‘Women in Church,Men at the Public House’: religious experience in Romanian society, 1700–1830

This study analyzes religious practices in the Romanian lands in the long eighteenth century. Research for it was based on a series of largely unpublished archival documents which illustrate ordinary people's attitudes to faith, magic, superstition and the church. In periods of instability and insecurity, quite understandably, as daily worries become more acute, faith and religion step in to offer spiritual comfort. This study looks at spiritual practices in the Romanian old regime and explores the ways in which women and men used them as focal points for building sociability and solidarity networks.