CHAPTER XII.

THE DISSOLUTION.

‘In church, chapell and priory

Abby, hospitall and nunry,

Sparing nother man nor woman,

Coopes, albes, holy ornamentes,

Crosses, chalecys, sensurs and rentes,

Convertyng all to usys prophane.’

_The Blaspheming English Lutherans_, verse 33.

‘The Abbaies went doune because of there pride,

And made the more covetus riche for a tyme,

There leivenges dispercid one everi syde,

Where wonce was somme praier, now placis for swyne.’

Quoted by Furnival from Douce MS. 365, l. 95.

§ 1. The Dissolution in England.

The movement of the 16th century commonly spoken of as the Reformation was

the forcible manifestation of a revolution in thought which had long been

preparing. This period may fitly be likened to a watershed between the

socialistic tendencies of the Middle Ages and the individualistic

tendencies which have mainly prevailed since. It forms the height which

limits average modern conceptions, but which can be made the standpoint

from which a more comprehensive view of things past and present becomes

possible. Like other great epochs in history it is characterised by a

sense of assurance, aspiration, and optimism,--and by wasted possibilities

which give its study an ever renewed interest. The political, social, and

intellectual changes which accompanied the Reformation are especially

interesting nowadays when the standards which were then formulated are

felt to be no longer final. The progressive thought of to-day, heretical

though the assertion may sound to some, has become markedly insensible to

the tenets which the reformers of the 16th century propounded and in which

Protestantism found its strength and its safeguard. While paying due

deference to the courage of the men who heralded what was advance if

measured by such needs as they realised, the thinker of to-day dwells not

so much on the factors of civilisation which those men turned to account

as on those which they disregarded;--he is attracted by Erasmus, not by

Luther, and looks more to him who worked in the interest of reform than to

him who worked in the interest of the Reformation.

Among the important social changes effected by the Reformation the

dissolution of the monasteries forms a small but a significant feature, a

feature pregnant with meaning if considered in the light of the changing

standards of family and sex morality. For those who attacked the Church of

Rome in her fundamentals, while differing in points of doctrine, were at

one in the belief that the state of morality needed amendment, and that

marriage supplied the means of effecting the desired change. In open

antagonism to principles which formed the groundwork of monasticism, they

declared celibacy odious and the vow of chastity contradictory to

scriptural teaching and in itself foolish and presumptuous.

The language in which Luther, Bullinger and Becon inculcated these

principles is often offensive to modern ears. Their views are wanting in

good taste, but consistency cannot be denied them. For these men were

logical in condemning the unmarried state at every point, attacking it

equally in the priest, the monk, the nun and the professed wanton. The

changed attitude towards loose women has repeatedly been referred to in

the course of this work, and it has been pointed out how such women, at

one time not without power, had been steadily sinking in general

estimation. Society, bent on having a clear line drawn between them and

other women, had interfered with them in many ways, and had succeeded in

stamping them as a class, to its own profit and to their disadvantage. But

even at the close of the Middle Ages these women retained certain rights,

such as that of having free quarters in the town, which the advocates of

the new faith openly attacked and summarily swept away. Zealous if

somewhat brutal in the cause of an improved morality, they maintained that

marriage was the most acceptable state before God and that a woman had no

claim to consideration except in her capacity as wife and mother.

The calling of the nun was doomed to fall a sacrifice to this teaching.

Her vocation was in antagonism to the doctrines of the party of progress,

and where not directly attacked was regarded with a scarcely less fatal

indifference. It has been shown that great efforts were made before the

Reformation to reform life in nunneries, but various obstacles, and among

them a growing indifference to the intellectual training and interests of

women, were in the way of their permanent improvement. The nun was chiefly

estimated by her devotional pursuits, and when the rupture came with Rome

and these devotional pursuits were declared meaningless, individuals who

were driven from their homes might be pitied, and voices here and there

might be raised deploring the loss of the possibilities secured by the

convent, but no active efforts were made to preserve the system, nothing

was attempted to save an institution, the _raison d’être_ of which had

vanished.

Previous to the Reformation the efforts of churchmen on the Continent to

reform convent life had led in several instances to the disbanding of a

convent. In England like results ensued from the conduct of churchmen, who

in their efforts to regenerate society by raising the tone of religion,

rank with the older humanists abroad. These men had no intention of

interfering with the institution of monasticism as such, but were bent on

removing certain abuses. Among them were John Alcock, bishop of Ely,

Fisher, bishop of Rochester, and Cardinal Wolsey; they appropriated a

number of decayed convents on the plea of promoting religious education,

and their action may be said to have paved the way towards a general

dissolution.

Among the monasteries dissolved by them were several belonging to nuns,

and the fact is noteworthy that wherever the property of women was

appropriated, it was appropriated to the use of men. Considering that the

revenues of these houses had been granted for women and had been

administered by women for centuries, this fact appears somewhat

regrettable from the woman’s point of view. But no blame attaches on this

account to the men, for their attitude was in keeping with progressive

thought generally and was shared by women themselves. Thus Margaret

Beaufort († 1509) the mother of Henry VII, whose college foundations have

given her lasting fame, seems never to have been struck by the thought

that advantages might accrue from promoting education among women also.

She founded Christ’s College at Cambridge, planned the foundation there of

St John’s, and instituted divinity professorships both at Oxford and at

Cambridge. But her efforts, in which she was supported by Fisher, bishop

of Rochester, were entirely devoted to securing an improved education for

the clergy.

The nunnery of St Radegund’s at Cambridge was among the first

establishments appropriated in the interest of the higher religious

education of men on the plea of decay and deterioration. It had supported

a convent of twelve nuns as late as 1460, but in 1496 it was dissolved.

The change was effected by John Alcock, bishop of Ely († 1500), a man of

liberal spirit who ranks high among contemporary ecclesiastics. The king’s

licence[1047] for the dissolution of the house contains words to the

effect that it had fallen into decay owing to neglect, improvidence, and

the dissolute dispositions of the prioress and convent, which were

referable to the close proximity of Cambridge. The house had only two

inmates, of whom one had been professed elsewhere and the other was a

girl. The bishop asked leave to declare the house dissolved in order to

appropriate its possessions and revenues to the foundation of a college of

one master (magister), six fellows (socii) and a certain number of

students (scolares). These numbers show that the property of the house was

not inconsiderable. The sanction of Pope Alexander III having been

obtained[1048], the nunnery of St Radegund was transformed into Jesus

College, Cambridge[1049].

This instance paved the way for others. The suppression of the smaller

monasteries for the purpose of founding and endowing seats of learning on

a large scale was advocated by Cardinal Wolsey soon after his accession to

power. He was advanced to the chancellorship in 1513 and was nominated

cardinal by the Pope in 1515, and among the first houses which he

dissolved were the two nunneries of Bromhall in Berkshire and Lillechurch

in Kent.

In a letter about Bromhall addressed to the bishop of Salisbury[1050]

Wolsey directs him to ‘proceed against enormities, misgovernance and

slanderous living, long time heretofore had, used, and continued by the

prioress and nuns.’ The nuns were to be removed ‘to other places of that

religion, where you best and most conveniently bestow them, especially

where they may be brought and induced unto better and more religious

living.’ Henry VIII asked in a letter to the bishop that the deeds and

evidences of the convent ‘by reason of the vacation of the said place’

might be delivered to his messenger[1051]. It is not clear whether the

inmates returned to the world or were transferred to other nunneries. In

1522 it was found that the prioress Joan Rawlins had resigned, her only

two nuns had abandoned the house, and it was granted to St John’s College,

Cambridge, by the interest and procurement of Fisher, bishop of

Rochester[1052].

Full information is preserved about the charges brought against the nuns

at Lillechurch. From records at Cambridge we learn on what pleas

proceedings were taken. The house formerly contained sixteen nuns, but for

some years past there had been only three or four. It stood in a public

place, that is on the road to Rochester, and was frequented by clerics,

and the nuns were notorious for neglect of their duties and incontinence.

Moreover the foundations at Cambridge made by Margaret Beaufort needed

subsidizing, and public feeling was against the house. Depositions were

taken in writing from which we see that the prioress was dead, and that

one of the three inmates had yielded to temptation some eight or nine

years before. In answer to the question: ‘Alas, madam, how happened this

with you?’--she replied: ‘And I had been happy I might have caused this

thing to have been unknown and hidden.’--Together with her two companions

she agreed to sign the form of surrender (dated 1521), which was worded as

follows. ‘Not compelled by fear or dread, nor circumvented by guile or

deceit, out of my own free will, for certain just and lawful reasons (I)

do resign and renounce all my right, title, interest and possession that I

have had and now have in the aforesaid monastery.’ We do not know what

became of these women. Their house was given over to Bishop Fisher, and

by letters patent it also passed to St John’s College, Cambridge[1053].

