[815]Wright and Halliwell,Reliquiae Antiquae,II, p. 117.
[816]Capgrave,Life of St Katharine of Alexandria, ed. Horstmann (E.E.T.S. 1893), Introd. p. xxix.
[817]St John’s Coll. MS.68. Other psalters from the aristocratic house of Wherwell areMS. add.27866 at the British Museum andMS. McClean45 at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.
[818]MS.136 (T. 6. 18). See J. Young and P. Henderson Aitkin,Cat. of MSS. in the Lib. of the Hunterian Museum in the Univ. of Glasgow(1908), p. 124. In the introduction the book is conjectured to have belonged to the Carthusian monastery at Sheen, where it obviously was written; but the reference to “sorores et ffratres” and the name of Elizabeth Gibbs (see Blunt,Myroure of Oure Ladye(E.E.T.S.), p. xxiii), show clearly that it belonged to Syon.
[819]So John of Pontoise sends Juliana de Spina to Romsey on the occasion of his consecration (1282), with the recommendation “Ejusdem Juliane competenter ad hujusmodi officii debitum litterate laudabile propositum speciali gracia prosequentes, etc.”Reg. J. de Pontissara(Cant. and York Soc.),I, p. 240. Cp.ib.p. 252.
[820]Collectanea Anglo-Praemonstratensia,II, p. 267.
[821]Linc. Visit.I, p. 53.
[822]Gesta Abbatum(Rolls Ser. 1867), II, pp. 410-2. But professions were often written by others, and the postulant only put his or her cross. So also with the vote.
[823]Ib.II, p. 213. This was a not uncommon method of voting. It is clear, too, from prohibitions of letter-writing in various injunctions that nuns could sometimes write.
[824]Sussex Archaeol. Coll.V, p. 256. Compare the editor’s note on the education of Christina von Stommeln: “Simul cum psalterio videtur tantum didicisse linguae latinae, quantum satis erat non solum illi legendo, sed etiam epistolis ad se Latine scriptis pro parte intelligendis, ac vicissim dictandis: nam scribendi ignoram fuisse habeo.”Acta SS. Junii, t.IV, p. 279.
[825]Jusserand,A Literary History of the English People,I, pp. 239-40.
[826]Jusserand,op. cit.I, p. 236.
[827]It is interesting to find the Master-General of the Dominicans in 1431 giving Jane Fisher, a nun of Dartford, leave to have amasterto instruct her in grammar and the Latin tongue. Jarrett,The English Dominicans, p. 11.
[828]Reg. Walter Giffard(Surtees Soc.), pp. 147-8.
[829]Reg. John le Romeyn, etc. (Surtees Soc.),II, pp. 222-4.
[830]Reg. Epis. J. Peckham(Rolls Ser.),III, pp. 845-52.
[831]Reg. Thome de Cantilupo(Cant. and York Soc. and Cantilupe Soc.), p. 202.
[832]Reg. R. de Norbury(Wm. Salt Archaeol. Soc. Coll.I), p. 257.
[833]Reg. R. de Stretton(ib.New Series,VIII), p. 119.
[834]Reg. W. de Stapeldon, p. 316. See below, p.286. In the same year Archbishop Melton writes to the nuns of Sinningthwaite that in all writings under the common seal a faithful clerk is to be employed and the deed is to be sealed in the presence of the whole convent, the clerk reading the deed plainly in the mother tongue and explaining it.V.C.H. Yorks.III, p. 177.
[835]Liveing,Records of Romsey Abbey, p. 105.
[836]New Coll.MS. f. 84.
[837]Linc. Epis. Reg. Memo. Gynewell, ff. 34. 139d, 100d.
[838]Ib. Reg. Memo. Bokyngham, ff. 343 (Elstow), 397 (Heynings).
[839]V.C.H. Suffolk,II, p. 83.
[840]Linc. Visit.I, p. 52.
[841]Ib.I, p. 45. At Kyme and Wellow, houses of canons, however, the injunctions are also to be expounded in the mother tongue.
[842]Linc. Visit.II, p. 1.
[843]Alnwick’s Visit.MS. f. 6.
[844]Linc. Visit.II, p. 91;Alnwick’s Visit.MS. ff. 83, 38.
[845]Linc. Visit.II, p. 117.
[846]Linc. Visit.II, p. 174.
[847]Archbishop Lee’s visitations of the York diocese on the eve of the Dissolution (1534-5) are typical. The injunctions sent to the nunneries of Sinningthwaite, Nunappleton and Esholt (Yorks. Archaeol. Journ.XVI, pp. 440, 443, 451) are in English, but those sent to the houses of monks and canons are all in Latin.
[848]Sir David Lyndesay’sPoems, ed. Small, Hall and Murray (E.E.T.S. 2nd ed. 1883), p. 21.
[849]Three Middle Eng. Versions of the Rule of St Benet(E.E.T.S. 1902), p. 48.
On the other hand the Caxton abstract at the end of the century is translated “for men and wymmen, of the habyte therof, the whiche vnderstande lytyll laten or none.”Ib.p. 119.
[850]The preface is quoted inThe Register of Richard Fox while Bishop of Bath and Wells, with a Life of Bishop Fox, ed. E. C. Batten (1889), pp. 102-4.
[851]Eng. Reg. of Godstow Nunnery(E.E.T.S.), pp. 25-6.
[852]The Myroure of Oure Ladye(E.E.T.S.), pp. 2-3.
[853]Ib.pp. 63 ff.
[854]Ib.pp. xliv-xlvi; Eckenstein,op. cit.p. 395. Wynkyn de Worde’s edition was reprinted for the Henry Bradshaw Society in 1893.
