This essay will compare Merici's ideal of experience of the sacred and her notion of woman with the cultural notion of the female of the time – whether expressed by theologians, humanists, lawyers or derived from women's social roles, from family to the world of work. Merici's contribution to this history is that she codified some of the most original traits of female spirituality into a religious rule for women.

2 The Company fits within a history of penitential and mystic spirituality which manifested especially between the thirteenth to the sixteenth century, a history where women attained forms of authority and creative opportunities which ordinary women normally did not have. Modern historiography has tended to consider Merici's Company as an institute teaching poor girls yet this image fails to capture the aim of the Company, which offered women an innovative secular form of religious life. Ursula founded by Angela Merici (1474-1540), this essay will provide a further illustration of how a certain model of female spirituality was articulated in connection with contemporaneous cultural notions of the female. Recent studies have shown that mainstream views of the female both limited and fostered women's opportunities within religion. Students of gender history often ponder on how to reconcile the achievements of spiritual women during the Renaissance with the misogynistic culture of the time.

Anchored by Death by Catherine Finger