Regarding the charges of immorality brought against the inmates of

convents in this and in other instances, it has been repeatedly pointed

out by students that such accusations should be received with a

reservation, for the occurrence may have taken place before the nun’s

admission to the house. The conventionalities of the time were curiously

loose in some respects; the court of Henry VIII could boast of scant

respect even for the conjugal tie, and a woman of the upper classes who

disgraced herself naturally took refuge in a convent, where she could hope

in some measure to redeem her character. The fact that Anne Boleyn, who

was averse to the whole monastic system, at one time thought of retiring

into a nunnery, is quoted as a case in point[1054].

The readiness of Wolsey to dissolve decayed convents and to appropriate

their property grew apace with his increase of power. In no case is it

recorded that he was deterred by opposition. In 1524 he appropriated St

Frideswith’s, a house of Austin canons at Oxford, and made it the nucleus

of his great college[1055]. His legatine powers being further extended by

a bull of the same year and the royal consent being obtained[1056], twenty

small convents were dissolved by him during the next few years[1057].

Among them we note two nunneries, Wykes in Essex, and Littlemore in

Oxfordshire[1058]. But little is known of the number and character of

their inmates at the time. Two further bulls[1059] were obtained by Wolsey

from Pope Clement (1523-34) for diminishing the number of monasteries and

suppressing houses of less than twelve inmates. Gasquet, to whom we are

indebted for a detailed account of the dissolution, shows that Clement,

who was hard pressed by the Lutheran agitation at the time, only

reluctantly yielded to Wolsey’s request[1060].

Wolsey’s proceedings in the matter, however, roused considerable local

dissatisfaction and brought censure on him from the king. ‘They say not

that all that is ill gotten is bestowed on the colleges,’ Henry wrote to

him on the eve of his fall, ‘but that the college is the cloak for

covering mischiefs.’ The king’s ire was further roused by the cardinal’s

accepting the appointment of Isabel Jordan as abbess of Wilton, a house

which was under royal patronage, and where the acceptance of the abbess

belonged to the king. Anne Boleyn was in the ascendant in Henry’s favour

at the time, and wanted the post for someone else. But on enquiry at

Wilton the unsuitability of this person became apparent. ‘As touching the

matter of Wilton,’ Henry wrote to Anne, ‘my lord cardinal has had the nuns

before him and examined them, Master Bell being present, who has certified

to me that for a truth she has confessed herself (which we would have

abbess) to have had two children by sundry priests, and further since has

been kept by a servant of Lord Broke that was, and not long ago; wherefore

I would not for all the world clog your conscience nor mine to make her

ruler of a house who is of such ungodly demeanour, nor I trust, you would

not that neither for brother nor sister I should so stain mine honour and

conscience[1061].’ It is evident from this letter that whatever the

character of the women received into the house might be, the antecedents

of the lady superior were no matter of indifference. In this case the

king’s objection to one person and the unsuitability of the other led to

the appointment of a third[1062].

From the year 1527 all other questions were swallowed up by the momentous

question of the king’s divorce. Wolsey, who refused to comply with his

wishes, went into retirement in 1529 and died in the following year. The

management of affairs then passed into the hands of those who in this

country represented the ruthless and reckless spirit of rebellion which

had broken loose abroad. However several years passed before the attempt

to appropriate the revenues of monasteries was resumed.

In the intervening period of increasing social and political unrest we

note the publication, some time before 1529, of the ‘Supplication for

beggars,’ with which London was flooded[1063]. It was an attack on the

existing religious and monastic orders by the pamphleteer Simon Fish († c.

1530). Based on the grossest misrepresentations this supplication, in a

humorous style admirably suited to catch popular attention, set forth the

poverty of the people, the immorality of those who were vowed to religion,

and the lewdness of unattached women, and declared that if church and

monastic property were put to a better use these evils would be remedied.

The king, who was on the eve of a rupture with Rome, lent a willing ear to

this ‘supplication,’ and it so fell in with the general belief in coming

changes that the refutation of its falsehoods and the severe criticism of

Luther written in reply by Thomas More passed for the most part

unheeded[1064].

Another incident which reflects the spirit of the time in its

contrarieties and instability, is the way in which Elizabeth Barton, of

the parish of Aldington, the so-called Maid or Nun of Kent, rose to

celebrity or notoriety. Her foresight of coming events had been received

as genuine by many men of distinction, but her visions concerning the

king’s projected divorce were fiercely resented by the king’s partisans.

Bishop Fisher wept tears of joy over her, Wolsey received her as a

champion of Queen Katherine’s cause, and even Thomas More showed some

interest in her, while Cromwell accused her of rank superstition and

induced Henry to take proceedings against her[1065]. She had been a

servant girl, but at the instigation of the clergy at Canterbury had been

received into St Sepulchre’s nunnery, where she lived for seven years and

was looked upon with special favour by the Carthusian monks of

Charterhouse and Sheen, and the inmates of the monastery of Sion. At the

beginning of 1533 the king was married to Anne, and in the autumn of the

same year Elizabeth Barton was accused of treasonable incitement and made

to do public penance. Later a bill of attainder was brought in against

her, and as Gasquet has shown[1066], she was condemned without a hearing

and executed at Tyburn with several Carthusian monks who were inculpated

with her on the charge of treason. Henry also made an attempt to get rid

of Bishop Fisher and of Sir Thomas More by causing them to be accused of

favouring her ‘conspiracy,’ but the evidence against them was too slight

to admit of criminal proceedings. It was on the charge of declaring that

Henry was not the supreme head of the Church that Fisher suffered death

(June, 1535), and on the yet slighter charge of declining to give an

opinion on the matter, that More was executed a fortnight later[1067].

The parliament of 1533 had passed the act abolishing appeals to the Court

of Rome, and among other rights had transferred that of monastic

visitation from the Pope to the king. In the following year a further

division was made,--the king claimed to be recognised as the head of the

Church. It was part of Henry’s policy to avoid openly attacking any part

of the old system; gradual changes were brought about which undermined

prerogatives without making a decided break. Cromwell was appointed

vicegerent in ecclesiastical matters, and it was on the plea of securing

the recognition of the king’s supremacy that he deputed a number of

visitors or agents to conduct monastic visitations on a large scale, and

to secure all possible information about religious houses. His plan and

the way in which it was carried out struck a mortal blow at the whole

monastic system.

The agents employed by Cromwell were naturally laymen, and the authority

of the diocesan was suspended while they were at work. Great powers were

conferred on them. A list of the instructions they received is in

existence; and we gather from it that monks and nuns were put through

searching interrogatories concerning the property of their house, the

number of its inmates, its founders and privileges, its maintenance of

discipline, and the right conduct of its inmates. The agents then enjoined

severance from the Pope or any other foreign superior, and directed those

who had taken the vow, whether men or women, henceforth to observe strict

seclusion. A daily lesson in scripture was to be read; the celebration of

the hours was to be curtailed; profession made under the age of

twenty-four was declared invalid; and ‘other special injunctions,’ says

the document, might ‘be added by the visitors as the place and nature of

accounts rendered (or comperts) shall require,’ subject to the wisdom and

discretion of Cromwell[1068].

The character of the visitors engaged in this task has been variously

estimated. Among them was Dr Legh († 1545) who is described by a

contemporary as a doctor of low quality. He wrote to Cromwell (July, 1535)

recommending himself and Layton († 1544) for the purpose of

visitation[1069]. Layton had previously acted for Cromwell in conducting

visitations at Sheen and Sion in the affair of Elizabeth Barton. Legh

afterwards complained that he did not act as he himself did in regard to

enforcing injunctions[1070], but Legh, even in the eyes of his companion

John ap Rice, another visitor with whom he had started for the western

countries, was needlessly severe. ‘At Laycock (nunnery),’ wrote ap

Rice[1071], ‘we can find no excesses. Master (Legh) everywhere restrains

the heads, the brethren and sisters from going forth; and no women of what

estate soever are allowed to visit religious men’s houses and vice versa.

I think this is over strict, for as many of these houses stand by

husbandry they must fall to decay if the heads are not allowed to go out.’

We have seen, in connection with matters on the Continent, that the heads

of houses who were landowners felt it impossible to conform to the rule of

always keeping within the precincts. The injunction in this case gave rise

to a number of letters of complaint addressed by the heads of monasteries

to Cromwell[1072]. Cecil Bodman, abbess of Wilton, wrote to him as

follows[1073].

‘Dr Legh the king’s visitor and your deputy, on visiting my house, has

given injunction that not only all my sisters but that I should keep

continually within the precincts. For myself personally I am content; but

as the house is in great debt, and is not likely to improve without good

husbandry, which cannot be exercised so well by any other as by myself, I

beg you will allow me, in company with two or three of the sad (serious)

and discreet sisters of the house, to supervise such things abroad as

shall be for its profit. I do not propose to lodge any night abroad,

except by inevitable necessity I cannot return. I beg also, that whenever

any father, mother, brother, sister, or nigh kinsfolk of my sisters, come

unto them, they may have licence to speak with them in the hall in my

presence. Wilton, 5 Sept.’ (1535).