[855]Deanesly,The Lollard Bible, pp. 320, 336-7. It may be noted as of some interest that when in 1528 a wealthy London merchant was imprisoned for distributing Tyndale’s books and for similar practices, he pleaded that the abbess of Denney, Elizabeth Throgmorton, had wished to borrow Tyndale’sEnchiridionand that he had lent it to her. Dugdale,Mon.VI, p. 1549.
[856]Sussex Arch. Coll.IX, p. 7.
[857]Linc. Visit.II, p. 49. At Bondeville in 1251 Archbishop Eudes Rigaud has to forbid the nuns to sell their thread and their spindles to raise money, “quod moniales non vendant nec distrahant filumet lor fusees,”Reg. Visit. Archiepiscopi Roth.ed. Bonnin (1852), p. 111.
[858]“Nuns with their needles wrote histories also,” as Fuller prettily says, “that of Christ his passion for their altar clothes, as other Scripture (and moe legend) Stories to adorn their houses.” Fuller,Church Hist.(ed. 1837), II, p. 190.
[859]J. H. Middleton,Illuminated MSS.(1892), p. 112. On nunnery embroidery at different periods seeib.pp. 224-30; but the book must be read with great caution.
[860]Mackenzie Walcott,Inventory of St Mary’s Ben. Nunnery at Langley, Co. Leic. 1485(Leic. Architec. Soc. 1872), pp. 3, 4.
[861]V.C.H. Yorks.III, 120, 127, 183. Greenfield may have so enjoined other houses; the injunctions are not always fully summarised. As to nuns’ embroidery there is an interesting passage in the thirteenth century German poemHelmbrechtby Wernher “the Gardener”: “Old farmer Helmbrecht had a son. Young Helmbrecht’s yellow locks fell down to his shoulders. He tucked them into a handsome silken cap, embroidered with doves and parrots and many a picture. This cap had been embroidered by a nun who had run away from her convent through a love adventure, as happens to so many. From her Helmbrecht’s sister Gotelind had learned to embroider and to sew. The girl and her mother had well earned that from the nun, for they gave her in pay a calf, and many cheeses and eggs.” J. Harvey Robinson,Readings in Eur. Hist.I, pp. 418-9, translated from Freytag,Bilder aus der deutschen Vergangenheit(1876,II, pp. 52 ff.).
[862]Manners and Household Expenses(Roxburghe Club 1841), p. 18.
[863]Gasquet,Engl. Monastic Life, p. 170.
[864]Trans. St Paul’s Eccles. Soc.VII, ptII(1912), p. 54.
[865]Ancren Riwle, ed. Gasquet, p. 318.
[866]See below, p.655.
[867]Wood,Letters of Royal and Illustrious Ladies,II, pp. 229-31.
[868]Peckham, forbidding the nuns of Barking (1279) to eat or sleep in private rooms or to receive mass there, makes an exception for those who are seriously ill, “in which case we permit the confessor and the doctor, also the father or brother, to have access to them.”Reg. Epis. Johannis Peckham,I, p. 84. Cf.ib.II, pp. 652, 663. For nuns and medicine see S. Luce,La Jeunesse de Bertrand de Guesclin(1882), p. 10.
[869]At Romsey Abbey a pittance of sixpence was due to each nun “when blood is let” (see Bishop John de Pontoise’s injunctions in 1302 and those of Bishop Woodlock in 1311, both of which refer to the payments not having been made). Bishop Woodlock enjoined that “Nuns who have been bled shall be allowed to enter the cloister if they wish.” Liveing,Records of Romsey Abbey, pp. 100, 103, 104. In 1338 Abbot Michael of St Albans orders all the nuns of Sopwell to attend the service of prime, “horspris les malades et les seynes.” Dugdale,Mon.III, p. 366. At Nuncoton in 1440 the sub-prioress deposed that “the infirm, the weakminded and they that are in their seynies ... do eat in the convent cellar.”Alnwick’s Visit.MS. f. 71d. Bishop Stapeldon forbids the nuns of Polsloe in 1319 to enter convent offices outside the cloistral precincts “pour estre seigne ou pur autre encheson feynte.”Reg. Stapeldon, ed. Hingeston-Randolph, p. 317.
[870]On the custom of periodical bleeding in monasteries see J. W. Clark,The Observances ... at Barnwell, Introd. pp. lxi, ff. It is interesting to note that medieval treatises on the diseases of women occasionally refer specifically to nuns, e.g. in a fourteenth century English MS. a certain “worschipfull sirop” for use in cases of anaemia is said to be “for ladyes & for nunnes and other also þat ben delicate.” Brit. Mus. MS. Sloane 2463, f. 198 vº.
[871]E.g. Nicholaa de Fulham dates her will in 1327 from Clerkenwell and leaves certain rents for life to Joan her sister, a nun there. Sharpe,Cal. of Wills enrolled in Court of Husting,I, p. 324. The will of Elizabeth Medlay “of the house of St Clement’s in Clementthorpe” directs her body to be buried in the conventual church, bequeathes legacies to the high altar, the Prioress and each nun there and appoints dame Margaret Delaryver, prioress, as executor (1470).V.C.H. Yorks.III, p. 130.
[872]New Coll.MS. ff. 88, 88dº.
[873]The Fifty Earliest Wills in the Court of Probate, ed. F. J. Furnivall (E.E.T.S.), p. 54. But she may have been a sister from a hospital.
[874]Linc. Visit.II, pp. 4, 5, 6.
[875]Visit. of Dioc. Norwich(Camden Soc.), p. 243.
