Taking The Veil: Catholic Nuns in the 17th-century Early Modern England

Jean-François Carvin, Justine Radojcic, Catherine Roux

When the monarch has been designated as the only Head of the Church of England, religious
conformity and royal loyalty were bound.
The 16th and 17th century were periods of nationwide religious disturbances in England. During
the reign of Queen Elizabeth I onwards, the aim of eradicating Catholicism developed in a part
of national ideology.1 Being Catholic became a punishable offence and was associated with
treason to the Crown and to the “true religion”. Parliament began passing Penal Laws that
discriminated against non-Anglicans, particularly Catholics. They became known as Recusants
since they acknowledged the Pope's authority. The anti-Catholicism sentiment was supplied by
various crises and threats, such as the Gunpowder Plot (1605).
Intolerance regarding Catholics forced many of them to hide, to convert to Protestantism or
move abroad as exiles to practice their faith freely from oppression. The survival of English
Catholics was assured for instance, through the training of priests on the Continent and the
Jesuits mission.
Based on the article of Professor Frances E. Dolan at the University of California Davis, the
following study will discuss how the nun figure allows to replace both the notions of being a
woman and of Catholic faith in the 17th century reformed England, through 3 main notions:
the representation of women and religiousness, the anti-Catholic propaganda, and the political
role of nuns during their exile on the continent.

A) Women and sexuality: representations of the holy and the body

“And Adam said, This [is] now bone

of my bones, and flesh of my flesh:
she shall be called Woman, because
she was taken out of Man.” 2

Figure 1. Schnorr von Carolsfeld, Julius. “Fall of Men .” Istock,

January 2012. By permission of Media istock Bank Image

The Early Modern period saw women as frivolous and irrational creatures of lust. That belief
came from Genesis in the Bible and is related to the original sin.

1
Wiener, The Beleaguered isle. A study of Elizabethan and Early Jacobean Anti-Catholicism, p.27
2
The Holy Bible, Genesis 2:23
According to that view, women were seen as either prostitutes (Mary-Madeleine) or young
virgins (Mary the Virgin) in a patriarchal society. More than this, they had to remain discreet
and obedient: “The young woman is taught […] that passivity and receptivity are central to her
sexuality and that these must be core aspects of her future sexual behaviour.”3.
In England, the Protestant reform changed everything for Catholic women. As Judith Bennett
explains in her article 4, recusant women were targeted for their faith (the religion of the ‘Whore
of Babylon’). They also were associated with ‘carnality’ and Protestantism viewed the female
body in religious practices as dangerous because Catholic women were leading Protestants to
their spiritual downfall by seducing them. On the other hand, they were also seen as fragile
creatures being seduced into Catholicism. But why were nuns the target of Protestants?

That question can be partly answered by looking at the way the Catholic Church viewed nuns
in the medieval area. Indeed, the Council of Trent which was held in three parts from 1545 to
1563 drew a specific line between nuns and monks, gendering the religious and therefore
reducing nuns to ‘women’. The argument given was that the nun’s special role was to be the
bride of Christ. Chastity in this discourse became the nun’s primary feature. Consequently, by
binding spiritual marriage to being the bride of Christ, it carried a sexual resonance that resulted
in sexualizing the nun’s body and its virginity.

Moreover, because the Council of Trent adopted

Figure 2. Engraving (plate number 21) from a Latin
edition of The Dialogues of Luisa Sigea (c.1690), BL
PC.30.i.10. Courtesy of the British Library. From
Sarah Toulalan's Imagining Pornography and
Bodies in Seventeenth-Century England, 2007
strict enclosure to cut off nuns from the outside
world and male supervision of the religious
houses of women, Protestants’ distrust for
Catholics grew even more as they saw convents
as secret places where the Catholic clergy was
performing profane acts. From that point of view,
convents could be compared to brothels: “Nuns
and prostitutes wore special clothes, eschewed
matrimony, and inhabited separate institutional
spaces.” 5. Since the ‘naughty nun’ became a
trope in the rhetorical Protestants’ discourse, the
supposedly immoral Catholic cloisters provided
empirical proof for their doctrinal allegations.
Furthermore, the architectural structures of the
cloisters, pinpoints Frances Dolan in her essay,
were “made literal symbolism for describing the
female body […] for nuns the external carapace
of the convent walls might have served as an
extreme reification of a symbolism many women
used to describe and defend their chastity” 6

