This conference will examine the manifestations of religiosity of women who were not fully considered by the Catholic Church as members of its body, such as beatas, consecrated virgins, beguines, bizzoche, penitents, tertiaries, puellae, as well as sisters of religious congregations, from 1400 to 1900.

These women will be examined from the perspective of the Americas, Africa, and Asia. As many of these global experiences are closely tied to colonising states, Europe will only be considered in relation to these non-European cases. The aim is to integrate these models of religious life into the cultural, religious, social and economic history of women religious and devout laywomen, who have often been sidelined in favour of cloistered nuns. The long chronological period considered will highlight continuities and ruptures beyond the confessional age.

The main objective of this collaboration between two international initiatives, ISHWRA (International Scholars for the History of Women Religious Association) and Sorores (SORORES. Les religieuses non cloîtrées en Europe du Sud, XIIe-XVIIIe siècles), is to look, on a global scale, at women who were engaged in models of religious life that have been under-researched due to the ambiguity of their status and their presence on the margins of monastic institutions, or because of the scarcity of sources.

12 May 2026

Salle des Examens 

UCLouvain Saint-Louis Bruxelles

Boulevard du Jardin Botanique, 43 - 1000 Brussels

13.45

Introduction : Sarah Barthélemy and Liliana Pérez Miguel

14.00-15.45

SESSION 1 How Women’s Religious Commitment is Experienced and Defined

14:00 - Yolande François (Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3)

Jewish Female Religiosity as a Matrix of Christian Models: Rethinking Women’s Religious Polymorphism in a Longue Durée Perspective (Antiquity–Modernity)

14:20 - Ji Li (The University of Hong Kong)

Chinese Christian Virgins: Adaptation, Contribution, and Identity

14:40 - Tiffany Hunsinger (University of Dayton)

Between Cloister and Community: Beatas and Laywomen in Colonial Mexico as Agents of Polymorphic Catholicism

15:00 - Sofía Brizuela (UNSTA) & Óscar Leonardo Londoño (Universidad Nacional de Colombia)

Del hecho prodigioso a la institucionalidad. La beata María Ramos y el culto a la Virgen de Chiquinquirá

Discussion

Coffee Break

16.00-18.10

SESSION 2 How women’s religious commitment is controlled, debated, or prosecuted

16:00 - Julia Lewandowska (Uniwersytet Warszawski)

La Santita: Gender, Mystical Theology, and the Prism of Sanctity. The Case of Beata Josefa Romero (1620–1655) in the Viceroyalty of New Spain

16:20 - Esther Borauzima Feza (UCLouvain)

Kimpa Vita et le messianisme kongo : Subversion religieuse, agency féminine et résistance anticoloniale au XVIIIe siècle

16:40 - Luis Rodríguez Toledo (PUCP / UNMSM)

“¿A qué vienes puta, a atormentarnos?”. Ángela de Carranza, el buen gobierno y la mala burocracia en el Perú, 1673–1689

17:00 - Laura Montoya Upegui (Universidad de los Andes)

Between Support and Distrust: “Women Only Spend on Ribbons and Feathers” (Antioquia, 1886–1954)

17:20 - Rimliya Tariq Telkenaroglu (McGill University)

Demoniac, Witch, or the Living God? The Female Quaker Minister in Early Modern England

17:40 - Discussion

18:30

Keynote Speaker

Martina Vinatea Recoba (Universidad del Pacífico)

Catalina María Doria, from Milan to Peru : Fragments of a Life

13 May 2026

Learning Center Christine de Pizan - Salle flexible 2

UCLouvain, campus Louvain-la-Neuve

11.00-13.00

SESSION 3 How women’s religious commitment is embedded in and acts within society

11.00 - Marya Svetlana T. Camacho (University of Asia and the Pacific)

For Sound Doctrine and the Holy Fear of God: The Beaterio de la Compañía in Eighteenth-Century Manila

11.20 - Patrick Romuald Jie Jie (Université de Bertoua)

Vie religieuse et statut des femmes catholiques du “Sixa”: Entre aspiration conjugale et dévotion religieuse au Cameroun colonial (1890–1960)

11.40 - Liliana Pérez Miguel (Universidad de Burgos)

Jacinta Montoya: Networks and the Political Agency of Lima’s Religious Women in the Seventeenth Century

12.00 - Ariel J. Morrone (CONICET / Universidad de Buenos Aires)

Dos beatas, dos estampas. Religiosidad local y redes de poder en Jesús de Machaca (obispado de La Paz, Charcas), siglos XVII–XVIII

12.20 - Discussion

Lunch and coffee break

14.30-16.30

SESSION 4 How women’s religious commitment circulates and is transformed globally

14.30 - Elena Manchado Rodríguez (Museo Naval de Madrid)

Gesuitesse, Pregadoras and Apóstoles: Women Evangelizers in the Seventeenth-Century Asian Pacific

14.50 - Sarah Barthélemy (UCLouvain Saint-Louis Bruxelles)

Beatas, Demoiselles and the Spiritual Exercises for Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Women. Manila, Vannes and Córdoba

15.10 - Adriana G. Alonso Rivera (Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla)

La identidad Nazarena femenina y su dimensión performática: de la laicidad a la institucionalización agustiniana y carmelitana (siglos XVII–XVIII)

15.30 - Discussion

15.45 - Closing round-table discussion moderated by par Isabel Harvey (UCLouvain / UQAM)

Sarah Barthélemy (UCLouvain Saint-Louis Bruxelles)

Annick Delfosse (ULiège)

Philippe Desmette (UCLouvain Saint-Louis Bruxelles)

Isabel Harvey (UCLouvain / UQAM)

Silvia Mostaccio (UCLouvain)

Liliana Pérez Miguel (Universidad de Burgos)

Cormac Begadon (Durham University)

Gemma Betros (Australian National University)

Sylvie Duval (Università di Bologna)

Sergi Sancho Fibla (Université de Clermont-Ferrand)