[876]Liveing,Records of Romsey Abbey, pp. 226, 236. William of Wykeham in 1387 ordered that three or four at least of the more discreet nuns of this large abbey, “in regula sancti benedicti et obseruanciis regularibus sufficienter erudite” should be chosen to instruct the younger nuns in these matters.New Coll.MS. f. 86. At St Mary’s, Winchester, in 1501, besides Margaret Legh, mistress of the novices, there was Agnes Cox, senior teacher (dogmatista).V.C.H. Hants.II, p. 124. At Elstow in 1421-2 the bishop ordered “That a more suitable nun be deputed and ordained to be precentress; and that elder nuns, if they shall be capable and fit for such offices, be preferred to younger.”Linc. Visit.I, p. 50. Dean Kentwode’s injunction to St Helen’s Bishopsgate in 1432 runs: “That ye ordeyne and chese on of yowre sustres, honest, abille and cunnyng of discretyone, the whiche can, may and schall have the charge of techyng and informacyone of yowre sustres that be uncunnyng, for to teche hem here service and the rule of here religione.” Dugdale,Mon.IV, p. 554.
[877]The controversy was roused by an article by Mr J. E. G. de Montmorency entitled “The Medieval Education of Women in England” in theJournal of Education(June, 1909) pp. 427-31. This was challenged by Mr Coulton,loc. cit.(July, 1910), pp. 456-7; see the correspondencepassim, especially the two articles by Mr A. F. Leach,loc. cit.(Oct. and Dec. 1910), pp. 667-9, 838-41. The subject was afterwards treated with great erudition by Mr Coulton in a paper read before the International Congress of Historical Studies in 1913, reprinted with notes asMonastic Schools in the Middle Ages(Medieval Studies, X, 1913).
[878]For the rest of this chapter I shall not give full references in footnotes, because they can easily be traced inNote B, p.568below.
[879]Cistercian Statutes, 1256-7, ed. J. T. Fowler (reprinted fromYorks. Archaeol. Journ.), p. 105.
[880]Probably, however, after the dissolution of her house.
[881]Tanner,Notitia Monastica(1744 edit.), p. xxxii (basing his opinion on three secondary authorities and on a misunderstanding of two medieval entries, one of which refers to lay sisters and the other to an adult boarder).
[882]N. Sanderus,de Schismate Anglicana, ed. 1586, p. 176. The statement is not in the original Sanders. A well-known passage in thePaston Lettersillustrates the practice as regards girls; Margaret Paston writes to her son in 1469 “Also I would ye should purvey for your sister to be with my Lady of Oxford, or with my Lady of Bedford, or in some other worshipful place whereas ye think best, for we be either of us weary of other.” It is probable that this method of educating girls was more common than nunnery education.
[883]Quoted by Mr Leach,Journ. of Educ.(1910), p. 668.
[884]Possibly, as Mr Coulton points out (Med. Studies,X, p. 26), this may account for the fact that evidence of girl pupils is wanting for some of the wealthier and more important nunneries; he instances Shaftesbury, Amesbury, Syon, Studley and Lacock. For the life of the nuns at Lacock and Amesbury we have very little information of any kind, but our information is fairly full for Shaftesbury, and very full for Syon and for Studley.
[885]For a discussion of these charges and of other prices and payments, with which they may be compared, see J. E. G. de Montmorency inJourn. of Educ.(1909), pp. 429-30 and Coulton,op. cit.app. iv. (School Children in Nunnery Accounts), pp. 38-40.
[886]Quoted in S. H. Burke,The Monastic Houses of England, their Accusers and Defenders(1869), p. 32. Compare the words of a Venetian traveller, Paolo Casenigo: “The English nuns gave instructions to the poorer virgins as to their duties when they became wives; to be obedient to their husbands and to give good example,” a curious note.Ib.p. 31.
[887]Quoted in Fosbroke,British Monachism(1802),II, p. 35.
[888]Ancren Riwle, ed. Gasquet, p. 319.
[889]Notice the recognition of the financial reasons for taking schoolchildren. So also in 1489 the nuns of Nunappleton are to take no boarders “but if they be childern or ellis old persons by which availe by likelihod may grow to your place”—fees or legacies, in fact. Dugdale,Mon.IV, p. 654.
[890]Caesarius of Heisterbach gives a picture of a less disturbing child in quire (though she was more probably a little girl who was intended for a nun). This is the English fifteenth century translation: “Caesarius tellis how that in Essex” (really in Saxony, but the translator was anxious to introduce local colour for the sake of his audience), “in a monasterye of nonnys, ther was a litle damysell, and on a grete solempne nyght hur maistres lete hur com with hur to matyns. So the damysell was bod a wayke thyng, and hur maistres was ferd at sho sulde take colde, and she commaundid hur befor Te Deum to go vnto the dortur to her bed agayn. And at hur commandment sho went furth of the where, thuff all it war with ill wyll, and abade withoute the where and thoght to here the residue of matyns”; whereat she saw a vision of the nuns caught up to heaven praising God among the angels, at theTe Deum.An Alphabet of Tales(E.E.T.S. 1905),II, p. 406.
[891]Fuller,Church Hist.See p.255above, note 3.
[892]Quoted in Gasquet,Eng. Monastic Life, p. 177.
[893]Hugo,Medieval Nunneries of Somerset(Minchin Buckland), p. 107.
[894]G. Hill,Women in Eng. Life(1896), p. 79.
[895]Times Educational Supplement(Sept. 4, 1919). This seems to be taken from Fosbroke,Brit. Monachism,II, pp. 6-7, who takes it from Sir H. Chauncey’sHist. and Antiqs. of Hertfordshire, p. 423; it is the first appearance of dancing; as Fosbroke sapiently argued, “The dancing of nuns will be hereafter spoken of and if they dance they must somewhere learn how.”
[896]Journ. of Education, 1910, p. 841. Mr Hamilton Thompson sends me this note: “Probably, so far as any systematic teaching went, they were taught ‘grammar’ and song, which would vary in quality according to the teacher. These are the only two elements of which we regularly hear in the ordinary schools of the day. I do not see any reason to suppose that they were taught more or less. Song (i.e. church song) takes such a very prominent part in medieval education that I think it would not have been neglected; it was also one of the things which nuns ought to have been able to teach from their daily experience in quire. Bridget Plantagenet’s book of matins (see below) would be an appropriate lesson book for both grammar and song, as nuns would understand them.”
