Beguines are trendy: many websites and novels are dedicated to them. But who were they? Their rediscovery created an upheaval in the long-accepted binary scheme of the female condition in the past: the convent or the house, aut virum aut murum. The beguines were, in fact, only the tip of the iceberg, that of non-cloistered female religious life. The works of Gabriella Zarri about the “terzo stato” in the 1990s demonstrated the importance of this third way of religious celibacy outside religious enclosure. The non-cloistered sisters represented a perpetually changing reality throughout Western Christendom, and the multiplication of female congregations in the nineteenth century was based in large part on this phenomenon, long ignored by historiography. In fact, these sisters were probably much more numerous than cloistered nuns, but they have been the subject of very few studies.

 The research project Sorores, supported by the École française de Rome and the Casa de Velazquez of Madrid, is planning a series of panels for the upcoming RSA conference in San Juan (9-11 March 2023) about women who publicly lived non-cloistered religious lives in Europe and the colonies between 1400 and 1800. This year, we are focusing on two issues: definitions and sources. Using the negative – non-cloistered religious women – to define these women inevitably brings us to question the definition of enclosure and, in connection, religious vows, Roman norms, identities and self-definitions. Is it possible to define better – or alternatively – these women and their religious experience according to various context? Which sources allow us to see their life paths and to hear their voices? We will explore these questions through the following topics:

• Comparative historiography and historiographical issues about non-cloistered forms of women’s lives
• Definitions: enclosure and non-enclosure, rules and vows, communities and their self-definitions
• Roman Church and its norms
• Forms and experiences of women’s non-cloistered religious lives
• The structures of these communities
• The social role and presence of non-cloistered religious women in cities
• Community (Societies, Third Order, Dimesse…) vs individual (bizzoche, monache di casa…) experiences
• Permanency and mutation throughout long time periods 
• Relations with ecclesiastical and secular authorities
• Sources and methodology

We specifically invite papers that will present either a new source for the study of non-cloistered religious women or the theorization of a working definition of these women. Papers should be 15-20 minutes. 

Please email your abstract by August 5, 2022, to Sylvie Duval (duvalsylvie@hotmail.com), Isabel Harvey (harvey.isabel@courrier.uqam.ca) and Sergi Sancho Fibla (ssfibla@gmail.com), with your full name, current affiliation, and email address; a paper title (15-word maximum), and an abstract (150-word maximum).