Proving Woman: Female Spirituality and Inquisitional Culture in the Later Middle Ages

This book addresses the trajectory of female spirituality over the course of the High and later Middle Ages. From a certain perspective, it is a familiar story to which all students of the medieval and early modern periods can supply the ending: during this period, female spirituality (“always already” suspect) is progressively perceived as a substantial threat to the church and society at large. This gradual criminalization of female spirituality parallels the progressive efforts to constrain and even persecute women, an impetus most  ramatically illustrated in the witch-hunts of the early modern period. Therefore this book is not really about what happens to female spirituality, but about why it happens. It attempts to isolate a constellation of factors that help to explain this process.