Project

Catherine’s Daughters: Female Penitents, Thomas Caffarini, and the Creation of the Dominican Third Order

Program

ACLS Project Development Grants

Department

Humanities and Religious Studies

Abstract

“Catherine’s Daughters” offers a history of Catherine of Siena’s community of female lay penitents, as well as an exploration of how the Dominican Order’s promotion of Catherine both produced a revisionist history of lay female religious life and also labeled any religious vocation taken up outside of church supervision as suspect. The grant will support archival research in Italy.