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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 February 2015
Mary Ward was born in 1585 near Ripon, eldest child of a recusant family. She spent her whole life until the age of 21 in the intimate circle of Yorkshire Catholics, with her parents, her Wright grandparents at Ploughland in Holderness, Mrs. Arthington, née Ingleby, at Harewell Hall in Nidderdale, and finally with the Babthorpes of Babthorpe and Osgodby. Convinced of her religious vocation, but of course unable to pursue it openly in England, she spent some time as a Poor Clare in Saint-Omer in the Spanish Netherlands, first in a Flemish community, then in the English house that she helped to found. She was happy there, but was shown by God that he was calling her to ‘some other thing’. Exactly what it was to be was not yet clear, so she returned to England, spent some time in London working for the Catholic cause, and discovering that there was much for women to do—then returned to Saint-Omer with a small group of friends, other young women in their 20s, to start a school, chiefly for English Catholic girls, and through prayer and penance to find out more clearly what God was asking. Not surprisingly, given her early religious formation in English Catholic households, served by Jesuit missionaries, and her desire to work for her own country, the guidance that came was ‘Take the same of the Society’. She spent the rest of her life trying to establish a congregation for women which would live by the Constitutions of St. Ignatius, be governed by a woman general superior, under the Pope, not under diocesan bishops or a male religious order, and would be unenclosed, free to be sent ‘among the Turks or any other infidels, even to those who live in the region called the Indies, or among any heretics whatsoever, or schismatics, or any of the faithful’. There were always members working in the underground Church in England, and in Mary Ward's own lifetime there were ten schools, in Flanders and Northern France, Italy, Germany and Austria-Hungary. But her long struggle for approbation met with failure—Rome after the Council of Trent, which had insisted on enclosure for all religious women, was not yet ready for Jesuitesses. In 1631 Urban VIII banned her Institute by a Bull of Suppression, imprisoning Mary Ward herself for a time in the Poor Clare convent on the Anger in Munich. She spent the rest of her life doing all she could to continue her work, but when she died in Heworth, outside York, in 1645 and was buried in Osbaldwick churchyard, only a handful of followers remained together, some with her in England, 23 in Rome, a few in Munich, all officially laywomen. It is owing to these women that Mary Ward's Institute has survived to this day.
Most of the references, quoted as ‘Doc’ are to Mary Ward und ihre Gründung. Die Quellen-texte bis 1645, herausgegeben von Sr. Ursula Dirmeier CJ Corpus Catholicorum 45–48, Aschendorff Verlag, Münster Westfalen 2007.
1 AB6, in Italian: ‘altro dovevo fare… che era cosa buona’.
2 Doc.245.
3 Doc.323, Institutum: ‘ad Turcas, sive ad quoscumque alios Infideles, etiam in partibus quas Indias vocant, sive ad quoscumque haereticos, schismaticos sive etiam ad quosvis fideles…”.
4 Doc.1125; The Papal Bull Pastoralis Romani Pontificis. Available in English translation in Mary Ward Under the Shadow of the Inquisition, M. Immolata Wetter, Way Books, Campion Hall, Oxford.
5 Mary Ward und ihre Gründung… see introductory note above.
6 Doc. Band I, Section I, Die autobiographischen Fragmente (AB) pp. 9–50.
7 AB1.
8 AB3.
9 AB3.
10 AB3.
11 Available in English translation in Mary Ward (1585–1645) A Briefe Relation… with Autobiographical Fragments and a Selection of Letters, edited by Christina Kenworthy-Browne CJ, published for the Catholic Record Society by the Boydell Press, 2008. For Italian originals, cf. note vi.
12 Doc.196D.
13 Doc.198F.
14 Doc.213G.
15 Cf. notes vi and xi.
16 Doc.245.
17 Doc.197.
18 Doc.166.
19 ‘sono venuta fin ä Monaco, ove la trovö viva (che mi basta). Doc. 1236 Barbara Babthorpe to Elizabeth Keyes. This letter, like others exchanged between Mary Ward's English companions at this time, is in Italian—probably because they knew it was likely that post would be intercepted, and wanted their enemies at least to know what they had really said!
20 ‘la vita della nostra Madre ci è più cara che mille mundi, e la priggionia l'ammazzara; la sera dinanzi che fu presa era più morte che viva con estremità di catarro et altri accidenti’ Doc.1145, Elizabeth Cotton to Elizabeth Keyes.
21 ‘li suoi anni non sono che 46, mà mirando li suoi travagli, patimenti, e malatie, si possono stimare altri tanti, e non dubito certo che Dio non sia per darli ancora altri 40 anni di vita, bene desiderato sopra ogni altro fuor che la gratia di Dio e la vita eterna’, Doc.1226, Elizabeth Cotton to Elizabeth Keys.
22 Doc.1144.
23 Doc.1150.
24 Doc.1154.
25 Doc.1155.
26 Doc.1156.
27 Doc.1154.
28 Doc.1158.
29 Doc.1173E.
30 Doc.1198C.
31 Doc.1207.
32 Doc.1376.
33 Doc.1384.
34 Doc.1388.
35 Charles I.
36 Henrietta Maria, mother of the future Charles II.
37 Doc. 1499.
38 Doc. 1523 ‘Cest pourquoy Ion trouve necessaire quelle differe son voyage pour quelque temps pour recouvrer ses forces et santé, et aussi pour l'utilité quelle peut apporter a plusieures personnes icy’.
39 Doc. 1518.
40 Doc.708.
41 Doc.535; ‘Ex tuis ultimis litteris intellexi, esse puellas quasdam, quae in Societatem nostrum recipe postulabant, sed eas Patribus Societatis Jesu urgentibus reiectas fuisse, quia dotem, quam secum illae afferent, habebant nullam. Id mihi vehementer displicuit. Non enim pauperibus aditus ad Societatem Nostram omnino est praecludendum. Neque te moveat hac in re Patrum Societatis Jesu authoritas… Nam non Patribus hisce, sed mihi vota vovisti.
42 Doc.637.
43 Doc.690.
44 The Mind and Maxims of Mary Ward, Burns Oates & Washbourne Ltd., 1959, p. 45.
