Philip IV of Spain and the Portuguese Inquisition (1621–1641)

The historiography of the I berian I nquisitions has focused on analysing relations between the H oly O ffice and the secular authorities in the society in which it operated. The I nquisition was not an i sland. It influenced and was influenced by society. This line of inquiry will be reprised to study relations between the C rown and the P ortuguese I nquisition in a complex and difficult period in the history of the H ispanic monarchy, namely the reign of P hilip IV , during which the kingdom of P ortugal regained full independence in 1640. It will offer a holistic view of the institution (not restricted to policies designed to repress heresy), and a detailed reconstruction of events in order to demonstrate the dynamic nature of these processes. The essential problem will be to determine the impact of the C rown's offensive, launched in an attempt to dominate the T ribunal, and the strategies and results of the response of the I nquisition, commanded by its I nquisitor G enerals and the G eneral C ouncil of the H oly O ffice.     

‘To Women in the Year 2000’: Norwegian Historians of Women,c.1900–c.1960

The lives and writings of three women who during the first half of the twentieth century wrote books on women's history are the subject of this article. Ragna Nielsen, a teacher and an amateur historian, in 1904 published her account of women's lives during the first part of the nineteenth century, stressing the sad consequences of patriarchal attitudes, but also the importance of women's contribution to the maintenance of a national identity. Anna Caspari Agerholt and Mimi Sverdrup Lunden, both with masters' degrees in history, belonged to the next generation. Agerholt is mainly remembered for her impressive book of 1927 on the Norwegian women's movement, while Lunden's books of 1942 and 1948 on women's work were important contributions to social history. The writings of these three women's historians are related to dominant positions within Norwegian historiography of their times, highlighting how they helped change central concepts by adding gender to class analysis and to the process of constructing a national identity, stressing the importance of voluntary organisations to the formation of politics and widening the concept of work.     

Men in the Communities of Dominican Nuns – Sister‐Books Discussing Priests and Friars

This article discusses the relationship between Dominican nuns and their caregivers (priests and friars) with the help of sister‐books written by the Dominican nuns themselves in the first half of the fourteenth century. My main focus will be on analysing the way religious men were described in these books and asking how this discussion was related to the everyday life of the nuns in the Dominican convents. I will suggest that the sister‐books can give a new and perhaps unexpected view of the relationships between Dominican nuns and their spiritual caregivers, as these texts suggest that nuns preferred local secular priests over the friars, even though they accepted the religious authority of the latter. I will argue that although the sister‐books were literary products, they had a close connection to the lived reality of nuns and that they can tell us about the interaction between nuns and religious men in their service. However, these texts also formed the ideas of nuns and kept the old attitudes towards priests and friars live, even when the interaction might have already taken other forms in practice.