Another injunction which was felt to be a calamity was the order

declaring that profession made under twenty-four was invalid. ‘No greater

blow could have been struck at the whole theory of religious life,’ says

Gasquet[1074], ‘than the interference with the vows contained in the order

to dismiss those who were under twenty-four years of age or who had been

professed at the age of twenty. The visitors, it is clear, had no scruple

about their power to dispense with the solemn obligations of the monastic

profession. They freely extended it to any who would go, in their idea

that the more they could induce to leave their convents, the better

pleased both the king and Cromwell would be.’

How far inmates of convents availed themselves of the permission to go is

difficult to establish. Margaret Vernon, abbess of Little Marlow in

Buckinghamshire, who was left with only one nun, did not feel unwilling to

give up her house, and wrote to Cromwell as follows[1075].

‘After all due commendations had unto your good mastership, with my most

humble thanks for the great cost made on me and my poor maidens at my last

being with your mastership, furthermore may it please you to understand

that your visitors have been here of late, who have discharged three of my

sisters, the one is dame Catheryn, the other two are the young women who

were last professed, which is not a little to my discomfort; nevertheless

I must be content with the king’s pleasure. But now as touching mine own

part, I most humbly beseech you so special a good master unto me your poor

bedewoman, to give me your best advice and counsel what way shall be best

for me to take, seeing there shall be none left here but myself and this

poor maiden; and if it will please your goodness to take this house into

your own hands either for yourself, or for my own (master) your son, I

would be glad with all my heart to give it into your mastership’s hands,

with that you will command me to do therein. Trusting and nothing doubting

in your goodness, that you will so provide for us that we shall have such

honest living that we shall not be driven by necessity either to beg or to

fall to other inconvenience. And thus I offer myself and all mine unto

your most high and prudent wisdom, as unto him that is my only refuge and

comfort in this world, beseeching God of His goodness to put in you His

Holy Spirit, that you may do all things to His laud and glory. By your own

assured bedewoman M(argaret) V(ernon).’

Some time afterwards she was in London, trying to get an interview with

Cromwell, and eventually she became governess to his son[1076]. The

property of her nunnery, together with that of Ankerwyke in

Buckinghamshire, and several monasteries of men, was granted by Henry in

1537 to the newly founded abbey of Bisham, but at the general dissolution

it fell to the crown[1077].

Another petition touching the matter of dismissing youthful convent

inmates was addressed to Cromwell by Jane G(o)wryng[1078], in which she

begs that four inmates of her house, whose ages are between fifteen and

twenty-five and who are in secular apparel may resume their habits or else

have licence to dwell in the close of the house till they are twenty-four.

Also she wishes to know if two girls of twelve and thirteen, the one deaf

and dumb, the other an idiot, shall depart or not. Again a letter was

addressed to Cromwell, asking that a natural daughter of Cardinal Wolsey

might continue at Shaftesbury till she be old enough to take the

vow[1079].

Modern writers are agreed that the effect of these visitations was

disastrous to authority and discipline within the convent, not so much

through the infringement of privileges as through the feeling of

uncertainty and restlessness which they created. Visitation was dreaded in

itself. With reference to Barking nunnery Sir Thomas Audley wrote to

Cromwell: ‘I am informed that Dr Lee is substituted by you to visit all

the religious houses in the diocese of London. My suit at this time to you

is that it may please you to spare the house at Barking[1080].’

In point of fact the visitations were conducted in a manner which left

those immediately concerned in no doubt as to the ultimate object in view.

In court circles likewise men were aware that the monastic system was

threatened by dangerous and far-reaching changes. While Cromwell’s agents

were on their tours of inspection Chapuys, the French ambassador (Sept.

1535) wrote as follows[1081]: ‘There is a report that the king intends the

religious of all orders to be free to leave their habits and marry. And if

they will stay in their houses they must live in poverty. He intends to

take the rest of the revenue and will do stranger things still.’ And two

months later he wrote that the king meant to exclude the abbots from the

House of Lords for fear of their opposition to his intentions regarding

the spoliation of monasteries[1082].

The one merit Cromwell’s visitors can claim is despatch, for in six

months, between July 1535 and February 1536, the information on the

monasteries was collected throughout the country and laid before

Parliament. Gasquet has shown that the House of Lords was the same which

had been packed for passing the act of divorce, and that the king, bent on

carrying his purpose, bullied the Commons into its acceptance[1083].

The preamble to the bill is couched in strong terms and begins as

follows[1084]: ‘Forasmuch as manifest sins, vicious, carnal, and

abominable living is daily used and committed amongst the little and small

abbeys, priories, and other religious houses of monks, canons and nuns,

where the congregation of such religious persons is under the number of

twelve persons, whereby the governors of such religious houses and their

convent spoil, destroy, consume and utterly waste, as well their churches,

monasteries, priories, principal houses, farms, granges, lands, tenements

and hereditaments, as the ornaments of their churches and their goods and

chattels, to the high displeasure of Almighty God, slander of good

religion, and to the great infamy of the king’s highness and the realm, if

redress should not be had thereof,’ ... and it goes on to say that since

visitations have produced no results, and bad living continues, the Lords

and Commons, after deliberation, have resolved to put the possessions of

these religious houses to a better use, and that the king and his heirs

shall for ever enjoy all houses that are not above the clear annual value

of £200 in like manner as the heads of houses at present enjoy it, but

that the king by ‘his most excellent charity’ is pleased to grant pensions

to those whom he deprives.

Touching the evidence on which action was taken writers of the Elizabethan

era speak of the so-called Black Book, the existence of which has since

been disproved[1085]. Latimer in a sermon preached in 1549 refers to the

‘enormities’ which were brought to the knowledge of the house; we hold a

clue to these in the letters forwarded by Cromwell’s agents when on their

tours of inspection, and in their ‘comperts’ or accounts rendered. The

condensed accounts (comperta compertorum) rendered by Layton and Legh for

the province of York including one hundred and twenty monasteries are

extant, as also two other reports, one on twenty-four houses in Norfolk,

another on ten[1086].

It has been remarked that the evidence collected differs according to the

character of the informers; the reports of Tregonwell for example are by

no means so full of scandal as those of Layton and Legh. Moreover Layton

and Legh gave a specially bad character to houses in the north where, as

we shall see later on, both the people and the gentry were in favour of

their continuance. It should also be noted that the state of the lesser

houses which fell under the act was not uniformly worse than that of the

larger. Many difficulties of course stood in the way of the men who

collected evidence. They were received with suspicion and hatred, which

their proceedings were not likely to dissipate, and they naturally lent a

willing ear to any one who gave information of the character required. It

has been shown that in several instances their reports were directly

contradicted by those made by the leading men in the different counties,

who after the passing of the act were appointed to make a new and exact

survey, so that, considering the evidence forthcoming from both sides, it

seems reasonable to accept that while the mode of life within convents no

longer compared favourably with the mode of life outside them, their

standard had not fallen so low, as to render these institutions uniformly

despicable.

An example of how the visitors were received is afforded by a letter from

Layton to Cromwell, in which he describes how after meeting Legh in the

north they visited Chicksand, a Gilbertine house in Bedfordshire[1087].

The nuns here at first refused to admit him, and when he forced an

entrance the two prioresses would not admit the accusations made against

two of their nuns, ‘nor the parties concerned, nor the nuns, only one old

beldame.’ He tried intimidation and was told by the prioress ‘that they

were bound by their religion never to confess the secret faults done among

them except only to their visitor of religion, and to that they were sworn

every one of them at their first admission.’

A similar esprit de corps was manifested by a house of Gilbertine

canons[1088]. Layton in the same letter gives a bad character to the

nunnery of Harwold, in Bedfordshire, which was inhabited by Austin

canonesses[1089], and the inmates of which had been foolish enough to sign

a Latin document in favour of Lord Mordaunt without knowing what it

contained.

The accusations brought by the visitors can be summarised under two

headings, superstitions and scandalous living. The accounts of

superstitions are full of most interesting particulars for the student of

art and of folklore; the properties which were attached to relics, the

character of the images and paintings which were held in reverence, and

the construction of saint-images, will amply repay study[1090]. The

instances of scandalous living recorded are numerous and affect alike the

inmates of men’s and of women’s houses. Coloured as they may be to suit

the temper of inquisitor and informer, there is no denying that they point

to an advanced state of monastic decay.

It has been estimated that the lesser houses including those of monks and

nuns which fell under the act numbered about three hundred and eighty;

they were to surrender to the crown within a year. Of these the women’s

houses, owing to their comparative poverty, were relatively more numerous

than those of the men. Out of about one hundred and thirty nunneries which

existed at this period only fifteen were exempt through having a yearly

income exceeding £200, but in addition to these over twenty by some means

or other secured a reprieve.

