Spanning two thousand years of Christian religious women's quest for spiritual and vocational fulfillment, Sisters in Armsis the first definitive history ofCatholic nuns in the Western world. Unfolding century by century, this epic drama encompasses every period from the dawn of Christianity to the present.

History has until recently minimized the roleof nuns over the centuries. In this volume, their rich lives, their work, and their importance to the Church are finally acknowledged. Jo Ann Kay McNamara introduces us to women scholars, mystics, artists, political activists, healers,and teachers--individuals whose religious vocation enabled them to pursue goals beyond traditional gender roles. They range from Thecla, the legendary companion of Paul, who baptized herself in preparation for facing the lions in theRoman arena, to Hildegard of Bingen, whose visions unlocked her extraordinary talents for music, medicine, and moral teaching in the twelfth century. They also include Sister Mary Theresa Kane, who stood before the pope--and an Americantelevision audience-in 1979 and urged him to consider the ordination of women.

By entering the convent, McNamara shows, nuns gained a community that allowed them to evolve spiritually, intellectually,and emotionally; but the convent was never a perfect refuge. Women's struggles continued against the male church hierarchy, the broader lay community, and the larger cultural and historical forces of change.

The history of nuns is an important part of the larger story of western women whose gender provoked resistance to their claims to autonomy and power. As we enter the third millennium, thisgroundbreaking work pays fitting tribute to the sisters who have labored with prayer and service for two thousand years, who have struggled to achieve greater recognition and authority, and who have forged opportunities for all womenwhile holding true to the teachings of the Gospel.

Sisters in Arms...is fascinating to read...[It] presents a powerful story of dedication and struggle.

McNamara's fascinating guide through the lives and work of Catholic nuns over the last two thousand years reveals both the successes and failures of these women who have played such significant roles in the historyof the Catholic church.

McNamara has done us a tremendous service in bringing our foremothers' struggle for spiritual riches into view.

Sisters in Arms, which is attracting high praise from reviewers, is a remarkable work, in the judgment of Sister Karen Kennelly, president of Mount St. Mary's College inCalifornia...She calls the book 'a unique effort to lay out the comprehensive picture of the history of religious life for women'...Dr. [Mary Martin] McLaughlin [a medieval historian formerly of Vassar College] calls the book'groundbreaking in certain of its aspects, certainly in its scope,' and she praises its economic analysis and use of family histories.

[A] remarkable story--truly of epic proportions...The book is a tour de force...No book in the library has told the whole rich story [of Catholic nuns] as soundly and intelligentlyas this one does; and for that Jo Ann Kay McNamara deserves our undying gratitude.

[An] erudite but impassioned study.

[An] ambitious and energetic book.

Sisters in Armsis undoubtedly the definitive work on nuns. The book...covers 2,000 years of Catholic women's search for holiness in the celibate life. Jo Ann Kay McNamara paradesseekers from Mary Magdalen to Sister Mary Theresa Kane, and she does it with a scholar's eye for detail, a Catholic's nostalgia, and a raconteur's penchant for entertainment...Century by century McNamara presents them: women fromGalilee (who supported the 'little band of vagabonds'), deaconesses, hermits, sanctimonials, canonesses, conversae, beguines, anchorites, abbesses, witches and mystics. Stealthily, we enter the sacred and secluded halls of Quedlinberg,Bingen, Amesbury, the Paraclete and glimpse (only just) the occupants. But those glimpses are titillating and make us want to keep on reading.

A scholarly and sweeping review of early apostolic, medieval, and modern religious women.

McNamara's work...is a learned and readable history of religious women which begins historically with female discipleship in the New Testament era and ends with some contemporary reflections on female religiousorders today...The precise merit of this highly accessible historical study rests in the author's keen appreciation that the Christian tradition, though organic, is not monodirectional...McNamara raises many historical questions thatremain pertinent today...[T]he strong historical narrative and the rich panorama of persons...give shape and power to Sisters in Arms. I know of no other book of such comprehensive scope. It deserves awide readership for what it tells us about women in the Christian tradition generally and in the ascetic/religious/vowed world in particular.

A rich tumble of anecdotes, stories, examples and testimonials, presented in a vigorous and engaging writing style with a certain staccato rhythm, clothes the understructure of serious scholarship. McNamara'sstrength is in dealing with the early and high Middle Ages. She explains clearly the logic of various social and particularly economic structures which more often than not determined whether a young woman would enter a convent(willingly or otherwise) and just what the range of options were for the individual and for the community...[The book is] a masterwork of recovered history, finely detailed and assessed with a knowing and worldly-wise eye.

Sisters in Armshas received great acclaim in the secular press, and makes a splendid contribution to the history of Catholic nuns and sisters. In a single volume she has drawntogether the fruits of decades of research and comprehensive documentation, but in a way which makes for compulsive reading rather than boring narrative. Her overarching theme is the way in which male clerics tried to shape and controlthe lives of ecclesial women religious, much as husbands used their legal rights to control the lives of their wives and children...The treatment of women religious during the upheavals of the European reformations makes poignantreading...[A] splendidly incivisive account of women religious within the Christian tradition.

[An] extraordinary book...In her preface, McNamara affectingly declares: 'Like Voltaire, I have grown up to be a secular humanist, yet, like him, I must concede that all I am I owe to my Catholic education.' It hasserved her--and her readers, including this one--very well.

[McNamara's] topic has both vast dimensions and profound implications.

McNamara...knows how to make complex issues clear for a general audience. Throughout her ambitious narrative she pays close attention to the scholarly literature. But she does not allow the apparatus of scholarshipto banish her own feminist point of view, or to overwhelm the story. What comes across most strongly in Sisters in Armsis the extraordinary tenacity of religious commitment women have made to theChurch over the centuries, and the great difficulties they have faced in expressing a female point of view within an institution dominated by men...Readers...will be rewarded with vivid reminders of the many ways that the problem ofgender has been dealt with throughout Western history. More than a history of nuns, Sisters in Armsis a survey of how the Roman Catholic tradition has confronted the ever-present question of how toconceptualize the relationship between men and women.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 695-740) and index.

Jo Ann Kay McNamarais Professor of History at <>Hunter Collegeand at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

Preface

Introduction: Chastity and Female Identity

The Roman Empire

The Apostolic Life

Cult and Countercult

The Discipline of the Desert

TheEarly Middle Ages

The Power of Prayer

The Frontier Outpost

The Bonds of Castimony

Family Ties

The World, the Flesh, and the Devil

The High Middle Ages

The Imitation of Christ

Cura Mulierum

Disordered Women

The Alchemy ofMysticism

The Tears of the Magdalene

The Early Modern Era

Regular Lives

Defenders of the Faith

Martha's Part

The Mystical Regiment

The Sweetness of Life

Modern Times

Culture Wars

The Feminine Apostolate

Conclusion: Toward a Third Millennium

Notes

Bibliography

Index