This conference will examine the manifestations of religiosity of women who were not fully considered by the Catholic Church as members of its body, such as beatas, consecrated virgins, beguines, bizzoche, penitents, tertiaries, puellae, as well as sisters of religious congregations, from 1400 to 1900.

Argument

This conference will examine the manifestations of religiosity of women who were not fully considered by the Catholic Church as members of its body, such as beatas, consecrated virgins, beguines, bizzoche, penitents, tertiaries, puellae, as well as sisters of religious congregations, from 1400 to 1900.

These women will be examined from the perspective of the Americas, Africa, and Asia. As many of these global experiences are closely tied to colonising states, Europe will only be considered in relation to these non-European cases. The aim is to integrate these models of religious life into the cultural, religious, social and economic history of women religious and devout laywomen, who have often been sidelined in favour of cloistered nuns. The long chronological period considered will highlight continuities and ruptures beyond the confessional age.

The main objective of this collaboration between two international initiatives, ISHWRA (International Scholars for the History of Women Religious Association) and Sorores (SORORES. Les religieuses non cloîtrées en Europe du Sud, XII^e-XVIII^e siècles), is to look, on a global scale, at women who were engaged in models of religious life that have been under-researched due to the ambiguity of their status and their presence on the margins of monastic institutions, or because of the scarcity of sources.

This conference was funded by the F.R.S.-FNRS, CRHiDI (UCLouvain Saint-Louis) and IACCHOS (UCLouvain). We are very grateful for their support.

Programme

12 May 2026

Saint-Louis campus, Brussels

Salle des Examens

• 13h45 Introduction Sarah Barthélemy (UCLouvain Saint-Louis) and Liliana Pérez Miguel (Universidad de Burgos)

14h-15h45 SESSION 1 How Women’s Religious Commitment is Experienced and Defined

• 14h| Yolande François (Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3) Jewish Female Religiosity as a Matrix of Christian Models: Rethinking Women’s Religious Polymorphism in a Longue Durée Perspective
• 14h20| Ji Li (The University of Hong Kong) Chinese Christian Virgins: Adaptation, Contribution, and Identity
• 14h40| Tiffany Hunsinger (University of Dayton) Between Cloister and Community: Beatas and Laywomen in Colonial Mexico as Agents of Polymorphic Catholicism
• 15h| Sofía Brizuela (UNSTA) & Óscar Leonardo Londoño (Universidad Nacional de Colombia) Del hecho prodigioso a la institucionalidad. La beata María Ramos y el culto a la Virgen de Chiquinquirá
• 15h20| Discussion

Coffee break

16h-18h10 SESSION 2 How Women’s Religious commitment is Controlled, Debated, or Prosecuted 

• 16h| Julia Lewandowska (Uniwersytet Warszawski) La Santita: Gender, Mystical Theology, and the Prism of Sanctity. The Case of Beata Josefa Romero (1620–1655) in the Viceroyalty of New Spain
• 16h20| Esther Borauzima Feza (UCLouvain)  Kimpa Vita et le messianisme kongo : Subversion religieuse, agency féminine et résistance anticoloniale au xviii^e siècle
• 16h40| Luis Rodríguez Toledo (PUCP / UNMSM)  “¿A qué vienes puta, a atormentarnos?”. Ángela de Carranza, el buen gobierno y la mala burocracia en el Perú, 1673–1689
• 17h| Laura Montoya Upegui (Universidad de los Andes) Between Support and Distrust: “Women Only Spend on Ribbons and Feathers” (Antioquia, 1886–1954)
• 17h20| Rimliya Tariq Telkenaroglu (McGill University) Demoniac, Witch, or the Living God? The Female Quaker Minister in Early Modern England
• 17h40| Discussion 

18h30 Keynote

• Martina Vinatea (Universidad del Pacífico) Catalina María Doria, from Milan to Peru: Fragments of a Life

13 May 2026

Louvain-la-Neuve campus

LC Christine de Pizan – salle flexible 2

11h-13h SESSION 3 How Women’s Religious Commitment is Embedded in and Acts within Society 

• 11h| Marya Svetlana T. Camacho (University of Asia and the Pacific) For Sound Doctrine and the Holy Fear of God: The Beaterio de la Compañía in Eighteenth-Century Manila
• 11h20| Patrick Romuald Jie Jie (Université de Bertoua) Vie religieuse et statut des femmes catholiques du “Sixa”: Entre aspiration conjugale et dévotion religieuse au Cameroun colonial (1890–1960)
• 11h40| Liliana Pérez Miguel (Universidad de Burgos) Jacinta Montoya: Networks and the Political Agency of Lima’s Religious Women in the Seventeenth Century
• 12h| Ariel J. Morrone (CONICET / Universidad de Buenos Aires) Dos beatas, dos estampas. Religiosidad local y redes de poder en Jesús de Machaca (obispado de La Paz, Charcas), siglos xvii–xviii

12h20| Discussion 

Lunch and coffee break

14h30-16h30 SESSION 4 How Women’s Religious Commitment Circulates and is Transformed Globally

• 14h30| Elena Manchado Rodríguez (Museo Naval de Madrid) Gesuitesse, Pregadoras and Apóstoles: Women Evangelizers in the Seventeenth-Century Asian Pacific 
• 14h50| Sarah Barthélemy (UCLouvain Saint-Louis) Beatas, Demoiselles and the Spiritual Exercises for Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Women. Manila, Vannes and Córdoba
• 15h10| Adriana G. Alonso Rivera (Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla) Female Nazarene Identity and Its Performative Dimension: From Secularity to Augustinian and Carmelite Institutionalisation (17^th–18^th Centuries)
• 15h30| Discussion
• 15h45| Closing round-table discussion moderated by par Isabel Harvey (UCLouvain / UQAM)

Inscription

Lien d'inscription pour recevoir le lien de connexion Teams

Organising committee

• Sarah Barthélemy (UCLouvain Saint-Louis)
• Annick Delfosse (ULiège)
• Philippe Desmette (UCLouvain Saint-Louis)
• Isabel Harvey (UCLouvain / UQAM) 
• Silvia Mostaccio (UCLouvain)
• Liliana Pérez Miguel (Universidad de Burgos)

Scientific committee

• Cormac Begadon (Durham University)
• Gemma Betros (Australian National University)
• Sylvie Duval (Università di Bologna)
• Sergi Sancho Fibla (Université Clermont Auvergne)