The Basque Seroras: Local Religion, Gender, and Power in Northern Iberia, 1550-1800

The Basque Seroras explores the intersections between local community, women's work, and religious reform in early modern northern Spain. Amanda L. Scott illuminates the lives of these uncloistered religious women, who took no vows and were free to leave the religious life if they chose. Their vocation afforded them considerably more autonomy and, in some ways, liberty, than nuns or wives.

Scott's archival work recovers the surprising ubiquity of seroras, with every Basque parish church empl...