[897]An Alphabet of Tales(E.E.T.S. 1905), p. 272, from Caesarius of Heisterbach,Dialog. Mirac.ed. Strange,I, p. 196.
[898]See e.g. the Knight of La Tour Landry, p. 178, “Et pour ce que aucuns gens dient que ilz ne voudroient pas que leurs femmes ne leurs filles sceussent rien de clergie ne d’escripture, je dy ainsi que, quant d’escryre, n’y a force que femme en saiche riens; mais quant a lire, tout femme en vault mieulx de le scavoir et cognoist mieulx la foy et les perils de l’ame et son saulvement, et n’en est pas de cent une qui n’en vaille mieulx; car c’est chose esprouvee.” Quoted in A. A. Hentsch,De la littérature didactique du moyen âge s’addressant spécialement aux femmes(Cahors, 1903), p. 133. So Philippe de Novare († 1270) refuses to allow women to learn reading or writing, because they expose her to evil, and Francesco da Barberino († 1348) refuses to allow reading and writing except to girls of the highest rank (not including the daughters of esquires, judges and gentlefolk of their class); both, however, make exception for nuns.Ib.pp. 84, 106-7.
[899]See below, p.388.
[900]Archaeologia,XLIII(1871), p. 245 (Redlingfield and Bruisyard).
[901]See below, p.309.
[902]Wood,Letters of Royal and Illustrious Ladies,II, pp. 213-7.
[903]Quoted Gasquet,Hen. VIII and the Eng. Monasteries(1899), p. 227.
[904]The Catechism of Thomas Bacon, S.T.P., ed. John Ayre (Parker Soc. 1894), p. 377.
[905]See above, p.82.
[906]Yorks. Archaeol. Journ.XVI, pp. 452-3. Unluckily among Archbishop Lee’s injunctions there remain only three sets addressed to nunneries; there are also two letters concerning an immoral and apostate ex-Prioress of Basedale. At the other two nunneries addressed, Nunappleton and Sinningthwaite, no specific accusations are made, but the Archbishop enjoins that the nuns shall “observe chastity” (§IX, p. 440) and avoid the suspicious company of men (§V, p. 441).
[907]Aungier,Hist. of Syon Mon.p. 385. Compare also the regulations for behaviour in choir, “There also none shal use to spytte ouer the stalles, nor in any other place wher any suster is wonte to pray, but yf it anone be done oute, for defoylyng of ther clothes.”Ib.p. 320.
[908]The hours seem to have varied in length according to the season; see Butler,Benedictine Monachism, ch.XVII.
[909]Reg. W. de Stapeldon, p. 316.
[910]Aungier,op. cit.pp. 405-9. It is unlikely, however, that Betsone actually invented any of the signs, for similar lists are to be found in the early consuetudinaries of Cluniac houses and other sources. The signs were probably to a great extent “common form.”
[911]Ib.p. 298.
[912]Bernold,Chron.(1083) inMon. Germ. Hist.V, p. 439, quoted in Workman,The Evolution of the Monastic Ideal, p. 157.
[913]E.g. a nun asks that sufficient clothes and food be ministered to her “ut fortis sit ad subeundum pondus religionis et diuini seruicii.”Linc. Visit.II, p. 5. A bishop orders no nun to be admitted unless she be “talem que onera chori ... ceteris religionem concernentibus poterit supportare.”Ib.I, p. 53.
[914]Vattasso,Studi Medievali(1904),I, p. 124. Quoted inMod. Philology(1908),V, pp. 10-11. I have ventured to combine parts of two verses.
[915]Alnwick’s Visit.MS. f. 1d; but some of these would be absent from the monastery.
[916]Ib.ff. 71d, 72. For other injunctions against “cutting” services, see Heynings, 1351 and 1392 (Linc. Epis. Reg. Memo. Gynewell, f. 34d, andBokyngham, f. 397), Elstow 1387 and 1421 (ib.Bokyngham, f. 343 andLinc. Visit.I, p. 51), Godstow 1279 and 1434 (Reg. J. Peckham,III, p. 846,Linc. Visit.I, p. 66), Romsey 1387 (New Coll.MS. f. 84), Cannington 1351 (Reg. R. of Shrewsbury, p. 684), Nunkeeling 1314, Thicket 1309, Yedingham 1314, Swine 1318, Wykeham 1314, Arthington 1318 (V.C.H. Yorks.III, pp. 120, 124, 127, 181, 183, 188), Sinningthwaite 1534 (Yorks. Arch. Journ.XVI, p. 443), etc.
[917]See e.g.Linc. Visit.II, pp. 1, 8, 67, 131, 133, 134-5,Linc. Epis. Reg. Memo. Gynewell, f. 34d,Sede Vacante Reg.(Worc. Hist. Soc.), p. 276,Reg. Epis. J. Peckham,II, pp. 651-2, etc.
[918]V.C.H. Lincs.II, p. 131. For other instances of lateness at matins, see Heynings 1442 (Linc. Visit.II, p. 133), Godstow 1432 (Linc. Visit.I, p. 66), Flixton 1514 (Jessopp,Visit. of Dioc. of Norwich, p. 143), Romsey 1302 (Liveing,Records of Romsey Abbey, p. 100), Easebourne 1478, 1524 (Sussex Arch. Coll.IX, pp. 17, 26-7), St Radegund’s, Cambridge (Gray,Prior of St Radegund, Cambridge, p. 36).