3
Toulalan, Imagining Pornography and Bodies in Seventeenth-Century England, p.137

4
Bennett, "Lesbian-Like" and the Social History of Lesbianisms, p.1-24

5
Strasser, State of Virginity: Gender, Religion, and Politics in an Early Modern Catholic State, p.70
6
Dolan, Why are nuns Funny?, p.517
B) The popular representations of nuns in literature

Nuns were also seen as sexual beings because of the large body of printed material that was
produced through the seventeenth century. Several works of literature like Venus in the
Cloister: Or, The Nun in her Smock (Barrin, 1683), Putanism de Roma, or, The History of the
whores and whoredoms of the Popes Cardinals and Clergey of Rome, discovered by a Conclave
of Ladies, convened for the Election of a new Pope (Leti, 1630) or even Anatomy of the English
Nunnery at Lisbon (Robinson,1622).
Such literature or anti-Catholic pamphlets served the purpose of discrediting both women and
Catholics, using sexual flagellation – for example – to link sexual pleasure to one of the most
known Catholic punishments, sending up a hypocritical and unchaste Church.

By contrast, nuns could also be seen as not to be taken seriously like in Aphra Behn’s The
History of the Nun Or the Fair Vow-Breaker (1689) in which nuns “sing, dance, play
instruments, and make ‘little plays’ to ‘divert themselves’” 7 or a ‘waste’ because some young
women were too beautiful to take the veil such as Olivia and Rosaline in Shakespeare’s plays
Twelfth Night (1602) and Romeo and Juliet (1597). Additionally, plays like The Convent of
Pleasure (1668) by Margaret Cavendish can be interpreted today as a feminist examination of
the roles of women in the 17th-century patriarchal English society but could be seen, at that
time, as a model of women disrupting public order by rejecting marriage, thus, enjoying the
single life.

C) Anti-Catholic propaganda: the alleged perversity of the Catholic Order

Figure 3. The Anatomie of the English nunnery at Lisbon in Portugall dissected and laid open by one that was
sometime a yonger brother of the covent. Who (if the grace of God had not prevented him) might have growne as
old in a wicked life as the oldest amongst them. Published by authority. Nom/numéro bibliographique: STC (2nd
ed.) / 21126. Pamphlet by Robinson, Thomas. From Early English Books Online, ProQuest.

7
Dolan, Why are nuns Funny?, p.513
As explained in the first part, the aim of Protestants’ texts was to prove that Catholics were
manipulators, easily influenced, or used God’s forgiveness as a false pretext to justify sinful
acts. Edmund Curll, a publisher of the second English edition of Venus in the Cloister (1725),
summarises it as “to lay open the Abuses and Corruptions of the Church of Rome…” Though
the actions described in such texts may have existed to some extent, they happened to a degree
far inferior to the one that is told in such literature.
While such texts often claim to be reliable sources8 by indicating precise locations and names
of religious personnel, they can easily be identified as uncertain. The authors of this
‘revolutionary naked fundamentalist’9 sect which created false Catholic denominations – such
as the Adamites – used and perverted the Catholic clothing rite of novices by turning it into a
sexual one. The rite consists in leaving one’s former possessions and removing one’s clothes to
wear the traditional novice apparat. To put it simply, the Adamite denomination takes this rite
to another level by declaring that all its members worship God while being naked. The nuns’
actual duties were well registered and can counter such anti-Catholic propaganda, as stated in
Walker’s article: “the nuns had to develop income-generating activities to supplement their
customary revenues; and this had to be done within the narrow cultural space imposed by their
gender and social status”10.

D) Above the walls: the political role of nuns in exile on the continent

Women were given a central place in the Catholic

resistance. What is most striking to consider is the task
performed by exile nuns on the continent, “some
dispossessed nuns joined convents abroad or banded
together to attempt to continue a contemplative life;
some daughters of English exiles entered local
cloisters”11. Their cloistered nature did not prevent
them from having contacts with the outside world and
the political context of Britain during the 17th century.
Indeed, they actively participated in the Catholic
resistance by creating an early modern “underground
railroad”, collaborating with missionaries and with the
Stuarts monarchs. As explained by Claire Watkinson,
“the period from the founding of the first English
convent in exile, the Brussels Benedictines, in 1594 to
the start of Charles I’s reign in 1625 marks a period
where the English convents in exile emerge as highly
politicized institutions''12.

