Where the Middle Ages Begin
To a modern reader the constraints of enclosure which were so strictly enforced in medieval monasteries may seem extreme. One could argue that some oblates found
themselves subjected to a position they never desired, hence acted out against the rules of celibacy and enclosure
Using the life of St. Mary of Egypt, this paper will consider three different Middle High German versions produced by reform communities and will analyze how the reform ideologies and goals manifest in the texts.
Pilgrimage, after Whitby, and before Vatican II, was a secular activity, a performance of piety by the laity, not by the clergy; although there were a few exceptions.7 Chaucer’s Monk, Friar, Prioress, Nun, Priest, Summoner, Pardoner and Parson ought not to be here. Their presence is outrageous comedy. Inns were forbidden to the cloistered clergy who, if they had to travel, were enjoined to stay in other monastic establishments along their route.
This article reconsiders the story of Katherine Norfolk and her troublesome relations in light of these documents, which I found as a part of my wider research on women, conflict and power in late medieval Yorkshire.
The methodological questions at stake are much more important and interesting. To quote the initial words of P. von Moos’ monumental article, these documents represent a real challenge for medievalism.
In the cloistered halls of medieval nunneries, something strange was happening to women’s bodies. In late 14th-century Europe, reports abounded of religious women who could sustain themselves for years on nothing but the Eucharist – no other food passed their lips.
What makes the nuns from the convent of Wienhausen such an outstanding and interesting example of taking control over their own lives results from their religious, political, social, and individual life in relation to the secular world outside the convent.
Monks and nuns living together: not a cause for scandal but, as Barbara Mitchell explains, an intriguing window onto the variety of monastic life – under the aegis of remarkable abbesses – before the Conquest.
Blood and body : women’s religious practices in late medieval Europe Tudesko, Jenny L. Thesis: M.A., History, California State University, Sacramento (2009) Abstract Religious women in thirteenth and fourteenth-century Western Europe developed forms of pious practice that were unique in their extreme devotions to the blood and body of Christ and unique in their use […]
Defending the Double Monastery: Gender and Society in Early Medieval Europe By Thomas Cramer PhD Dissertation, University of Washington, 2011 Abstract: This is a study of the relationship between the institution of the double monastery and Aldhelm of Malmesbury’s treatise De Virginitate (“On Virginity”). Double monasteries, institutions with monks and nuns ruled by an abbess, were […]
Who was Lady Constance of Angers? Nuns as poets and correpondents at the monastery of Ronceray d’Angers in the early twelfth century By Belle Tuten Medieval Perspectives, Vol. 19 (2004) Introduction: Cloistered monastics wrote to one another a good deal in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The epistolary medium provided ways of forging new relationships, […]
Breaking Through the Stained Glass Barrier: The Voices of Etheldreda, Catherine of Alexandria, and Margaret of Antioch Delsigne, Jill Scripps College (2004) Abstract Saint Etheldreda, Saint Catherine of Alexandria, and Saint Margaret of Antioch seem frozen and silenced in their stained glass images; however, the stories of strong women, whether fantastical or real, spoke to […]
Hrotsvit of Gandersheim, a poetess and playwright during the tenth century, created a body of work that both reflected and instructed people in her society.
Excavation of an early church and a women’s cemetery at St Ronan’s medieval parish church, Iona O’Sullivan, Jerry et al. Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, Vol.124 (1994) Abstract St Ronan’s was the medieval parish church of lona. Excavation within the church recorded remains of an earlier building and graves of various dates, […]
Cistercian Nuns in Medieval England: the Gendering of Geographic Marginalization Freeman, Elizabeth Medieval Feminist Forum, 43, no. 2 (2007) Abstract Medieval monasticism was inherently, unavoidably, and inextricably bound up with practicalities and concepts of space. A monastery needed a grant of land in order to exist in the first place. The very word “locus” often […]
The Persistence of Late Antiquity: Christ as Man and Woman in an Eighth-Century Miniature Lifshitz, Felice Medieval Feminist Forum, 38, no. 1 (2004) Abstract This brief essay. originally delivered as part of an SMFS panel at Kalamazoo, forms part ofa larger project to reconstruct the intellectual culture of the eighth-century Main Valley, with a particular focus […]
Gender, religion and society : a study of women and convent life in coptic orthodox Egypt Jeppson, Karolina M.A. Cultural Anthropology Thesis,Uppsala University, May (2003) Abstract This study deals with the interrelations between gender, religion and society in the context of contemporary Coptic Orthodox Egypt, with a focus on Coptic nuns and convent life. In the […]
From Social Death to Spiritual Rebirth: The Beginnings of Monastic Life for Christian Women between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (4th-6th Centuries) By Andra Jugănaru Cogito, Vol.3 No.2 (2011) Abstract: The aim of this paper is to highlight the way that female monasticism was perceived in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. […]
A Gregorian manuscript in the Ian Potter Museum of Art Martyn, John R.C. University of Melbourne Collections, Issue 6, June (2010) Abstract In about 1000 a very interesting illuminated manuscript that probably held copies of all of the letters of Pope Gregory the Great was created. Five centuries later, 41 of these letters, from books two, […]
Recent research on medieval nuns shows that many of them were dressing in the latest fashions instead of simple religious habits. And while their were efforts by the church to make nuns dress more humbly, by the 14th and 15th centuries these rules were becoming less and less adhered to. The article, “Best Clothes and […]
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