Sharon T. Strocchia

This is a wonderful overview of the lives of the women who occupied Florence's convents in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and the first proper monograph on the topic. Sharon Strocchia documents not just what daily life was like in these institutions, but also how central that life was to the city. Between the Black Death and the early modern period, female religious life in Florence shifted from being largely constituted of marginalised communities of women engaged in the vita apostolica to larger groups who were deeply embedded in the city's familial, social and political networks. They aided in the rise of patrician clans like the Medici, and through their labour were an important part of the city's luxury textile industry. Strocchia makes impressive use of the city's abundant archives. Well worth the read both for those interested in the history of women and religion, and as an example of solid social-historical methodology.… (meer)