A religious educator as depicted in this picture, Angela Merici (1474-1540) was the founder of the Company of St.Ursula, “a group of lay single women and widows [who are] dedicated to the poor” (Wiesner-Hanks, 189). The company “received papal authorization, and later in the century became a religious order focusing increasingly on girls’ education” (Weisner-Hanks, 189). However, they were under increasing pressure to become cloistered nuns after being a religious organization. The story of Angela Merici and the Ursulines reflects multiple layers of social construct around women during the religious reformation. The facts that the Ursulines are mostly “single women and widows” and they were soon under pressure to became nuns indicate that worldly religious women weren’t really an option. Woman is either wife in a household or a nun. However, since men were still the dominant force in the debate about religion, the population of women priest and nuns were relatively small. Thus, this again emphasizes women’s importance in a household. When Jesuits and other priests preached under the threat of arrest and execution in England, “they were often sheltered by women from prominent Catholic families,” because according to common law, married women “controlled no property and imprisoning a woman would disrupt family life” (Wiesner-Hanks, 189). Similarly, in the Protestant point of view, marriage and women’s role in a household are just as important. Marriage was considered to serve as a “‘remedy for the unavoidable sin of lust,” to “provide site for the pious rearing of the next generation of God-fearing Christians”, and to “offer companionship and consolation” (Wiesner-Hanks, 179). Women are the crucial formation of such family unit with “the proper social hierarchy of husbandly authority and wifely obedience” (Wiesner-Hanks, 179). Thus, in the religious reformation, women were not expected to participate as actively as men; however, they were considered to be an indispensable part of family life, which lots of religious learning and progression were made around.
Calzavacca, Pietro. Saint Angela Merici. 1850s. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Saint_Angela_Merici.jpg.