Johnson
Elliott has written a very smart book; it is complex, subtle and challenging, and an important work of scholarship.
Penelope D. Johnson, New York University
Barbara Newman
In this provocative and forceful book, Dyan Elliott considers the impact of an institutional procedure on the phenomena it was used to assess. Proving Woman examines sacramental confession, the inquisition of heretics, and the discernment of spirits as parallel cases of a growing medieval concern with the "proving" of spirituality, especially that of women, by an increasingly skeptical clergy. Elliott carefully sifts through primary sources in diverse genres, including many little-known texts, in her characteristically sharp and lucid prose.
Barbara Newman, Northwestern University
From the Publisher
"In this provocative and forceful book, Dyan Elliott considers the impact of an institutional procedure on the phenomena it was used to assess. Proving Woman examines sacramental confession, the inquisition of heretics, and the discernment of spirits as parallel cases of a growing medieval concern with the "proving" of spirituality, especially that of women, by an increasingly skeptical clergy. Elliott carefully sifts through primary sources in diverse genres, including many little-known texts, in her characteristically sharp and lucid prose."—Barbara Newman, Northwestern University"Elliott has written a very smart book; it is complex, subtle and challenging, and an important work of scholarship."—Penelope D. Johnson, New York University