As the act abolishing the lesser houses was based on the assumption of

their corruption, the heads of some of the houses which bore a good

character asked leave on this ground to remain. Among those who wrote to

Cromwell in this sense was Jane Messyndyne, prioress of a convent of about

ten nuns at Legbourne in Leicestershire, who pleaded that no fault had

been found with her house[1091]. ‘And whereas,’ she wrote, ‘we do hear

that a great number of abbeys shall be punished, suppressed and put down

because of their misliving, and that all abbeys and priories under the

value of £200 be at our most noble prince’s pleasure to suppress and put

down, yet if it may please your goodness we trust in God you shall hear no

complaints against us neither in our living nor hospitality keeping.’ But

petitions such as hers apparently passed unheeded, for in the autumn of

the same year (Sept. 1536), the process of dissolution was going on at her

house[1092].

There seems no doubt that in many cases where the lesser houses were

allowed to remain bribery was resorted to, perhaps backed by the

intervention of friends. Payments into the Royal Exchequer were made by a

large proportion of the lesser houses which continued unmolested, and

among them were a number of nunneries which paid sums ranging from £20 to

£400[1093]. Among these was Brusyard in Bedfordshire, a small settlement

of nuns of the order of St Clare, the abbess of which wrote to Cromwell

seeking his intervention[1094]; she ultimately secured a reprieve and paid

the sum of £20[1095]. Alice Fitzherbert, abbess of the nunnery of

Polesworth in Warwickshire, to which an exceptionally good character was

given, bought a reprieve for £50, on the intervention it is said of

friends[1096]. Again the abbess of Delapray, who is characterised as a

very sickly and aged woman, secured a reprieve and paid £266. The agent

Tregonwell had reported well of Godstow[1097]. Its inmates all bore a good

character excepting one who, some thirteen years ago, had broken her vow

while living in another convent, had been transferred to Delapray by the

bishop of Lincoln and had since lived virtuously. Margaret Tewkesbury the

abbess wrote to Cromwell begging him to accept a little fee and to forward

the letter she enclosed to the king[1098]. Her convent was allowed to

remain.

The attempt of the prioress of Catesby to save her house in a similar

manner was fruitless. The house bore an excellent character according to

Tregonwell[1099], and his opinion was confirmed by the commissioners who

came down later (May, 1536) to take an exact survey. ‘We found the house,’

they wrote to Cromwell[1100], ‘in very perfect order, the prioress a wise,

discreet, and religious woman with nine devout nuns under her as good as

we have seen. The house stands where it is a relief to the poor, as we

hear by divers trustworthy reports. If any religious house is to stand,

none is more meet for the king’s charity than Catesby. We have not found

any such elsewhere....’ But the recommendation was insufficient and Joyce

Bykeley, ‘late prioress,’ addressed herself directly to Cromwell.--‘Dr

Gwent informed you last night,’ she wrote[1101], ‘that the queen had moved

the king for me and offered him 2000 marks for the house at Catesby, but

has not yet a perfect answer. I beg you, in my great sorrow, get the king

to grant that the house may stand and get me years of payment for the 2000

marks. You shall have 100 marks of me to buy you a gelding and my prayers

during my life and all my sisters during their lives. I hope you have not

forgotten the report the commissioners sent of me and my sisters....’ But

her letter was of no avail. Somehow she had incurred the king’s

displeasure[1102], and the order to dissolve her convent was not

countermanded.

The sums paid by some nunneries appear enormous compared with their yearly

income. Thus the convent of Pollesloe, with a yearly income of £164, paid

the sum of £400 into the Royal Exchequer; Laycock, with an income of £168,

paid £300, and the nuns of St Mary at Chester, with an income of £66, paid

£160; other sums paid are given by Gasquet[1103].

Among the lesser houses reprieved was St Mary’s, Winchester, one of the

nunneries dating from the Anglo-Saxon period, but which in course of time

had decreased. The report of the commissioners who came down to take stock

of the contents of the settlement provides us with many interesting

particulars[1104]. The number of persons residing in the monastery at the

time was over a hundred. The abbess Elizabeth Shelley presided over a

convent of twenty-six nuns, twenty-two of whom were professed and four

novices. The nuns are designated in this report by the old term

‘mynchyns.’ With the exception of one who desired ‘capacity,’ that is

liberty to return to the world, they all declared their intention of going

into other houses. Five lay sisters also dwelt there, thirteen

women-servants and twenty-six girls, some of whom were the daughters of

knights receiving their education. Of the women-servants one belonged to

the abbess who lived in a house of her own with her gentlewoman; the

prioress, sub-prioress, sexton, and perhaps one other nun, lived in

separate houses and each had her servant. There were also a number of

priests and other men designated as officers of the household. Among them

was a general receiver and his servant, a clerk and his servant, a

gardener (curtyar), a caterer, a bottler (botyler?), a cook, an undercook,

a baker, a convent cook, an under convent cook, a brewer, a miller,

several porters and ‘children of the high altar,’ and two men enjoying

corrodies, that is free quarters and means of subsistence. The yearly

income of this vast establishment was assessed at £179, and the house

therefore came under the act. But the abbess, Elizabeth Shelley, who is

described as a person of spirit and talent, found means to avert the

storm. The sum £333 was paid by her into the Royal Exchequer[1105], and

(in August 1536) letters patent were obtained by which the abbey was

refounded with all its property excepting some valuable manors[1106].

Other convents which at the same time secured a licence to remain[1107]

were the Benedictine convent of Chatteris with Anne Seton[1108] as

prioress; the Austin convent of Gracedieu in Leicestershire; the convent

of the order of St Clare of Dennis; also the nuns of St Andrew’s, Marricks

in Yorkshire under Christabel Cooper, and of St Mary’s, Heyninges, in

Lincolnshire under Joan Sandford[1109]. No payment is recorded in

connection with any of these houses so far as I have been able to

ascertain.

Among the reprieves that of the Austin nuns or White Ladies at Gracedieu

is noteworthy, as the report of Cromwell’s agents (Feb. 1536) had charged

two of its inmates with incontinence, and among other superstitions

countenanced by the convent, mentioned their holding in reverence the

girdle and part of the tunic of St Francis which were supposed to help

women in their confinement[1110]. But the special commissioners a few

months later spoke of the prioress Agnes Litherland and her convent of

fifteen nuns in the highest terms, describing them as of good and virtuous

conversation and living, and saying that all of them desired their house

to remain[1111].

The convent of Dennis, which secured a licence at the same time, was one

of the few settlements of nuns of St Clare, the abbess of which, Elizabeth

Throgmerton, was renowned for her liberal sympathies. In 1528 a wealthy

London merchant was imprisoned for distributing Tyndale’s books and other

practices of the sort, and he pleaded among other reasons for exculpation

that, the abbess of Dennis wishing to borrow Tyndale’s _Enchiridion_, he

had lent it to her and had spent much money on restoring her house[1112].

Legh in a letter to Cromwell[1113] described how on visiting Dennis he was

met by the weeping nuns, who were all ready to return to the world, a

statement in direct contradiction to the fact that the house was not

dissolved.

The work of dissolution began in April 1536 and continued without

interruption throughout the summer. Gasquet holds that the women suffered

more than the men by being turned adrift[1114]. ‘Many things combined to

render the dissolution of conventual establishments and the disbanding of

the religious more terrible to nuns than to monks. A woman compelled to

exchange the secluded life of a cloister with all its aids to piety for an

existence in the world, to which she could never rightly belong, would be

obviously in a more dangerous and undesirable position than a man.’

By a provision of the act those who were professed were to receive

pensions, but the number of inmates of the lesser houses to whom they were

granted was comparatively small[1115]. Moreover pensions were not

apportioned with regard to the needs of subsistence, but to the wealth of

the house, so that even those who received them were in a great measure

thrown on their own resources. The number of professed nuns, as is

apparent from the accounts given of St Mary’s, Winchester, and other

houses, was relatively small compared with the number of servants and

dependents. These in some cases received a small ‘award’ but were thrown

out of employment, while the recipients of alms from the house were

likewise deprived of their means of living, and went to swell the ranks

of those who were dissatisfied with the innovation. While the process of

dissolution was going on (July 1536) Chapuys the French ambassador wrote

as follows[1116]: ‘It is a lamentable thing to see a legion of monks and

nuns who have been chased from their monasteries wandering miserably

hither and thither seeking means to live; and several honest men have told

me that what with monks, nuns, and persons dependent on the monasteries

suppressed, there were over 20,000 who knew not how to live.’ His estimate

may have reference to the ultimate effect of the act[1117]. The immediate

results of the suppression were, however, disastrous throughout the

country, and the dissatisfaction which the suppression caused went far to

rouse the latent discontent of the northern provinces into open rebellion.