Figure 4. Jenna Lay, Beyond the Cloister:

Catholic Englishwomen and Early Modern
Literary Culture, 2016. From OpenEdition
Journals.

8
Dolan, Why are nuns Funny ?, p.517
9
Dolan, Why are nuns Funny? p.532
10
Walker, Combining Martha and Mary: Gender and Work in Seventeenth-Century English Cloisters, p.398
11
Frances E. Dolan, Why are Nuns Funny?, p.510
12
Claire Watkinson, Engaging nuns: Exiled English convents and the politics of exclusion, 1590-1829, p.62
Nuns and Charles II would regularly exchange letters and nuns appeared as significant
supporters of the Stuart cause. Their status as both religious women and cloistered into convents
emerged as the perfect cover. Claire Watkinson asserts that “On the restoration of the King in
1660 the English nuns were hopeful of securing gains from Charles II on account of their
support during the English civil war”13. As the years began to pass and in the anticipation of a
possibility of Catholicism being tolerated once again in England, these women organized
themselves into various houses dedicated to the religious education of other English exiles.
As told by Claire Walker points out in her article, “monastic houses for English women
proliferated rapidly during the early decades of the seventeenth century. There were thirty-six
in existence by 1700, and these comprised most of the pre-Reformation orders of Benedictines,
Augustinians, Franciscans, and Dominicans, as well as the reformed Carmelites, and a newly
created English congregation, the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary”14.
Mary Ward, the founder of the institute, worked in secret to preserve Catholic faith before
establishing a community of active sisters in St. Omer, Belgium. Without a cloister, she and her
accomplices educated young women, assisted persecuted Catholics, and spread the word of
God. The Sisters lived and worked openly on the continent while clandestinely nurturing the
faith in England. She travelled throughout Europe and established schools in the Netherlands
or Italy. Nevertheless, since the convents remained in exile, the shaping of a British monarchy
tied to the exiled convents had to be maintained through epistolary networks.
On his accession to the throne, James II also made it clear that he intended to offer toleration
for Catholics as well. According to Watkinson, the King converted to Catholicism on his
deathbed and this decision would have been influenced by a nun’s advice in Flanders’15. The
period that Charles II had spent associating with the exiled cloisters had been crucial in shaping
his faith. James' accession to the throne appeared as a hope to the revival of Catholicism, and
more particularly, to a national English Catholicism.

The exiled nuns on the continent were crucial contributors to the shaping of sense of
Englishness. The first means to do so was through perpetuating an English Catholic education.
English Catholic nuns purposefully maintained a national identity within the walls of their
convents. By preserving the English identity, nuns deconstructed this well-known belief that
shaped the English identity in the 17th century onwards.

To draw a conclusion from this research, the analysis replaces both the notions of being a
woman and of Catholic faith into the 17th century reformed England by showing that nuns were
reduced to their gender - which was linked to their bodies - and therefore depicted as sexual
beings in both Protestant and Catholic discourses. Moreover, the different printed materials of
that time indicate that Protestants used it as a means to spread anti-Catholic propaganda by
turning the nun figure into a ridiculous stock character. Traces of those peculiar views remain
to this day, just looking at pictures or costumes of nuns and priests on Google. Finally, the last
part of the study focuses on the important role of nuns in political matters. However, it would
be relevant in a future study to add real epistolary testimonies of nuns such as Angela of Foligno
(13th-century), Teresa of Ávila (16th-century) or Catherine Wigmore (17th-century) to

13
Claire Watkinson, Engaging nuns: Exiled English convents and the politics of exclusion, 1590-1829, p.67
14
Claire Walker, Combining Martha and Mary: Gender and Work in Seventeenth-Century English Cloisters, p.398
15
Claire Watkinson, Engaging nuns: Exiled English convents and the politics of exclusion, 1590-1829, p.85
distinguish fact from fiction and understand that even while they were women and religious,
they still managed to influence the larger society as a whole.
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