Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: The history of women’s education in Portugal predates the implementation of an official system, which was only consistently addressed after 1836 with Passos Manuel’s reform of primary instruction. Long before that, particularly from the Early Modern period onwards, women religious played a key role in providing education. Convents and Third Order houses—alongside families, charities, and religion-inspired foundations—offered instruction considered appropriate to women’s gender and social status. The Council of Trent (1545–1563) extended strict enclosure to all female convents, leading to the “monasticisation” of education—an arrangement that neither promoted the visibility of female learners nor encouraged the development of the pedagogical models that shaped their instruction. The later emergence of teaching orders, despite their adherence to enclosure, began to challenge the traditional monastic model. Drawing on largely unpublished or scarcely explored archival sources, this article seeks to shed light on the historical reasons behind the prominent and precedent-setting role of monasticism in the field of female education, and to address the enduring invisibility that still shrouds the cloistered world.
Source: Religions
DOI: 10.3390/rel16121551
Author: Maria Luísa Jacquinet
Institution: Autonomous University of Lisbon
Language: English
Topic: Early Modern Women Writers
Subfield: Religious studies
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $2,172
Award: G7765616148
OpenAlex ID: W7111366255