Western Studies
Ms. Portman

"Religion played a very political role in this period as it justified a gender system that supported the existing social order. Religious symbols of female martyrs promoted the belief that women should be self-sacrificing, giving themselves up to pain and humility for a higher cause" (6).
- Gender and Disorder in Early Modern Seville by Mary Elizabeth Perry

Explain the relationship between female religious symbols and Christian women in early modern Europe.

"The sixteenth century was a time when everyone had his or her place in society, and certain kinds of behavior were expected and enforced in accordance with a person's rank in life...To reach above one's station in life or act contrary to it unsettled one's neighbors and was viewed as a threat to public order" (105).
-The Bürgermeister's Daughter: Scandal in a Sixteenth-Century German Town
by Steven Ozment

What is meant by the phrase, "a threat to public order"? Who determined what the order was and how do you think order was enforced and maintained?

"The cultural perception of women's power as disorder, and of their disorderliness as power, reflects male anxieties about the success of patriarchal rule" (6).
-Disorderly Women and Female Power in the Street Literature of Early Modern England and Germany by Joy Wiltenburg

What do you think this statement means?