Mary Ward (1585–1645)
Overview
Para1Mary Ward was an English Catholic who refused to conform to the religious and gender
expectations of early modern England. Refusing to conform to the state religion of
the Church of England, she founded a religious institute for women, the Institute
of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Congregation of Jesus, now also known as the Sisters
of Loreto, which still exists today. Branches of Ward’s order currently sponsor more
than 200 schools worldwide.
Para2Ward came from a famously Catholic family; two of her uncles were executed for their
involvement in the 1605 Gunpower Plot, and her father was questioned regarding it.
Ward kept detailed records of her life, and two of her followers composed an account
of her life after she died. A more recent biography and five-volume German publication
of documents related to her life and religious mission solidify her as an important
figure in the religious and social strife of the period.
Life
Para3Christened as Joan Ward, Mary Ward was an English Catholic from Yorkshire whose family
experienced significant persecution in the last decades of the 16th century. Her family’s
home was burned down when she was about 10 years old in an anti-Catholic riot. Like
many English people who were unwilling to become Protestants and adhere to the law
that required they attend the Church of England, Ward left England for Europe.
Para4Upon leaving England in 1606, she joined the order the Poor Clares, a Franciscan order
of nuns, in Flanders, but left it the next year to establish another house of Poor
Clares for Englishwomen only, called the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary and
the Congregation of Jesus, which still exists today. Scholar Alexanra Verini summarizes
Ward’s unique approach:
Ward’s Society of Jesus was highly unusual as it was governed by women, unenclosed, and available for apostolic work worldwide, including the support of priests on the English Mission. In taking the step to found her society, Ward went against the establishment on multiple fronts: she was inherently at odds with her nation’s religion, but she also fell out of favor with the papacy since, by promoting women’s active ministry, she defied the Post-Tridentine prescription of enclosure for religious women.
Para5The Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary was non-monastic and non-cloistered. The
members of the order did not wear habits, instead dressing in modest ordinary clothes.
Like the male Jesuits, Ward’s new order served communities through teaching and pastoral
care. In fact, Ward closely modeled the oaths for her new order on those of the Jesuits.
Para6Yet male religious institutions, especially the Jesuits, rejected the Institute of
the Blessed Virgin Mary even though it had the approval of Pope Paul V because it
clashed with their beliefs on the role of women within society and the family. Ward
was arrested multiple times and accused of heresy, spending a year in prison in Munich
in 1631.
Ward and Women’s Education
Para7During the early modern period, girls had limited options for formal education in
Protestant countries like England. In 1609, Ward opened the first free public school
for English girls and local French Catholic girls in Saint-Omer, France. Unlike traditional
convent schools, Ward’s schools followed a more secular, humanist tradition, offering
girls a similar program of study to what boys received in grammar schools. She went
on to found several other schools in Italy and Germany. Due to the severe anti-Catholic
sentiment in her home country, none of Ward’s schools were opened in England until
1639. Mary Ward died in 1645 at one of her schools in Yorkshire during a siege that
was part of the English Civil Wars.
Legacy
Para8Ward left behind extensive writings pertaining to her life and Institute. These writings
cover her life as a young girl in England, her early religious life in France as a
member of the more traditional Poor Clares, and her establishing of her new non-cloistered
order. A set of 50 paintings of Ward’s life, completed by different artists in the
second half of the 17th century, also survive in Augsburg, Germany. The religious
order of women she founded has two branches today, one known as The Congregation of
Jesus and the other as The Institute of Jesus, with about 4000 members. The order
she founded was formally recognized by the Catholic Church in 1877. In 2009, she was
declared Venerable by Pope Benedict XI, which is a formal recognition of her spiritual
heroism and one step on the path to official sainthood.
Key Print Sources
Bedford, Ronald,
A Gendered Genre: Autobiographical Writings by Three Early Modern Womenin Early Modern English Lives: Autobiography and Self-Representation 1550–1660, ed. Ronald Before, Lloyd Davis, and Phillippa Kelly. Ashgate, 2007.
Kentworthy-Browne, Christina, ed. Mary Ward (1585–1645): A Briefe Relation…with Autobiographical Fragments and a Selection
of Letters. Boydell Press for the Catholic Record Society, 2008.
O’Brien, Susan.
Ward, Mary (1585–1645), Roman Catholic nun and founder of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary.Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 29. Oxford University Press, 22 Sep. 2005.
Martin, Randall. Women Writers in Renaissance England. Addison Wesley Longman, 1997.
Key Online Sources
Best, Michael.
Mary Ward.Shakespeare’s Life and Times. Internet Shakespeare Editions. University of Victoria. https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/literature/women%20writers/ward.html. Accessed 25 Apr. 2023.