It was in Lincolnshire, in October, that the commissioners first met with

opposition. From here a rising spread northwards to Scotland, and under

the name of the ‘Pilgrimage of Grace’ drew votaries from the lay and

religious classes alike. The insurgents claimed among other things that

the innovations in religion should be disowned, and that despoiled

monasteries should be restored. They pursued the visitors Layton and Legh

with unrelenting hatred on account of their extortions; Legh was in danger

of his life and barely escaped their fury[1118]. The rising assumed such

proportions that the king was seriously alarmed; an army was sent to the

north, strenuous efforts were made to win over the powerful northern

barons, and concessions were made and rescinded with much shameful

double-dealing. Beyond the effect it had on religious houses, the story of

the rebellion, on which a new light has recently been thrown by the

publication of letters which passed at the time[1119], does not concern us

here. Wherever the insurgents spread they seized on despoiled monasteries

and reinstated their superiors and inmates; among other houses the nunnery

of Seton in Cumberland was restored for a time[1120]. But in proportion as

the king regained his authority, terrible bloodshed followed; the

representatives of the chief families and the abbots who had joined in the

rising were hanged, burnt, or beheaded, and their property confiscated by

attainder. Cromwell, who was still on the high road to prosperity,

availed himself of the rebellion to institute a general suppression, which

was speedily and summarily carried into effect. In the autumn of 1537, the

fear of systematic revolt being quelled, the suppression began and

extended over the whole of 1538 and 1539. No further evidence was

collected, no act was passed till April 1539, when a provision was made by

which all monasteries which were dissolved or surrendered fell to the

king[1121]. The commissioners came down on each house in succession,

beginning with the less wealthy and influential ones, and used every means

to secure a free surrender. Even then a certain reticence in the

proceedings was observed which went far to blind contemporaries to the

vastness of the ultimate object in view, for every effort was made to keep

up the fiction that Henry was doing no more than correcting abuses and

accepting free surrenders. But the study of documents proves things to

have been otherwise. The promise of a pension was held out on condition of

a voluntary surrender, but where hesitation was shown in accepting, the

effect of threats of deprivation was tried. The visitor Bedyll wrote that

he advised the monks of Charterhouse rather to ‘surrender than abide the

extremity of the king’s law[1122],’ and many of the forms of surrender

which are extant remain unsigned. On others the name of the superior is

the only signature, on others again the names of the superior and the

members of the convent are entered in the same hand. Considering the

helpless position in which religious houses were placed, it seems a matter

for wonder that any opposition was made.

It is interesting to find that as late as (Jan.) 1538, two years after the

passing of the first bill, the heads of houses were asked to believe that

there was no wish for a general suppression[1123], and that a grant of

continuance was made (May 1538) to the nunneries of Kirkless and

Nunappleton in Yorkshire[1124]. In Yorkshire there was a strong feeling in

favour of nunneries,--‘in which our daughters (are) brought up in virtue,’

as Aske, one of the leaders of the rebellion, put it[1125], and owing

doubtless to the opposition made by the rebels, a number of lesser

nunneries in the north which came under the act escaped dissolution.

Among them besides Kirkless and Nunappleton were Swine and Nun-Kelyng;

there is no evidence that they secured a licence at the time. The fact

that Kirkless remained and gained a reprieve in 1538 is the more

noticeable as the commissioners had in the first instance reported

unfavourably on the state of the house[1126].

In February 1538 a courtier wrote to Lord Lisle[1127], ‘the abbeys go down

as fast as they may and are surrendered to the king,’ adding the pious

wish: ‘I pray God send you one among them to your part.’ For the property

of religious houses which were appropriated to the king was now frequently

granted to courtiers, or to those who were quick enough to avail

themselves of their opportunities in the general scramble.

Several of the agents who had previously conducted visitations were among

those who carried on the work of the dissolution. Among them London (†

1543) has been characterised as ‘the most terrible of all the monastic

spoilers’; his letters remain to show in what spirit he stripped the

houses of their property, seized relics and defaced and destroyed

everything he could lay hands on[1128]. There is a letter extant which

Katherine Bulkeley, abbess of Godstow, wrote to Cromwell complaining of

him[1129]. He came down to her house (Nov. 1537), ostensibly to hold a

visitation, but really bent on securing a surrender.

‘... Dr London, which as your lordship does well know was against my

promotion and has ever since borne me great malice and grudge like my

mortal enemy, is suddenly come unto me with a great rout with him and here

does threaten me and my sisters saying that he has the king’s commission

to suppress my house in spite of my teeth. And when he saw that I was

content that he should do all things according to his commission and

showed him plain that I would never surrender to his hand being my ancient

enemy, now he begins to entreat me and to inveigle my sisters one by one

otherwise than I ever heard tell that any of the king’s subjects have been

handled, and here tarries and continues to my great cost and charge, and

will not take my answer that I will not surrender till I know the king’s

gracious commandment and your lordship’s ...’ and more to the same

purpose.

London on the following day wrote to Cromwell[1130] asking that the

‘mynchyns’ or nuns of her house, many of whom were aged and without

friends, should be generously dealt with (in the matter of a pension).

Stories were current[1131] at the time about insults to which the nuns

were exposed by the agents. Although it seems probable that there was no

excessive delicacy used in their treatment, no direct complaints except

those of the abbess of Godstow have been preserved.

The last pages of the history of several of the great abbeys are full of

traits of heroism; one cannot read without sympathy of the way in which

for example the abbot of Glastonbury identified himself with the system to

which he belonged, and perished with it rather than be divided from it.

The staunch faith of the friars no less commands respect. The heads of

women’s houses naturally made less opposition. However Florence Bannerman,

abbess of Amesbury, refused every attempt to bribe or force her into a

surrender. After considerable delay she was deposed in December 1539, and

was succeeded by Joan Darrell who surrendered the house at the king’s

bidding[1132], and accepted the comparatively high pension of £100.

To some of the heads of houses it seemed incredible that the old system

was passing away for ever, and they surrendered in the belief that their

deprivation was only temporary. Elizabeth Shelley, abbess of St Mary’s,

Winchester, who in 1535 had saved her house, accepted the surrender but

continued to dwell at Winchester with a number of her nuns, and when she

died bequeathed a silver chalice which she had saved to the college in the

city on condition that it should be given back to St Mary’s if the convent

were restored[1133]. The fact that she succeeded in carrying away a

chalice appears exceptional, for the inmates of convents who were expelled

seem as a rule to have taken with them nothing except perhaps their books

of devotion.

The story of the dissolution repeats itself in every convent. The

inventory of the house having been taken, the lead was torn from the

roofs, and sold together with the bells; the relics and pictures were

packed in sacks and sent up to London to be burnt.

The plate and jewels of the house, the amount of which was considerable in

the houses of men and in some of women (for example in Barking) were also

forwarded to London to be broken up and melted; in a few instances they

were sold. The house’s property in furniture, utensils and vestments was

sold there and then. The superiors and convent inmates were then turned

away, and the buildings that had so long been held in reverence were

either devoted to some profane use or else left to decay.

The inventory taken at the dissolution of the ancient Benedictine nunnery

of Wherwell in Hampshire has been preserved among others, and shows how

such a house was dealt with[1134]. There is a list of the inmates of the

convent and of the pensions granted to them; the abbess in this case

received a yearly pension of £40, and her nuns’ pensions ranged from £3.

6_s._ 8_d._ to £6. We then get a list of the dwellings of which the

settlement was composed. The houses and buildings ‘assigned to remain’

were as follows: ‘the abbess’ lodging with the houses within the quadrant,

as the water leads from the east side of the cloister to the gate, the

farmery, the mill and millhouse with the slaughter-house adjoining, the

brewing and baking houses with the granaries to the same, the barn and

stables in the outer court.’ The list of dwellings ‘deemed to be

superfluous’ follows. ‘The church, choir, and steeple covered with lead,

the cloister covered with tiles and certain gutters of lead, the chapter

house, the refectory (ffrayter), the dormitory, the convent kitchen and

all the old lodgings between the granary and the hall door covered with

tiles.’ Then follow accounts of the lead and bells remaining, of the

jewels, plate and silver ‘reserved for the king’s use,’ and of the

ornaments, goods and chattels which were sold. We further gather that the

debts of the house were paid and that rewards and wages were given to the

chaplain, officers and servants before they were turned away.

As mentioned above the pensions given differed greatly, and the heads of

wealthy houses were allowed considerable sums. Thus Elizabeth Souche,

abbess of Shaftesbury, the yearly income of which house was taxed at

£1166, received £133 a year and all her nuns to the number of fifty-five

were pensioned. Dorothy Barley, abbess of Barking, a house taxed at £862,

received a yearly pension of £133; while Elizabeth Shelley, abbess of St

Mary’s, Winchester, received only £26 a year. The prioress of St Andrew’s,

Marricks, a small house, received £5 annually, and her nuns a pension of

from twenty to forty shillings each. Gasquet points out that a large

number of those who were pensioned died during the first few years after

the surrender[1135]. Probably many of them were old, but there is extant a

pension roll of the year 1553 (reign of Philip and Mary) from which can be

gathered that a certain number of pensioned monks and nuns were then alive

and continued to draw their pensions. Gasquet further remarks that only a

few of the nuns who were turned away are known to have married[1136];

considering that hardly any are known to have left their convents

voluntarily, and that many of the younger ones were turned away through

the act of 1535, this seems only natural.

