandment” (), as it appears in M. Kiddushin 1:7. This rule states that women are exempt from the obligation to perform those commandments, such as, for example, sitting in a Sukkah on the Feast of Tabernacles, or saying the kriءat shemעa, the declaration of God&#39;s Oneness, morning and evening, in which the requirement for the mandated action comes about with the arrival of a specific time. I offer this analysis of a particular rabbinic ruling, in its literary context in the Mishnah, as a case study in what I claim to be a major component of the rabbinic discourse of gender: the male appropriation of the “feminine” into their own identities, and the resultant exclusion of women from those areas of appropriation. In this paper I will employ a literary/anthropological approach to reading the Mishnah, which I believe is very useful in uncovering such underlying cult...

"Gender, Confession, and Authority: MS Douce 114 in the Fifteenth Century." Eds. Vincent Gillespie andKantik Ghosh. After Arundel: Religious Writing in 15th Century England. Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2011. 415-428

In order to examine the ways in which Gnostic-Manichean myths have been conceptualised by Patristic writers, it will first be necessary to summarise the important aspects of the Gnostic and Manichean belief systems. It will also be necessary to examine the ways in which a number of Patristic writers have interpreted the Manichean practices, including the extent to which their own biases and prejudices have influenced how they have perceived these practices. The accusations that were levelled against the Manicheans and the Gnostics will then be examined, focusing in particular upon the motifs of sex and gender that were used by the Patristic writers. The accusations involving gender, sex and slander were also made against the Christians and various other groups, and the common themes that were prevalent within the accusations made against these various groups will then be explored. The extent to which one group tends to regard a rival group as being the evil Other will then be examined, as this evil Other was perceived as engaging in behaviours that were thought to be so completely abhorrent and subversive that members of this group could hardly be regarded as human at all. Many groups have traditionally been regarded as this evil Other, including various religious cults, people from a wide variety of geographical locations, and women, and the ways in which these groups were conceptualised will also be examined. Female characters within Gnostic and Manichean traditions have tended to be perceived in a negative, or at least ambivalent, manner within the texts that were written by the Patristic writers, and the ways in which these characters have been conceptualised will also be examined within this paper. Finally, a conclusion will be reached concerning the reception of Gnostic-Manichean myths by the Patristic writers, focusing particularly upon the ways in which they have used gender, sex and slander when discussing these religious traditions.

Lived Religion and Gender in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, 2021

This study is an exploration of lived religion and gender across the Reformation, from the 14th–18th centuries. Combining conceptual development with empirical history, the authors explore these two topics via themes of power, agency, work, family, sainthood and witchcraft. By advancing the theoretical category of ‘experience’, Lived Religion and Gender reveals multiple femininities and masculinities in the intersectional context of lived religion. The authors analyse specific case studies from both medieval and early modern sources, such as secular court records, to tell the stories of both individuals and large social groups. By exploring lived religion and gender on a range of social levels including the domestic sphere, public devotion and spirituality, this study explains how late medieval and early modern people performed both religion and gender in ways that were vastly different from what ideologists have prescribed. Lived Religion and Gender covers a wide geographical area in western Europe including Italy, Scandinavia and Finland, making this study an invaluable resource for scholars and students concerned with the history of religion, the history of gender, the history of the family, as well as medieval and early modern European history. The Introduction of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license and is available here: https://tandfbis.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/rt-files/docs/Open+Access+Chapters/9781351003384_oaintroduction.pdf

Dialogo, 2020

The medieval penitentials propose a very interesting source to understand the sight of the whole society on the women. In our study, the presented books of penance reveal the women in their different social roles. We see them as the poor victims of the sinful activity of men. Nevertheless, we can recognize them as evil sinners. In this study, we try to present the medieval view of women's social position, the nature of their sins, and their manner of trespassing God's commandments as well. The numerous penitentials denote that the women commit only some kinds of sins, from which we can mention murder, witchcraft, and lust. Thus the women in Middle-Ages arouse fear and that is why they must be subordinated by men in society. Fortunately, the 20th century brings to women the liberty and equality with men, the new situation to which the Catholic Church reacts with the exaltation of the women.