[919]Linc. Visit.II, p. 48; Jessopp,Visit. of Dioc. of Norwich, p. 209;Arch.XLVII, p. 55; compare Romsey 1387, 1507 (New Coll.MS. f. 84; Liveing,op. cit.p. 231), St Helen’s Bishopsgate, c. 1432 (Hist. MS. Com. Rep.IX, App. p. 57).
[920]“These are they who wickedly corrupt the holy psalms: the dangler, the gasper, the leaper, the galloper, the dragger, the mumbler, the foreskipper, the forerunner and the over leaper: Tittivillus collecteth the fragments of these men’s words.” G. G. Coulton,Med. Garn.p. 423. He also collected the gossip of women in church. On Tittivillus see my article in theCambridge Magazine, 1917, pp. 158-60.
[921]Myroure of Oure Ladye, ed. Blunt (E.E.T.S.), p. 54.
[922]Greek ἀκηδία; whenceacediaoraccidiain Latin; Englishaccidie. It is a pity that the word has fallen out of use. The disease has not.
[923]An interesting modern study of this moral disease is to be found in a book of sermons by the late Bishop of Oxford, Dr Paget,The Spirit of Discipline(1891), which contains an introductory essay “concerningAccidie,” in which the subject is treated historically, with illustrations from the writings of Cassian, St John of the Ladder, Dante and St Thomas Aquinas, in the middle ages, Marchantius and Francis Neumayer in the seventeenth century, and Wordsworth, Keble, Trench, Matthew Arnold, Tennyson and Stevenson in the nineteenth century. See also Dr Paget’s first sermon “The Sorrow of the World,” which deals with the same subject. He diagnoses the main elements ofAccidiavery ably: “As one compares the various estimates of the sin one can mark three main elements which help to make it what it is—elements which can be distinguished, though in experience, I think, they almost always tend to meet and mingle, they aregloomandslothandirritation.”Op. cit.p. 54. OnAccidia, see also H. B. Workman,The Evolution of the Monastic Ideal(1913), pp. 326-31. During the great war the disease ofaccidiewas prevalent in prison camps, as any account of Ruhleben shows very clearly. For a short psychological study of this manifestation of it, see Vischer, A. L.,Barbed Wire Disease(1919).
[924]See book X of Cassian’sDe Coenobiorum Institutis, which is entitled “De Spiritu Acediae” (Wace and Schaff,Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, 2nd ser., vol.XI, Sulpitius Severus, Vincent of Lerins and John Cassian, pp. 266 ff.; chaptersIandIIare paraphrased by Dr Paget,op. cit.pp. 8-10); Book IX, on the kindred sin ofTristitiais also worthy of study; the two are always closely connected, as is shown by the anecdotes quoted below.
[925]Dante,Inferno,VII, l. 121 ff. Translation by J. A. Carlyle.
[926]Chaucer,The Persones Tale, §§ 53-9.
[927]See the translation of the episode (from Busch,Chronicon Windeshemense, ed. K. Grube, p. 395) in Coulton,Med. Garner, pp. 641-4. On the subject of medieval doubt and despair see Coulton in theHibbert Journal,XIV(1916), pp. 598-9 andFrom St Francis to Dante, pp. 313-4.
[928]Caes. of Heist.Dial. Mirac.ed. Strange,I, pp. 209-10.
[929]Ib.I. pp. 210-11. For a case of doubt in an anchoress, which, however ended well, seeib.I, pp. 206-8.
[930]Langland,Piers Plowman, ed. Skeat, B, passusX, 300-5.
[931]Langland,Piers Plowman, ed. Skeat, B, passusV, ll. 153-65. The C text has a variant for the last four lines:
Thus thei sitte the sustres · somtyme, and disputen,Til “thow lixt” and “thow lixt” · be lady over hem alle;And then awake ich, Wratthe · and wold be auenged.Thanne ich crie and cracche · with my kene nailes,Bothe byte and bete · and brynge forthe suche thewes,That alle ladies me lothen · that louen eny worschep.
It is strange that the same hand which wrote these lines should have written the beautiful description of convent life quoted on p. 297.
[932]See above, p.82and below,Note F.
[933]From “Why can’t I be a nun,”Trans. of Philol. Soc.1858, PtII, p. 268.
[934]Wykeham’s Reg.II, pp. 361-2 (1384). Compare case at Shaftesbury (1298) where the nuns had incurred excommunication.Reg. Sim. de Gandavo, p. 14.
[935]Linc. Visit.II, p. 8. Compare Winchelsey’s injunctions to Sheppey in 1296.Reg. Roberti Winchelsey, pp. 99-100.
[936]Liveing,op. cit.pp. 245-6. The “bad language” may be scolding or defamation rather than swearing. It is rare to find a nun accused of using oaths. But see the list of faults drawn up for the nuns of Syon Abbey; among “greuous defautes” is “if any ... be take withe ... any foule worde, or else brekethe her sylence, or swerethe horribly be Criste, or be any parte of hys blyssed body, or unreuerently speketh of God, or of any saynte, and namely of our blessyd lady”; among “more greuous defautes” is “yf they swere be the sacramente, or be the body of Cryste, or be hys passion, or be hys crosse, or be any boke, or be any other thynge lyke”; and among “most greuous defautes” is “yf any in her madness or drunkenesse blaspheme horrybly God, or our Lady, or any of hys sayntes” (Aungier,Hist. of Syon Mon.pp. 256, 259, 262). In 1331, on readmitting Isabella de Studley (who had been guilty of incontinence and apostasy) to St Clement’s York, Archbishop Melton announced that if she were disobedient to the Prioress or quarrelsome with her sisters orindulged in blasphemyhe would transfer her to another house.V.C.H. Yorks.III, p. 130.
[937]V.C.H. Bucks.I, p. 383 andV.C.H. Lincs.II, p. 155.