Eye-witnesses as well as Cromwell’s agents have left descriptions which

give a striking picture of the brutality of the proceedings[1137]. But the

hardships to which the convent inmates were exposed, the terrible waste of

their property, and the senseless destruction of priceless art treasures,

must not blind us to the fact that the breaking up of the monastic system

was but an incident in one of the most momentous revolutions within

historic record. The dissolution of the monasteries at the time of the

Reformation, to be rightly estimated, must be considered as part of a

wider change which was remoulding society on an altered basis.

It is interesting to compare the view taken of monastic life at the time

of the dissolution with the attitude taken towards convents in the

following period. Some writings, as for example Lindesay in the play of

the _Three Estates_, acted in the North in 1535[1138], severely censure

the inclinations which are fostered in the convent.

But strong as the feeling against convents and their inmates was in some

instances at the time of the Reformation, when the system was once removed

little antagonism remained towards those who had represented it. The

thought of the nun, fifty years after she had passed away in England,

roused no acrimony. Shakspere had no prejudice against her, and Milton was

so far impressed in her favour that he represented ‘Melancholy’ under the

form of a ‘pensive nun, devout and pure,--Sober, steadfast and demure.’ It

was only at a much later period that the agitation raised by the fear of

returning ‘Popery’ caused men to rake up scandals connected with convents

and to make bugbears out of them.

The losses incurred by the destruction of the convents were not however

slow in making themselves felt; but as indifference towards women’s

intellectual interests had made part of the movement, a considerable time

went by before the loss of the educational possibilities which the convent

had secured to women was deplored. ‘In the convents,’ says Gasquet[1139],

‘the female portion of the population found their only teachers, the rich

as well as the poor, and the destruction of these religious houses by

Henry was the absolute extinction of any systematic education for women

during a long period.’ While devotion to domestic duties, exclusive of all

other interests, continued to be claimed from women, the loss of their

schools was a matter of indifference to society in general. But in

proportion as shortcomings in women were felt, the thought arose that

these might be due to want of training. The words in which the divine,

Fuller († 1661), expressed such thoughts in the 17th century are well

worth recalling. The vow of celibacy in his eyes remained a thing of evil,

but short of this the convents had not been wholly bad.

‘They were good she schools wherein the girls and maids of the

neighbourhood were taught to read and work; and sometimes a little Latin

was taught them therein. Yea, give me leave to say, if such feminine

foundations had still continued, provided no vow were obtruded upon them,

(virginity is least kept where it is most constrained,) haply the weaker

sex, besides the avoiding modern inconveniences, might be heightened to a

higher perfection than hitherto hath been attained[1140].’

§ 2. The Memoir of Charitas Pirckheimer.

A memoir is extant from the pen of the abbess of a convent at Nürnberg. It

was written (1524-28) during the stormy period following upon the outbreak

of the Lutheran agitation, and it helps us to realize the effect which the

rupture with Rome had on a convent of nuns. Charitas Pirckheimer, the

author of this memoir, was the sister of Wilibald Pirckheimer († 1530), a

well-known humanist, and through him she was in touch with some of the

leading representatives of learning and art of her day. She was well

advanced in life and had many years of active influence behind her when

the troubles began of which she has left a graphic description.

An examination of the contents of her memoir must stand as a specimen of

the effects which the Reformation had on women’s convent life on the

Continent, effects which varied in almost every town and every province.

For the breaking up of the monastic system abroad had none of the

continuity and completeness it had in England. The absence of centralised

temporal and spiritual authority left the separate townships and

principalities free to accept or reject the change of faith as they chose.

The towns were ruled by councils on which the decision in the first place

depended, and in the principalities the change depended on the attitude of

prince and magnate, so that the succession of the prince of a different

faith, or the conquest of one province by another, repeatedly led to a

change of religion. In some districts the first stormy outbreak was

followed by a reaction in favour of Rome, and convents which had disbanded

were restored on a narrowed basis; in others the monastic system which had

received a severe shock continued prostrate for many years. But even in

those districts where the change of faith was permanently accepted, its

influence on conventual establishments was so varied that an account of

the way in which it put an end to nunneries lies beyond the scope of this

work. It must suffice to point out that some convents, chiefly unreformed

ones, disbanded or surrendered under the general feeling of restlessness;

and that others were attacked and destroyed during the atrocities of the

Peasants’ War. The heads of others again, with a clearsightedness one

cannot but admire, rejected Romish usages and beliefs in favour of the

Lutheran faith, and their houses have continued to this day as homes for

unmarried women of the aristocracy. Others were suffered to remain under

the condition that no new members should be admitted, but that the old

ones should be left in possession of their house till they died. To this

latter class belonged the convent of St Clara at Nürnberg which we are

about to discuss.

The convent dated its existence from the year 1279, in which several nuns

from Söflingen, near Ulm, joined a number of religious women who were

living together at Nürnberg, and prevailed upon them to adopt the rule of

St Clara and place themselves under the guardianship of the Franciscan

friars who had settled in Nürnberg in 1226[1141]. It has been mentioned

above that the nuns of this order, usually designated as Poor Clares, did

not themselves manage that property of theirs which lay outside the

precincts; they observed strict seclusion and were chiefly absorbed by

devotional pursuits. Under the influence of the movement of monastic

reform described in a previous chapter, Clara Gundelfingen (1450-1460),

abbess of the house at Nürnberg, had greatly improved its discipline, and

nuns were despatched from thence to convents at Brixen, Bamberg and other

places to effect similar changes. There was another convent of nuns at

Nürnberg dedicated to St Katherine which was under the supervision of the

Dominican friars, but the convent of St Clara was the more important one

and seems to have been largely recruited from members of wealthy burgher

families. In 1476 it secured a bull from the Pope by which its use was

altogether reserved to women who were born in Nürnberg.

Charitas Pirckheimer came to live in the house (1478) at the age of

twelve. She was one of a family of seven sisters and one brother; all the

sisters entered convents, excepting one who married, and they were in time

joined by three of the five daughters of their brother[1142]. These facts

show that the women of most cultivated and influential families still felt

convent life congenial. The Dominican writer Nider († 1438), speaking of

convent life in the districts about Nürnberg, remarks that he had nowhere

else found so many virtuous, chaste and industrious virgins[1143]. Of the

members of the Pirckheimer family who became nuns, Clara († 1533) joined

her sister Charitas and acted as secretary to her for many years; her

letters show her to have been of a lively and sanguine disposition[1144].

Walpurg, another sister, lived as a nun in the convent of St Clara at

Münich; Katharina became prioress at Geisenfeld, and Sabina and Euphemia

entered the ancient Benedictine settlement of Bergen near Neuburg, of

which they successively became abbesses. Sabina (1521-29), like her sister

Charitas, was a great admirer of Albrecht Dürer, whom she consulted on the

subject of illuminations done at her house[1145]. A number of her letters

remain to show that she held opinions of her own on some points of

doctrine and watched the progress of affairs at Nürnberg with

interest[1146]. Her sister Euphemia (1529-47), who succeeded her,

experienced even greater hardships than Charitas, for when Palgrave, Otto

Heinrich of Neuburg, accepted the Protestant faith (1544), she and her

nuns were expelled from their convent, and spent several years staying

first at one place then at another, till the victory which the emperor

Karl V won at Mühlberg (1547) made it possible for them to return to

Bergen.

Charitas on entering the house at Nürnberg found herself among the

daughters of family friends and relations. She contracted a lasting

friendship with Apollonia Tucher, who was afterwards elected to the office

of prioress, which she held for many years. Apollonia was nearly related

to Anton Tucher († 1524), one of the wealthiest and most influential men

of the town, and to Sixtus Tucher († 1507), a learned divine who was made

provost of the church of St Lorenz, and in this capacity instructed the

nuns of St Clara and provided them with religious literature. Scheurl (†

1542), a nephew of Apollonia and a distinguished jurist, who came to

settle at Nürnberg, greatly admired Charitas. We shall return to him later

on.

Felicitas Grundherrin, another nun, who was made portress in 1503, wrote

letters to her father which throw an additional light on the conduct and

the experiences of the nuns during the period of religious contention.

There were sixty inmates at that time, and among them we find the chief

families of the town represented.

We are not informed at what age Charitas made profession. In 1494 she was

joined by her sister Clara, and a few years later, when we first hear of

her and her sister in connection with their brother, she was engaged in

teaching the novices.

The career of Wilibald Pirckheimer, a man of considerable literary

ability, is interesting, as it forms the centre of the intellectual and

artistic life of Nürnberg, which at that time was achieving some of its

greatest triumphs. The friend of Albrecht Dürer and of the leading

humanists, he was himself full of enthusiasm for the revived interest in

classic culture, and filled with that liberal appreciation of merit

regardless of origin and nationality which is one of the attractive traits

of the movement. In compliance with the taste of his age he had studied in

Italy, and shortly after his return to Nürnberg, on the occasion of their

father’s death (1501), he lent his sisters, Charitas and Clara, a copy of

the hymns of the Christian poet Prudentius, and an unnamed portion of

Jerome’s works, for their comfort and perusal; Charitas thanked him for

the loan in a Latin letter in which we get our first glimpse of her[1147].

