Meredith is a URA Scholar and Phi Kappa Phi member. She will present her research, "Uncertainties Spiritual and Temporal: The Plight of England's Catholic Nuns at the Dissolution of the Monasteries" at URCAD.
URCAD is April 19-25, 2021
URCAD.umbc.edu
Abstract
Mentor: Amy Froide, History
A variety of communities of religious women dotted the English landscape in the early sixteenth century. Most all but vanished after the Reformation. The women at the head of these communities wielded various amounts of power, both inside their walls and in the local towns and villages. As the English Reformation took hold in the 1530s and monasteries were abolished, these women responded to the upheaval in their lives in a variety of ways. Some accepted their fates and meager pensions, while others turned to powerful allies and patrons for assistance and relief. Some women renounced their vows, and others fled to the European continent to maintain their Catholic faith without fear of persecution. Few records about the nuns survive, but a careful review of pension rolls, state papers, and correspondence from this tumultuous period reveals that England's Catholic nuns responded to the criminalization of their faith and the loss of their homes in both familiar and surprising ways. Two thousand women's lives were uprooted when the government closed and destroyed all of England's Catholic religious houses. Their abrupt disappearance, both from their local communities and the historical record, merits further study.