Sisters: Myth and Reality of Anabaptist, Mennonite, and Doopsgezind Women ca. 1525–1900

Copyright

Contents

Acknowledgements

List of Illustrations

List of Contributors

Introduction

Part 1: The Sixteenth Century: Propaganda, Persecution, and Myth-Busting

1 Naked Harlots or Devout Maidens? Images of Anabaptist Women in the Context of the Iconography of Witches in Europe, 1525–1650

2 Greedy, Violent, and False: On the Image of the Anabaptist Woman in Thomas Birck’s Ehespiegel (1598)

3 Anabaptist Women and Their Families in Tirol, 1527–1531: Dispelling the Myth of Poverty

4 “…Polué et souillée…”: The Reformed Polemic against Anabaptist Marriage, 1560–1650

5 Images of Women in the Anabaptists’ Martyrology Het Offer des Heeren

6 “Pleased be God, dear Housewife and Sister in the Lord”: Gender Aspects in the Hymns of the Early Anabaptist Movement

7 Your Mother in Bonds: The Testament of Soetken van den Houte

Part 2: The Long Seventeenth Century: Caricatures, Stereotypes, and Super Sisters

8 The Stereotype of the Sanctimonious Menniste Zusje (Mennonite Sister) Reconsidered

9 Deaconesses, Fishwives, Crooks and Prophetesses: Mennonite Image and Reality in Golden Age Amsterdam

10 L’Honneste Femme: A French, Roman Catholic Role Model for Dutch Doopsgezind Sisters

11 Gender and the Suppression of “Anabaptist Pietists” in Bern

12 Mennonites, Gender and the Rise of Civil Society in the Dutch Enlightenment

Part 3: The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries: Subordinate Sisters in Control

13 A Stylish Silk Gown or Plain Bodice and Skirt? Clothing Prescriptions and Individual Choice among Eighteenth-Century Groningen Doopsgezind Women

14 Grumpy old women? The (Self) Image of Elderly Sisters of the Doopsgezind Oude Vrouwenhuis or Elderly Women’s Home in Nineteenth-Century Amsterdam

15 The Trouble with Marrying Prussian Lutheran Boys: The End of Exogamous Marriages in the Mennonite Community in the Polish Vistula Delta, 1713–1808

16 Romance, Marriage, Sex and the Status of Women in Nineteenth-Century Tsarist Russian Mennonite Society

Index of Personal Names

Index of Geographical names

Index of Subjects