She says that she has been interested to find among the hymns some which

are habitually sung in the choir and the authorship of which was unknown

to her, and she begs she may keep Jerome’s writings for some time longer,

as they afford her so much delight. She refers to the frequent loans of

books from her brother and assures him how much she depends on him for her

education, begging him to visit and further instruct her. She has some

knowledge of scripture, she says, but barely enough to instruct the

novices.

In the year 1487 Celtes († 1508), a celebrated Latin scholar and poet, was

crowned poet laureate by the Emperor Friedrich III at Nürnberg, and

received at his hands the doctor’s degree and a laurel wreath. Afterwards

he travelled about in Germany, rousing interest in the revival of

classical studies wherever he went, and encouraging those who were

interested in learning to band together in societies (sodalitates) for the

purpose of editing and publishing the classics. During a stay at a

monastery in Regensburg (1501) he had come across the forgotten dramas of

the nun Hrotsvith. They seemed to him so worthy of attention that he had

them published at Nürnberg in a beautiful illustrated edition. We do not

know if he was previously acquainted with Charitas; but he sent her a

copy of the dramas, and she wrote a grateful reply[1148]. She begins by

deploring the news she has heard that Celtes has been attacked and

plundered by robbers. ‘A few days ago,’ she writes, ‘I received the

interesting writings of the learned virgin Hrotsvith, sent to me by you

for no merits of my own, for which I express and owe you eternal

gratitude. I rejoice that He who bestows powers of mind (largitor ingenii)

and grants wisdom to men who are great and learned in the law, should not

have denied to the frail and humbler sex some of the crumbs from the

tables of wisdom. In this learned virgin the words of the apostle are

verified that God chooses the humble to confound the strong....’

Celtes was charmed by this letter, and was inspired to compose a Latin

ode[1149] in praise of Charitas. In it he addressed her as the crown and

star of womanhood, praised her for her knowledge of Latin, in which she

worthily followed in the steps of a learned father and a learned brother,

and enlarged on the pleasure her letter had brought. With the ode he sent

a copy of a work on the city of Nürnberg lately published by him, and

Charitas in reply sent a long letter which is most instructive in regard

to the light it throws on her general attitude towards humanist

culture[1150]. While delighted by the gifts and the attentions of so

distinguished a man as Celtes, she felt critical towards the heathen

element in him, which seemed to her incompatible with the claims of a

higher morality. The letter is too long to reproduce in full, but the

following are some of its most noteworthy passages. ‘I am your unworthy

pupil, but a great admirer of yours and a well-wisher for your salvation,

and as such I would earnestly and with all my heart entreat you not indeed

to give up the pursuit of worldly wisdom, but to put it to higher uses,

that is to pass from heathen writings to holy scripture, from what is

earthly to what is divine, from the created to the Creator.... Indeed

neither knowledge nor any subject of investigation which is from God is to

be contemned, but mystic theology and a good virtuous life must be ranked

highest. For human understanding is weak and may fail us, but true faith

and a good conscience never can. I therefore put before you, most learned

doctor, when you have enquired into all under the sun, that the wisest of

men said, Vanity of vanities.... In the same friendly spirit I would beg

you to give up celebrating the unseemly tales of Jupiter, Venus, Diana,

and other heathen beings whose souls are burning in Gehenna and who are

condemned by right-minded men as detestable and deserving of oblivion;

make the saints of God your friends by honouring their names and their

memory, that they may guide you to the eternal home when you leave this

earth.’

At the end of her letter she begged to be excused writing in this strain

in words which suggest that her brother had urged her to speak out her

mind, and a further letter of hers addressed to Wilibald says that she is

forwarding to him a copy of her letter to Celtes[1151]. She begs he will

not bring him to the grating without sending her word previously, and

expresses the belief that Celtes will not take umbrage.

We hear no more of their intercourse. Celtes soon afterwards left

Nürnberg, and when Helena Meichnerin, abbess of the convent, resigned on

account of some complaints of the town council, Charitas was chosen abbess

(1503). Her acceptance of the post was made conditional by the Franciscan

friars on her giving up her Latin correspondence[1152], and there can be

no doubt that this prohibition was primarily aimed at her intercourse with

men like Celtes, who was known to be very lax in his morality, and whose

sympathies in regard to learning were in direct opposition to the narrow

religious views of the friars. Charitas conformed, but Wilibald’s anger

was roused, and he wrote to Celtes: ‘You know that my sister Charitas has

been chosen abbess. Imagine, those soft-footed men (χυλόποδες) have

forbidden her to write Latin for the future. Observe their caution, not to

say roguery[1153].’

Charitas apparently wrote no more Latin letters, but her brother’s friends

continued to take an interest in her. Wilibald had a sincere regard for

her abilities and frequently wrote of her to his friends. Other members of

the humanist circle sought her out. Scheurl, the young jurist mentioned

above, sent her from Bologna a copy of his ‘Uses of the mass’ (Utilitates

missae) with a flattering letter which was presented to her by the provost

Tucher (1506)[1154]. It is overflowing with youthful enthusiasm, and says

that of all the women he has met there are only two who are distinguished

by abilities and intellect, knowledge and wealth, virtue and beauty, and

are comparable to the daughters of Laelius and Hortensius and to Cornelia,

mother of the Gracchi; the one is Cassandra (Fedele, poetess[1155]) in

Venice, the other is Charitas in Nürnberg. He expatiates on the merits of

the Pirckheimer family generally, and says Charitas is following the

example of her relatives in preferring a book to wool, a pen to the

distaff, a stilus to a needle. At a later stage of his career (1515)

Scheurl wrote that it was usual for men who were distinguished in mind and

power to admire and respect the abilities, learning and moral excellence

of this abbess[1156].

In 1513 Wilibald published an edition of Plutarch’s essay ‘On retribution’

which he had translated from Greek into Latin, and dedicated it to his

sister Charitas in a long and flattering epistle[1157]. Mindful no doubt

of the influences about her and referring to difficulties in his own

career, he spoke in the highest terms of the Stoic philosophers and of the

help their writings afforded. ‘Accept this gift on paper which, if I judge

rightly, will not be displeasing to you,’ he says, ‘and carefully peruse

the writings of this pagan author (gentilis). And you will soon see that

the philosophers of antiquity did not stray far from the truth.’ Charitas

was able to appreciate this point of view and admitted in her reply that

he had sent her a jewel more precious than gold and silver[1158]. Speaking

of Plutarch she confessed that ‘he writes not like an unbelieving heathen

but like a learned divine and imitator of Christian perfection. It is a

wonderful circumstance which has filled me with joy and surprise.’ But she

thought her brother’s praise of her excessive. ‘I am not learned myself,

only the friend of those who are learned; I am no writer, I only enjoy

reading the writings of others; I am unworthy of so precious a gift,

though in truth you have done well and wisely in placing the word Charitas

at the head of your work. For Charity is the virtue which makes all good

things to be shared, and that Charity which is the Divine Spirit itself

will reward you here and in the life to come, where honest efforts will be

fully requited.’

A short time afterwards Pirckheimer dedicated to his sister Clara, who was

now teaching the novices, a ‘Collection of the Moral Sentences of Nilus.’

It was a translation from Greek and Latin, and the title was ornamented

with a design by Dürer[1159]. He sent it ‘to prevent her feeling any

jealousy of her sister.’ Clara shared her sister’s tastes and was herself

an ardent reader. When the New Testament edited by Erasmus appeared,

Pirckheimer wrote to him that his sisters, who zealously read his

writings, took great delight in this book also, and he says that they had

greater insight into it than many men who were proud of their learning.

They would have written themselves, he adds, if they had not felt shy of

so great a man. Erasmus on one occasion compared the daughters of Sir

Thomas More to the sisters of Wilibald Pirckheimer. Some writings of the

humanist Reuchlin were also perused by them[1160].

Wilibald further dedicated to Charitas his edition of the works of

Fulgentius (1519), in a long preface in which he describes the difficulty

he had had in procuring the manuscript from the library of his friend

Tritheim, how he had despaired of deciphering it till the learned

Cochlaeus came to his rescue, and how sure he felt that his sister would

look upon the book as a treasure[1161]. The translation of the sermons of

Gregorius Nazianzenus, an important undertaking, he also accomplished

mainly for the use of his sisters[1162].

Besides their devotional and intellectual interests, the nuns at St Clara

made their own clothes, and seem to have had some ability in sewing, for

when the imperial robes which were kept at Nürnberg were to be carried to

Aachen for the coronation of the Emperor Karl V, they were first given

into the hands of the nuns to be looked over and mended[1163].

An interesting light is thrown on the less serious side of the character

of Charitas by an amusing German letter which she wrote to Dürer and two

envoys of Nürnberg who were staying at Augsburg in 1518 on the occasion of

the Imperial Diet. From there they had sent her a missive penned in a

jovial hour, and Charitas in reply wrote[1164]: ‘I received your friendly

letter with special delight and read it with such attention that my eyes

were often brim full, but more from laughing than any other emotion. Many

thanks to you that in spite of your great business and your amusements you

should have taken the trouble to give directions to this little nun about

cloister-life, of which you have a clear mirror before you at present....’

