Author: Boncheva, Tsvetana

Source: Aspasia, Volume 3 , pp. 31-54(24)

Abstract:

The article deals with the institution of 'village nuns', a form of religious celibacy among Bulgarian Catholics in the Plovdiv region during the first half of the twentieth century. The primary concern of this article is the structuring and functioning of the institution of village nuns, viewed from the perspective of the fractal dichotomy strategy-tactics, belonging to the paradigm of fractal dichotomies including religious culture-traditional culture, clergy/male celibacy-nuns/female celibacy, masculinity-femininity. The sources used in the research are of different types: census registers, parochial books, civil registers of births and deaths, household registers, property tax registers, various publications of the Catholic Church in Bulgaria, and ethnographic field material collected by the author. The methodology employed combines various qualitative methods: the gatekeeper and snowball methods, structured and semi-structured interviews, the biographical method and the comparative method. The analysis shows that the nuns' institution can be treated as a turning point at which female tactics turn into strategies and bring about certain power shifts affecting gender relations.

Keywords: BULGARIAN CATHOLICS; EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY; GENDER IDENTITY; GENDER POWER; RELATIONSHIPS; VILLAGE NUNS

DOI: 10.3167/asp.2009.030103

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