Mary Ward

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MW , seventeenth-century religious reformer and founder of a religious Order, used her writings (letters, autobiography, prayers, notes, and speeches) as a means to forward her radical ecclesiastical administration. She also wrote devotional works for her own spiritual life, and familiar letters.
Oval-framed portrait of Mary Ward. She is wearing a smooth white cap that covers her whole head, and dark clothing with a white collar. An inscription mostly in Latin, with a single German word, reads above the picture "Institut Beatae Mariae Virginis" and below "Gründerin [Founder] Maria Ward 1585-1645."

Milestones

23 January 1585

Joan Ward, later MW , was born at Mulwith Manor, Mulwith in Yorkshire (near the moors), the eldest of six children.
Chambers, Mary Catharine Elizabeth. The Life of Mary Ward (1585-1645). Editor Coleridge, Henry James, Burns and Oates.
1: 8
Oliver, Mary, and Maisie Ward. Mary Ward, 1585-1645. Sheed and Ward.
4

23 January 1617

At Liège on her twenty-second birthday, MW began an autobiography on the model of St Augustine 's Confessions, which takes her life to the age of fifteen only.
Chambers, Mary Catharine Elizabeth. The Life of Mary Ward (1585-1645). Editor Coleridge, Henry James, Burns and Oates.
1: 5, 402, 404

Later 1617

Faced with evidence of scepticism about her projects among the top Catholic hierarchy, MW made at St OmerThree Speeches about her mission.
Chambers, Mary Catharine Elizabeth. The Life of Mary Ward (1585-1645). Editor Coleridge, Henry James, Burns and Oates.
1: 411, 408

About 1627

MW wrote—or perhaps dictated—a second autobiography, in Italian, which begins with her aged fifteen.
Chambers, Mary Catharine Elizabeth. The Life of Mary Ward (1585-1645). Editor Coleridge, Henry James, Burns and Oates.
1: 48-9

20 January 1645

MW , whose health had been failing for some time, died in a safe home outside the recently besieged city of York.
Margaret Mary Littlehales notes that the date of her death, recorded in Old Style, was given as one year earlier in some early lives.
Littlehales, Margaret Mary. Mary Ward, Pilgrim and Mystic, 1585-1645. Burns and Oates.
258
Chambers, Mary Catharine Elizabeth. The Life of Mary Ward (1585-1645). Editor Coleridge, Henry James, Burns and Oates.
2: 495-6

Biography

Birth and Catholic Background

23 January 1585

Joan Ward, later MW , was born at Mulwith Manor, Mulwith in Yorkshire (near the moors), the eldest of six children.
Chambers, Mary Catharine Elizabeth. The Life of Mary Ward (1585-1645). Editor Coleridge, Henry James, Burns and Oates.
1: 8
Oliver, Mary, and Maisie Ward. Mary Ward, 1585-1645. Sheed and Ward.
4

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