- Introduzione (S. Cabibbo)- La reprise d'un ancien "topos" dans l'Italie de la Contre-Réforme: la veuve chrétienne (S. Cabibbo)- Social Identity and Religious Identity: The Case of Isabella farnese (1593-1651)

The ways through which women´s identity developed and diversified in the area which today we identify as Europe were determined to a great extent by the complex system of beliefs, practices, and representations expressed by the millenary history of christianity. Rarely dealt with by specific studies, the construction of gendered religious models has been highlighted by women´s and gender religious history since the Seventies and is the theme focused by the essays gathered in the present volume. They are the result of the lectures given in 1998 at the Universities of Oslo, Vienna and Roma Tre, within an international project organized by Norwegian, Austrian and Italian scholars in an effort to compare the gendered religious dimension in each national context as well as the different disciplinary approaches to this theme. The essays cover a chronological span which runs from the pre-christian world to the contemporary age. They aim to represent a teaching module capable of offering European students interested in women´s and gender history the possibility to search, within the co-ordinates of time and space, for both the unifying elements and the differences within a christian tradition which, rooted in different realities, has contributed to the development of a plurality of feminine identities.