Caldwell, Simon.
The First Sister of Feminism.The Independent. 10 Jun. 2009. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/the-first-sister-of-feminism-1702163.html. Accessed 10 Mar. 2018.
Our Foundress Mary Ward. Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary. https://www.ibvm.org/home/mary-ward/. Accessed 25 Apr. 2023.
Verini, Alexandra.
Mary Ward and the Society of Jesus.Early Modern Women: Lives, Texts, Objects. Ed. Martine van Elk. 24 Apr. 2017. https://martinevanelk.wordpress.com/2017/04/24/mary-ward-and-the-society-of-jesus/.
Prosopography
Kate McPherson
Kate McPherson is Professor of English and Honors Program Director at Utah Valley
University (Orem, UT, USA). In 2015, she began working to redevelop Shakespeare’s Life and Times, created by Michael Best, into the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Her other publications include commentary on Pericles and The Comedy of Errors for the New Oxford Shakespeare (2016); the co-edited volumes Stages of Engagement: Drama and Religion in Post-Reformation England with James Mardock (Duquesne University Press, 2014) and Shakespeare Expressed: Page, Stage, and Classroom in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries, with Kathryn M. Moncrief and Sarah Enloe (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press,
2013). With Kathryn M. Moncrief, Kate has also two edited collections, Performing Pedagogy in Early Modern England: Gender, Instruction, and Performance (Ashgate, 2011) and Performing Maternity in Early Modern England (Ashgate 2008). She has also published numerous articles on early modern maternity
in scholarly journals. Kate participated in the 2008 National Endowment for the Humanities
Institute,
Shakespeare’s Blackfriars: The Study, the Stage, the Classroom,at the American Shakespeare Center. She also served as Play Seminar Director, a public humanities position, for the Utah Shakespeare Festival in 2017 and 2018.
Katelyn Ekker
Katelyn Ekker was an Honors student at Utah Valley University.
Leah Hamby
Leah Hamby is the primary encoder for the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Aside from encoding, she also works as an editor for the project and contributed
several articles of her own. She has been working on the EMEE since February 2023. As of February 2026, she is soon to graduate with honours from
Utah Valley University with a major in history and a minor in creative writing. Her
other work with the LEMDO program includes remediating William Kemp’s Kemp’s Nine Day’s Wonder for the Digital Renaissance Editions.
Michael Best
Michael Best is Professor Emeritus at the University of Victoria, BC. He founded the
Internet Shakespeare Editions in 1996, and was Coordinating Editor until 2017, contributing two editions to the
ISE: King John and King Lear (the latter also available in print from Broadview Press). In print, he has published editions of works of Elizabethan magic and huswifery,
a collection of letters from the Australian goldfields, and Shakespeare on the Art of Love (2008). He contributed regular columns for the Shakespeare Newsletter on
Electronic Shakespeares,and has written many articles and chapters for both print and online books and journals, principally on questions raised by the new medium in the editing and publication of texts. He has delivered papers and plenary lectures on electronic media and the Internet Shakespeare Editions at conferences in Canada, the USA, the UK, Spain, Australia, and Japan.
Navarra Houldin
Training and Documentation Lead 2025–present. LEMDO project manager 2022–2025. Textual
remediator 2021–present. Navarra Houldin (they/them) completed their BA with a major
in history and minor in Spanish at the University of Victoria in 2022. Their primary
research was on gender and sexuality in early modern Europe and Latin America. They
are continuing their education through an MA program in Gender and Social Justice
Studies at the University of Alberta where they will specialize in Digital Humanities.
Orgography
LEMDO Team (LEMD1)
The LEMDO Team is based at the University of Victoria and normally comprises the project
director, the lead developer, project manager, junior developers(s), remediators,
encoders, and remediating editors.
University of Victoria (UVIC1)
https://www.uvic.ca/Metadata
| Authority title | Mary Ward (1585–1645) |
| Type of text | Critical |
| Publisher | University of Victoria on the Linked Early Modern Drama Online Platform |
| Series | Early Modern England Encyclopedia |
| Source |
By Katelyn Ekker and Kate McPherson, inspired by Michael Best’s Shakespeare’s Life and Times, Internet Shakespeare Editions
|
| Editorial declaration | This document uses Canadian English spelling |
| Edition | Released with Early Modern England Encyclopedia 1.0a |
| Sponsor(s) |
Early Modern England EncyclopediaAnthology Leads: Kate McPherson and Kate Moncrief.
|
| Encoding description | Encoded in TEI P5 according to the LEMDO Customization and Encoding Guidelines |
| Document status | published |
| Funder(s) |
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
Mitacs Globalink Research Internship Utah Valley University |
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