[938]In 1311 Archbishop Greenfield issued a general order that nuns only and not sisters were to use the black veil; sisters wore a white veil (V.C.H. Yorks.III, p. 188 note, andJourn. of Education, 1910, p. 841). This order was repeated at various houses, which shows that there must have been a widespread attempt to usurp the black veil (V.C.H. Yorks.III, pp. 124, 127, 175, 177, 188). At Sinningthwaite the Prioress was also ordered not to place the sisters above the nuns. A common punishment in this district was to remove the black veil from a nun and this was reserved for the more serious misdeeds.
[939]York Reg. Giffard, pp. 147-8. For further instances, seeNote Cbelow.
[940]Injunctions against dicing and other games of chance are common in the case of monks (see e.g.Linc. Visit.I, pp. 30, 46, 77, 89). I have found none in nunneries, but a more stately game of skill, the fashionable tables, was played by Margaret Fairfax with John Munkton. Above, p.77.
[941]Quoted from St Aldhelm’sDe Laudibus Virginitatisin Eckenstein,Woman under Mon.p. 115. Compare Bede’s account of the nuns of Coldingham some years before: “The virgins who are vowed to God, laying aside all respect for their profession, whenever they have leisure spend all their time in weaving fine garments with which they adorn themselves like brides, to the detriment of their condition and to secure the friendship of men outside.”Ib.pp. 102-3.
[942]For detailed examples, seeNote Dbelow.
[943]Linc. Visit.II, p. 118. Similardetectaand injunctions at Catesby, Rothwell and Studley (ib.pp. 47, 52;Alnwick’s Visit.MS. ff. 38, 26d) and at Ankerwyke (quoted above, p.76). Also at Studley (1531),Archaeol.XLVII, p. 55, and Romsey (1523), Liveing,op. cit.p. 244.
[944]Archaeol.XLVII, p. 52. For an equally detailed account see the case of the Prioress of Ankerwyke, quoted above p.76.
[945]See below, p.543.
[946]See below, pp.325-30.
[947]For nunnery pets as a literary theme, seeNote Eand for pet animals in the nunneries of Eudes Rigaud’s diocese see below, p.662.
[948]“Ye shall not possess any beasts, my dear sisters, except only a cat.”Ancren Riwle, p. 316. At the nunnery of Langendorf in Saxony, however, a set of reformed rules drawn up in the early fifteenth century contains the proviso “Cats, dogs and other animals are not to be kept by the nuns, as they detract from seriousness.” Eckenstein,op. cit.p. 415.
[949]“Mem. quod apud manerium de Newenton fuerunt quedam moniales.... Et postea contingit [sic] quod priorissa eiusdem manerii strangulata fuit de cato suo in lecto suo noctu et postea tractata ad puteum quod vocatur Nunnepet.” Quoted from Sprott’s Chronicle inThe Black Book of St Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury(British Acad. 1915),I, p. 283. In Thorn’s Chronicle, however, the crime is attributed to the prioress’cook. See Dugdale,Mon.VI, p. 1620. The nuns were afterwards removed to Sheppey.
[950]There really seems to have been a parrot at Fontevrault in 1477, to judge from an item in the inventory of goods left on her death by the Abbess Marie de Bretagne, “Item xviij serviecttes en une aultre piece, led. linge estant en ung coffre de cuir boully, en la chambre ou est la papegault (perroquet).” Alfred Jubien,L’Abbesse Marie de Bretagne(Angers and Paris 1872), p. 156. It is interesting to note that J. B. Thiers, writing on enclosure in 1681, mentions “de belles volieres à petits oiseaux” as one of those unnecessary works for which artisans may not be introduced into the cloister. Thiers,De la Clôture, p. 412.
[951]Reg. Epis. Peckham(R.S.),II, p. 660.
[952]Dugdale,Mon.II, p. 619 (Chatteris) andCamb. Antiq. Soc. Proc.XLV(1905), p. 190 (Ickleton).
[953]A decree of the Council of Vienne (1311) complains that many church ministers come into choir “bringing hawks with them or causing them to be brought and leading hunting dogs.” Coulton,Med. Garn.p. 588. Similarly Geiler on the eve of the Reformation complains, in hisNavicula Fatuorum, that “some men, when they are about to enter a church, equip themselves like hunters, bearing hawks and bells on their wrists and followed by a pack of baying hounds, that trouble God’s service. Here the bells jangle, there the barking of dogs echoes in our ears, to the hindrance of preachers and hearers.” He goes on to say that the habit is particularly reprehensible in clergy. The privilege of behaving thus was an adjunct of noble birth and in the cathedrals of Auxerre and Nevers the treasurers had the legal right of coming to service with hawk on wrist, because these canonries were hereditary in noble families.Ib.pp. 684-5. Medieval writers on hawking actually advise that hawks should be taken into church to accustom them to crowds. “Mais en cest endroit d’espreveterie, le convient plus que devant tenir sur le poing et le porter aux plais et entre les gens aux églises et ès autres assamblées, et emmy les rues, et le tenir jour et nuit le plus continuelment que l’en pourra, et aucune fois le perchier emmi les rues pour veoir gens, chevaulx, charettes, chiens, et toutes choses congnoistre.” Gaces de la Bugne gives the same advice.Le Ménagier de Paris(Paris, 1846),II, p. 296.
[954]Below, p.412.
[955]V.C.H. Yorks.III, pp. 168, 175.
[956]New Coll.MS. ff. 88-88d, translated in Coulton,Soc. Life in Britain from the Conquest to the Reformation, p. 397.
[957]Hist. MSS. Com. Rep.IX, app. pt.I, p. 57.
[958]Jessopp,Visit. of Dioc. of Norwich, p. 191.
