Winfield​/The Religious Body Imagined, 2. The Male Body and Catholic Piety in Early Modern Spain

Elizabeth Rhodes investigates a handful of understudied texts related to “The Male Body and Catholic Piety in Early Modern Spain.” She observes that monks in monasteries also imagined themselves as conjugal brides of Christ and engaged in many of the same devotional practices as the better studied nuns in Spanish and colonial Hispanic convents. Because these men practiced “ardent devotion to the Eucharist, strict food management and manipulation, as well as extreme asceticism justified by pious intentions,” just like the nuns did, Rhodes calls into question the presumed gendered nature of early modern Catholic piety.