The Library
1577 works catalogued century by century, from the literature the Bible was written among to the present — each with a note on what it is, why it lasted, and where to read it.
1501–1600
9 works
1558
English
John Knox · c. 1514–1572
An argument that female rule is contrary to nature, scripture, and justice, aimed at Mary Tudor and published months before Elizabeth came to the throne.
1562–1565
Spanish
Libro de la Vida
Teresa of Ávila · 1515–1582
Written under obedience for her confessors, describing twenty years of unsatisfying prayer, then the transverberation, with constant nervous asides about her own unreliability.
c. 1566
Spanish
Teresa of Ávila · 1515–1582
Practical instruction for her nuns on detachment, humility, and mental prayer, structured around the Lord's Prayer and full of dry humour about convent life.
1573–1582
Spanish
Teresa of Ávila · 1515–1582
An account of founding seventeen convents — the lawsuits, the bad roads, the hostile townspeople, the money, and the sisters who turned out to be impossible.
c. 1584–1606
French
Charlotte Arbaleste de Mornay · 1550–1606
A Huguenot noblewoman's account, written for her son, of escaping the Saint Bartholomew's Day massacre with a small child and of thirty years of flight and exile.
1601–1700
17 works
c. 1604–1641
French
Jane Frances de Chantal · 1572–1641
Spiritual direction from the co-founder of the Visitation order, on dryness in prayer, on grief, and on running a religious congregation for women without enclosure.
c. 1630–1653
French
Juliana Morell · 1594–1653
Devotional writings and a translation with commentary of a monastic rule, by a prodigy who publicly defended theses in philosophy at twelve.
1637–1638
English
The New England ministers and Anne Hutchinson's examiners
The trial transcripts of a Boston woman who held meetings to discuss sermons, claimed direct revelation, and was banished from Massachusetts while pregnant.
c. 1630–1660
French
Louise de Marillac · 1591–1660
Letters and rules from the co-founder of the Daughters of Charity, whose sisters took no solemn vows so that they could work in the streets and hospitals.
1650; enlarged posthumously 1678
English
Anne Bradstreet · c. 1612–1672
Poems on faith, marriage, the deaths of grandchildren, and the burning of her house — published in London by her brother-in-law without her knowledge.
1654; letters to 1671
French
Marie of the Incarnation · 1599–1672
A widow who left her son to enter a convent, then sailed to Quebec to found a school, writing home about mystical states, Iroquois raids, and Algonquian grammar.
1666
English
Margaret Fell · 1614–1702
A scriptural argument that women may preach — from the women at the tomb, from Priscilla, and from the claim that in Christ there is neither male nor female.
c. 1655–1665; published 1670
Spanish
María de Ágreda · 1602–1665
A life of the Virgin Mary received in visions, running to thousands of pages and filling in every silence of the gospels with detail.
c. 1675; published 1817
English
Lucy Hutchinson · 1620–1681
A treatise on Christian doctrine written for her daughter, working carefully through creation, providence, the fall, and redemption in the Calvinist order.
1679
English
Lucy Hutchinson · 1620–1681
A verse meditation on Genesis from creation to the patriarchs, published anonymously and offering a markedly different account of Eve from Milton's.
1682
English
Mary Rowlandson · c. 1637–1711
A minister's wife taken captive by Narragansett and Nipmuc raiders describes eleven weeks of forced marches, hunger, and her attempts to read providence in it.
1684
English
John Bunyan · 1628–1688
Christiana and her children follow her husband's road with a guide, a company of the weak, and Mr Great-heart to fight for them.
1685
French
Jeanne Guyon · 1648–1717
An argument that everyone, including the simplest, can pray by simply attending to God's presence and abandoning themselves to his will.
c. 1682–1709
French
Jeanne Guyon · 1648–1717
An account of an unhappy marriage, widowhood, spiritual states of great intensity, and years of confinement in convents and the Bastille without trial.
1690
Spanish
Juana Inés de la Cruz · 1648–1695
A critique of a celebrated sermon by a Portuguese Jesuit on Christ's greatest act of love, arguing that it was his restraint in withholding benefits.
1691
Spanish
Respuesta a Sor Filotea de la Cruz
Juana Inés de la Cruz · 1648–1695
A Mexican nun answers a bishop who told her to give up study, defending a woman's right to learn from scripture, from the fathers, and from her own experience.
1694; second part 1697
English
Mary Astell · 1666–1731
A plan for a religious college where women could study, pray, and teach, free from the marriage market — argued from the equal rationality of women's souls.
1701–1800
1 work
1705
English
Mary Astell · 1666–1731
A full statement of her own theology and philosophy, arguing that women must think for themselves and that submission in marriage is not owed to a tyrant.
81–103 of 103 matching · 1577 in the Library