Proving Woman Female Spirituality and Inquisitional Culture in the Later Middle Ages

"In this provocative and forceful book, Dyan Elliott considers the impact of an institutional procedure on the phenomena it was used to assess.Proving Womanexamines 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 UniversityElliott, Dyan is the author of 'Proving Woman Female Spirituality and Inquisitional Culture in the Later Middle Ages', published 2004 under ISBN 9780691118604 and ISBN 0691118604.