Article
French
ID: <
10.4000/1718.3658>
·
DOI: <
10.4000/1718.3658>
Abstract
After the Henrician reformation and the dissolution of the monasteries, as Protestantism settled as the established religion under Elizabeth I, English Catholic women who wished to take the veil had no other choice but to leave their native country to embrace religious life on the Continent, amongst local communities, often in the North of France and the Spanish Netherlands. In those convents, the refugees embodied the plight of a Catholicism without borders which, in the face of Protestant persecution, refused to be defeated and, on the contrary, grew in fervour. Yet although they proudly belonged to the universal Church of Rome, English nuns were different from their Continental Sisters. A brief study of some of the twenty-two convents founded specifically for English entrants during the seventeenth century will reveal the most salient aspects which made English convents in exile exceptional.