[959]Chaucer’s description of the monk is well known:
Therfore he was a pricasour aright;Grehoundes he hadde, as swifte as fowel in flight;Of priking and of hunting for the hareWas al his lust, for no cost wolde he spare.
Compare Langland’s picture of the monk, riding out on his palfrey from manor to manor, “an hepe of houndes at hus ers as he a lord were” (Piers Plowman, C TextVI, ll. 157-61). Visitation documents amply bear out these accounts; in a single set of visitations (those by Bishops Flemyng and Gray of Lincoln during the years 1420-36) we have “Furthermore we enjoin and command you all and several ... that no canon apply himself in any wise to hunting, hawking or other lawless wanderings abroad” (Dunstable Priory 1432); “further we enjoin upon you, the prior and all and several the canons of the convent aforesaid ... that you utterly remove and drive away all hounds for hunting from the said priory and its limits; and that neither you nor any one of you keep, rear, or maintain such hounds by himself or by another’s means, directly or indirectly, in the priory or without the priory, under colour of any pretext whatsoever” (Huntingdon Priory 1432); “also that hounds for hunting be not nourished within the precinct of your monastery” (St Frideswide’s Oxford, 1422-3) and a similar injunction to Caldwell Priory.Linc. Visit.I, pp. 27, 47, 78, 97.
[960]Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. Coll. I, p. 261. Compare also the provision in one of Charlemagne’s capitularies: “Ut episcopi et abbateset abbatissaecupplas canum non habeant nec falcones nec accipitres,” Baretius,Capit. Reg. Franc.(1853), p. 64. Some of the birds at Romsey may have been hawks, though it is more likely that they were larks and other small pets, such as Eudes Rigaud found in his nunneries.
[961]V.C.H. Essex,II, p. 123, and see above, p.105.
[962]The nuns of St Mary de Pré, St Albans, kept a huntsman.V.C.H. Herts.IV, p. 430 (note).
[963]V.C.H. Herts.IV, p. 431 (note); Dugdale,Mon.III, pp. 359-60.
[964]Hereford Reg. Thome Spofford, p. 82. (This was combined with an injunction against going to “comyn wakes and festes, spectacles and other worldly vanytees” outside the convent. Below, p.377.).
[965]Dugdale,Mon.IV, p. 554.
[966]Quoted in Coulton,Med. Garn.p. 304.
[967]See Chambers,op. cit.I, pp. 38-41.
[968]Ib.I, p. 56 (note). “The bishops of Durham in 1355, Norwich in 1362, and Winchester in 1374, 1422, and 1481 had ‘minstrels of honour’ like any secular noble.”
[969]Ib.I, pp. 39, 56 (notes).
[970]Langland,Piers the Plowman, C, TextVIII, l. 97.
[971]“Payments for performances are frequent in the accounts of the Augustinian priories at Canterbury, Bicester and Maxstoke and the great Benedictine houses of Durham, Norwich, Thetford and St Swithin’s, Winchester, and doubtless in those of many another cloistered retreat. The Minorite chroniclers relate how, at the coming of the friars in 1224, two of them were mistaken for minstrels by the porter of a Benedictine grange near Abingdon, received by the brethren with unbecoming glee, and when the error was discovered, turned out with contumely,” Chambers,op. cit.I, pp. 56-7. In the Register of St Swithun’s it is recorded under the year 1374 that “on the feast of Bishop Alwyn ... six minstrels with four harpers performed their minstrelsies. And after dinner in the great arched chamber of the lord Prior, they sang the same geste.... And the said jongleurs came from the household of the bishop,”ib.I, p. 56 (note). See extracts from the account books of Durham, Finchale, Maxstoke and Thetford Priories relating to the visits of minstrels,ib.II, pp. 240-6. At Finchale there was even a room called “le Playerchambre,”ib.II, p. 244. In 1258 Eudes Rigaud had to order the Abbot of Jumièges “that he should send strolling players away from his premises.”Reg. Visit. Arch. Roth.p. 607. At a later date, in 1549, a council at Cologne directed a canon against comedians who were in the habit of visiting the German nunneries and by their profane plays and amatory acting excited to unholy desires the virgins dedicated to God. Lea,Hist. of Sacerdotal Celibacy,II, p. 189.
[972]“Histrionibus potest dari cibus, quia pauperes sunt, non quia histriones; et eorum ludi non videantur, vel audiantur vel permittantur fieri coram abbate vel monachis.”Annales de Burton(Ann. Monast. R. S.I, p. 485), quoted Chambers,op. cit.I, p. 39 (note).
[973]Alnwick’s Visit.f. 83.
[974]Aucassin and Nicolete, ed. Bourdillon (1897), p. 22.
[975]See the well-known story of “Le Tombeor de Notre Dame” (Romania,II, p. 315), and “Du Cierge qui descendi sus la viele au vieleeux devant l’ymage Nostre Dame,” Gautier de Coincy,Miracles de Nostre Dame, ed. Poquet (1859), p. 310. Both are translated inOf The Tumbler of Our Lady and Other Miraclesby A. Kemp-Welch (King’s Classics 1909).
[976]For the following account, see A. F. Leach’s article on “The Schoolboy’s Feast,”Fortnightly Review, N.S.LIX(1896), p. 128, and Chambers,op. cit.I, ch. XV.
[977]See below, p.662.
[978]Reg. Epis. J. Peckham,I, pp. 82-3. For a similar injunction to Godstow, seeib.III, p. 846. At Romsey the Archbishop forbade the festivities altogether: “Superstitionem vero quae in Natali Domini et Ascensione Ejusdem fieri consuevit, perpetuo condemnamus,”ib.II, p. 664. The superstition was probably the election of the youngest nun as abbess.
[979]Norwich Visit.pp. 209-10.
