Women and Kirk Discipline

Prosecution, Negotiation, and the Limits of Control

Bibliographic Data

ID12899176
AuthorsAlice Glaze (0000-0002-9489-4628, corresponding author)
Year2016
Volume36
Issue2
Pages125-142
Publication date2016-10-12
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Scottish Historical Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1748-538X • E-ISSN: 1755-1749
PublisherEdinburgh University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.3366/jshs.2016.0182
OpenAlexW2530761130
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited4

This article won the Women's History Scotland Leah Leneman essay prize for 2014 This article examines some of the many ways in which women interacted with the Reformed Kirk of Scotland between 1613 and 1660, as recorded in the Canongate Kirk Session disciplinary records, focusing on cases that reveal the negotiation for control over women's bodies, their dignity, and their performances of gender and sexuality. These include the kirk session's prosecution of illicit sexuality, such as fornication, adultery, and prostitution; its protection, albeit limited, in cases of sexual assault; and its role as mediator in wet-nursing cases, and leniency towards wet-nursing fornication penitents. The article then examines the limits of the kirk session's powers in controlling its parishioners. It argues that the relationship between the kirk session and female parishioners was multifaceted, contradictory, and shifting. The kirk was a powerful social force in Canongate, but women were also active agents in the system of repentance, absolution and control in seventeenth-century Scotland

Adultery · Criminology · Dignity · Discipline · Human sexuality · Negotiation · Political science · Session (web analytics · Sociology · Gender Studies · Historical Economic and Social Studies · Historical Studies of British Isles · Law · Scottish History and National Identity

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