Sisters : : myth and reality of Anabaptist, Mennonite, and Doopsgezind women ca. 1525-1900 / / edited by Mirjam van Veen [and five others].

• Superior document: Brill's Series in Church History, Volume 65
• TeilnehmendeR: Veen, Mirjam van,
• Place / Publishing House: Leiden, Netherlands : : Brill,, 2014.; ©2014
• Año de Publicación: 2014
• Lenguaje: English
• Colección: Brill's series in church history ; Volume 65.
• Descripción Física: 1 online resource (352 p.)
• Notas: Includes index.

Harlot, pious martyr, marriage breaker, obedient sister, prophetess, literate woman, agent of the devil, hypocrite. These are some qualifications of the image of Anabaptist/Mennonite women, from a wide array of perspectives. Over the ages they became both negative and positive stereotypes, created by either opponents or sympathizers, as a means of demonizing or promoting the dissident, radical free church movement. This volume explores the characteristics, backgrounds and effects of the collective perceptions of Anabaptist/Mennonite women, as well as their self-understanding, from the sixteenth into the nineteenth centuries, in a variety of case studies. This is not a gender study in the traditional sense. The theory of imagology sets the stage for the interpretation of the image of the European Mennonite sisters, acting within their religious, moral, cultural and social landscapes of Austria, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Switzerland, and the Ukraine (tsarist Russia).

Table of Contents

Preliminary Material / Mirjam van Veen , Piet Visser , Gary K. Waite , Els Kloek , Marion Kobelt-Groch and Anna Voolstra -- Introduction / Mirjam van Veen , Piet Visser , Gary K. Waite , Els Kloek , Marion Kobelt-Groch and Anna Voolstra -- Naked Harlots or Devout Maidens? Images of Anabaptist Women in the Context of the Iconography of Witches in Europe, 1525–1650 / Gary K. Waite -- Greedy, Violent, and False: On the Image of the Anabaptist Woman in Thomas Birck’s Ehespiegel (1598) / Marion Kobelt-Groch -- Anabaptist Women and Their Families in Tirol, 1527–1531: Dispelling the Myth of Poverty / Linda A. Huebert Hecht -- “…Polué et souillée…”: The Reformed Polemic against Anabaptist Marriage, 1560–1650 / Mirjam van Veen -- Images of Women in the Anabaptists’ Martyrology Het Offer des Heeren / Nicole Grochowina -- “Pleased be God, dear Housewife and Sister in the Lord”: Gender Aspects in the Hymns of the Early Anabaptist Movement / Martina Bick -- Your Mother in Bonds: The Testament of Soetken van den Houte / Marjan Blok -- The Stereotype of the Sanctimonious Menniste Zusje (Mennonite Sister) Reconsidered / Mirjam de Baar -- Deaconesses, Fishwives, Crooks and Prophetesses: Mennonite Image and Reality in Golden Age Amsterdam / Mary S. Sprunger -- L’Honneste Femme: A French, Roman Catholic Role Model for Dutch Doopsgezind Sisters / Piet Visser -- Gender and the Suppression of “Anabaptist Pietists” in Bern / Lucinda Martin -- Mennonites, Gender and the Rise of Civil Society in the Dutch Enlightenment / Michael Driedger -- A Stylish Silk Gown or Plain Bodice and Skirt? Clothing Prescriptions and Individual Choice among Eighteenth-Century Groningen Doopsgezind Women / Marcel Kremer -- Grumpy old women? The (Self) Image of Elderly Sisters of the Doopsgezind Oude Vrouwenhuis or Elderly Women’s Home in Nineteenth-Century Amsterdam / Anna Voolstra -- The Trouble with Marrying Prussian Lutheran Boys: The End of Exogamous Marriages in the Mennonite Community in the Polish Vistula Delta, 1713–1808 / Mark Jantzen -- Romance, Marriage, Sex and the Status of Women in Nineteenth-Century Tsarist Russian Mennonite Society / John Staples -- Index of Personal Names / Mirjam van Veen , Piet Visser , Gary K. Waite , Els Kloek , Marion Kobelt-Groch and Anna Voolstra -- Index of Geographical names / Mirjam van Veen , Piet Visser , Gary K. Waite , Els Kloek , Marion Kobelt-Groch and Anna Voolstra -- Index of Subjects / Mirjam van Veen , Piet Visser , Gary K. Waite , Els Kloek , Marion Kobelt-Groch and Anna Voolstra.