[980]Archaeol.XLVII, p. 56. On the Lord of Misrule, see Chambersop. cit.I, ch.XVII. There is a vivid account (from the Puritan point of view) in Philip Stubbes,The Anatomie of Abuses(1583) quoted inLife in Shakespeare’s England, ed. J. D. Wilson (1915), pp. 25-7.
[981]Chambers,op. cit.I, p. 361 (note 1).
[982]Dugdale,Mon.III, p. 360.
[983]Cussans,Hist. of Herts., Hertford Hundred, app.II, p. 268.
[984]Walcott,Inventory of Shepey, p. 23. There is perhaps another reference in the inventory of Langley in 1485: “iij quesyns (cushions) of olde red saye, ij smale quechyns embrodred and ij qwechyns namyde Seynt Nicolas qwechyns,” Walcott,Inventory of Langley, p. 6.
[985]E.g. (besides the well-known case of Dr Rock inThe Church of Our Fathers), Gayley,Plays of our Forefathers, pp. 67-8.
[986]Leach,op. cit.p. 137.
[987]Ib.p. 131.
[988]Leach,op. cit.p. 137 (fromMartène,III, p. 39). I have slightly altered the translation.
[989]On Benedictine poverty, see Dom Butler,Benedictine Monachism, ch.X.
[990]The alteration was made even by the Cistercians in 1335. SeeLinc. Visit.I, p. 238 (underMisericord). Among Black Monks it began much earlier.
[991]Linc. Visit.I, p. 238. Alnwick’s visitations sometimes mention this division of the frater. “Also she prays that frater may be kept every day, since there is one upper frater wherein they feed on fish and food made with milk, and another downstairs, wherein they feed of grace on flesh” (Nuncoton 1440). “Also she says that they feed on fish and milk foods in the upper frater and on flesh in the lower” (Stixwould 1440).Alnwick’s Visit.MS. ff. 71d, 76.
[992]“Et qe nule Dame de Religion ne mange hors du Refreytour en chambre severale si ceo ne soit en compaignie la Priouresse, ou par maladie ou autre renable encheson.... Item, purceo qe ascune foitz ascunes Dames de vostre Religion orent lur damoiseles severales por faire severalement lur viaunde, si ordinoms, voloms et establioms qe totes celles damoiseles soyent de tut oste de la cusine, et qe un keu covenable, qi eit un page desoutz lui soit mys per servir a tut le Covent” (1319).Exeter Reg. Stapeldon, pp. 317-8. CompareV.C.H. Yorks.III, p. 165 (Hampole 1411).
[993]For the following references, seeLinc. Visit.II, pp. 46, 89, 114, 117, 119, 121, 175;Alnwick’s Visit.MS. ff. 71d, 76, 77, 83.
[994]Pupils or boarders may account for these discrepancies.
[995]Linc. Visit.I, p. 67 (and note 3); compareV.C.H. Yorks.III, p. 181.
[996]Walcott, M. E. C.,Inventories of ... the Ben. Priory of ... Shepey for Nuns(Arch. Cant.1869), pp. 23 ff.
[997]E.g. at Gracedieu “The dorter, item ther three nunnes selles whyche as sould for 30s.” Nichols,Hist. and Antiq. of Leic.(1804),III, p. 653; at Catesby where the “sells in the dorter were sold at 6s.8d.apiece,”Archaeologia,XLIII, p. 241. In theory the nuns were supposed to get up and lie down in full view of each other and curtains were forbidden by Woodlock at Romsey in 1311. Liveing,op. cit.p. 104. On the other hand at Redlingfield in 1514 a nun complained that “sorores non habent curricula inter cubilia, sed una potest aliam videre quando surgit vel aliquid aliud facit” and the Bishop ordered the Prioress to provide curtains between the cubicles in the dorter. Jessopp,Visit. of Dioc. of Norwich(Camden Soc.), pp. 139-40. Dom Butler thus traces the transition from the open dorter to private cells: open dorter; side partitions between the beds; curtains in front; a latticed door in front, making a cubicle; a solid door with a large window; the window grew smaller and smaller until it became a peephole; the dorter became a gallery of private rooms.Downside Review(1899), pp. 119-21.
[998]Linc. Visit.II, pp. 51-2. See also among many other injunctions and references to the custom the following: Gracedieu (1440-1),ib.II, p. 125; Godstow (1432),ib.I, pp. 67-8; Barking (1279); Wherwell (1284),Reg. Epis. Johannis Peckham,I, p. 84,II, p. 653; Hampole (1311),V.C.H. Yorks.III, p. 181; Swine (1318),ib.p. 163; Nunappleton (1346 and 1489),ib.pp. 171-2; Fairwell (1367),Reg. Stretton of Lichfield, p. 119; Romsey (1387 and 1492),New Coll.MS. ff. 85, 85d, 86, Liveing,Records of Romsey Abbey, p. 218; Aconbury (1438),Reg. Spofford of Hereford, p. 224; Stixwould (1519),V.C.H. Lincs.II, p. 148; Sinningthwaite (1534),Yorks. Arch. Journ.XVI, p. 441. Sometimes the system can be traced in one house over a long period of years. At Elstow, for instance, in 1387,Linc. Epis. Reg. Memo. Bokyngham, f. 343; in 1421-2,Linc. Visit.I, pp. 50, 51; in 1432,ib.I, p. 53; in 1442-3,ib.II, p. 89; and in 1531,Archaeologia,XLVII, p. 51. For an admonition to a nun by name see “Moneatis insuper dominam Johannam de Wakefelde commonialem quod illam cameram quam modo inhabitat contra debitam honestatem religionis predicte solitarie commorando omnino dimittat et sequatur conventum assidue tam in choro, claustro, refectorio et dormitorio quam in ceteris locis et temporibus opportunis, prout religionis convenit honestati” (Kirklees 1315),Yorks. Arch. Journ.XVI, p. 359.