And she begs the envoy Spengler to study accounts with a view to advising

her how to waste everything till nothing remains, and begs Dürer, ‘who is

such a draughtsman and genius,’ to give his attention to the buildings, so

that when she has the choir rebuilt he may help and advise her how to

introduce larger windows so that the nuns’ eyes may be less dim.

From these various notices we conclude that time passed not unpleasantly

or unprofitably with the abbess of St Clara before those contentions began

which followed upon the attack made on the established religion by Luther.

In Nürnberg, as in most other cities, the feeling was general that the

life of the prelacy was degenerate and that the Papacy was a hotbed of

abuse. Luther’s opposition to the Pope was therefore greeted with

acclamation both by the enlightened men of the town, who felt that the

tyranny of the Church was a stumblingblock in the way of progress, and by

the people, who readily seized the idea that the means were now given them

to break through class tyranny. Wilibald Pirckheimer was among those who

without hesitation sided with the Lutheran agitation, but Charitas thought

otherwise. The abbess of the convent of St Clara at Eger forwarded to her

some of the fierce attacks on Luther from the pen of Emser († 1527), and

Charitas was so delighted with them that she had them read out aloud to

the nuns during meals, and was prompted to write a letter to their

author[1165].

This letter became a source of great annoyance to her. It fell into the

hands of Emser’s enemies, and was published with an abusive running

comment on Charitas[1166]. Even Wilibald was annoyed and declared she

would have done better not to have written it. He strongly supported the

Lutheran agitation at the time, and Eck, who suspected him of having

written the attack on himself, entitled ‘Eccius Dedolatus,’ for personal

reasons inscribed Wilibald’s name on the Papal ban. There is extant from

Wilibald’s pen a fragment in which he expresses doubts as to the

rightfulness of convent life generally[1167], but he gradually modified

his views. The violence and narrowness of the representatives of the party

of progress in Nürnberg were little to his taste. On the plea of

ill-health he withdrew from the council, and took no part in the stormy

discussions of 1523, when the rupture with Rome was declared complete

and decisions arrived at, momentous for the future of the new faith not

only in Nürnberg, but in Germany generally.

At this juncture the memoir of Charitas[1168] begins. She describes the

effect of the Lutheran teaching; how ceremonies are being abolished, rules

and vows declared vain, so that many monks and nuns are leaving their

cloisters, putting off convent garb and marrying and otherwise doing as

they choose.

‘These various reasons brought us many troubles and difficulties,’ she

writes (p. 2), ‘for many powerful and evil-minded persons came to see the

friends they had in our cloister, and argued with them and told them of

the new teaching, how the religious profession was a thing of evil and

temptation in which it was not possible to keep holy, and that we were all

of the devil. Some would take their children, sisters and relatives out of

the cloister by force and by the help of admonitions and promises of which

they doubtless would not have kept half. This arguing and disputing went

on for a long time and was often accompanied by great anger and abuse. But

since none of the nuns by God’s grace was moved to go, the fault was laid

on the Franciscans, and everyone said they encouraged us, so that it would

be impossible to convince us of the new belief while we had them as

preachers and confessors.’

The friars had long been odious for their determined class feeling,

religious intolerance, and encouragement of superstitions; it was obvious

that the advocates of change would direct their attacks against them.

Charitas, fully aware of the emergency, assembled the nuns and put before

them the danger of being given over to ‘wild priests and apostate monks,’

and with their consent decided to hand in a ‘supplication’ to the town

council. This council was presided over by three leading men (triumviri),

of whom one named Nützel was the so-called representative (pfleger) of the

convent, another named Ebner had a daughter among the nuns, and the third,

Geuder, was the brother-in-law of Charitas. She consulted Wilibald on the

matter of the supplication, but forthwith wrote and despatched a letter to

each of these three men, begging and claiming the protection of her

privileges.

The supplication itself (p. 12) was carefully worded, and requested that

the connection between the Franciscans and the nuns might not be severed,

contradicting the charges which were brought against the former. They do

not forbid the nuns to read the Evangels and other books, Charitas

says,--‘if they did so we should not obey them.’ The nuns have the Old and

the New Testament in daily use in the German and the Latin versions.

Charitas denies despising the married state or retaining nuns by force.

‘But as we compel no one, so too we claim not to be compelled, and to

remain free in mind as well as in body. But this cannot be if we are given

over to strange priests, which would be destruction to our community ...,’

and more to a like purpose.

The supplication was handed in at the beginning of 1524, but after

considerable delay the councillors postponed giving a definite reply to

it. In the meantime Charitas was much annoyed by the mother of one of her

nuns who tried to persuade her daughter to leave the convent, and finding

her words of no avail, appealed to the town council (p. 19) for an order

to take her ‘out of this prison’ as she called it, into which she had sent

her nine years before at the age of fourteen. Charitas also sent in a

statement of the case (p. 28), but again no reply was vouchsafed her.

The letters which Clara wrote to her brother about this time help us to

realise the situation. All her letters are undated, but in one she thanks

Wilibald for his advice about the supplication, and says that if divine

service should really be abolished she means to devote herself more to

reading, for ‘the dear beloved old writers surely were no fools[1169].’ In

another she thanks him for the loan of books and says a work of Erasmus

(probably _De libero arbitrio_) has pleased the sisters by its moderation.

As to Charitas ‘she finds great comfort in her beloved old Cyprian, in

whose writings she reads day and night. She sends greetings and the

message that she prefers Cyprian to all these new evangelists who strut

about in cut garments and golden chains[1170].’

Though Clara did not lose her cheerfulness, Charitas, who saw further, was

full of apprehension. From what her sister says she regretted the severe

tone of her letter to Geuder[1171]. On other occasions also she was led to

indignant utterances which she afterwards regretted[1172].

A gap occurs at this period in her memoir which she resumed writing in

March 1525, after the religious disputation had taken place at Nürnberg.

After many stormy scenes, ‘the preachers of the Evangel,’ as they called

themselves, decided to carry out their intentions without waiting for the

decision of a Church Council. The immediate result of the decision was an

attack on all religious houses. But in the convent of St Clara the

determined and reckless energy of the reformers was matched by indignant

protest and unyielding opposition on the part of the abbess.

Charitas has described in full (p. 33) how a deputation from the town

council asked to be admitted into her house, and how they informed her and

the assembled nuns that their connection with the Franciscans was at an

end; a ‘reformed’ preacher had been appointed to preach in the church of

the nuns, and they were left the choice among several men who would act to

them as confessors. Much argument followed, but Charitas maintained that

her house and the Franciscans had always been closely connected. ‘If we

yield it is only to force and we turn to God,’ she said, ‘and before Him

we lodge a protest and declare that we are forced against our will, and

that we reject and discountenance all your proposals.’ The assembled nuns

rose to their feet to shew their approval of her speech, and the

deputation in vain tried the effect of persuasion. Charitas scorned the

idea of having anything to do with apostate monks; and the deputation

retired after blaming the women for behaving in a most ungrateful manner.

A second visit led to similar results; Charitas abode by her decision, the

nuns wept, and the deputation retired after venting their indignation in

threats.

The hopes of the convent now centred in Nützel, their representative in

the town council, and Charitas with her brother’s approval wrote to him

(p. 41) begging him to come to her. But the first words Nützel spoke

dispelled every hope of assistance from that quarter; he blamed the nuns

for opposing the council, and urged the advisability of their giving way.

Charitas was most indignant and declared she was well aware that it was

intended to force them to this new belief, but that they were agreed that

neither in life nor in death would they listen to what the Church had not

previously countenanced. She called upon the prioress to read out a second

petition to the council asking to have their father confessor back or else

to be left without one. She wanted Nützel to take charge of this petition,

but he was only angered, and taking Charitas aside, represented to her

that her opposition was a serious matter; her example was encouraging

other women’s convents to opposition, which would relent if she did. He

said that by resigning and disbanding the convent bloodshed would be

averted, and he spoke in praise of the new preacher. But Charitas remained

unmoved. As he was leaving the house his daughter and the other nuns,

whose fathers were members of the town council, went down on their knees

to him imploring protection. He refused to listen, but was so far

impressed that he never slept all the following night, as his wife

afterwards told the nuns (p. 54).

The convent’s opposition to their plans was a source not only of annoyance

but of apprehension to the town authorities. The peasants’ rising was

spreading in the direction of Nürnberg, and as popular feeling was against

religious houses the argument that dissolving the house might help to

avert a danger was not altogether unfounded. Nützel in a long

expostulation (p. 55) shortly afterwards tried to impress this view on the

abbess, but Charitas urged (p. 59) that other reasons besides hatred of

the friars had roused the peasants to rebellion, and complained that the

ill-feeling against her house was largely due to the reformed preachers,

who declared they would not rest till they had driven monks and nuns out

of the town (p. 62). Rightly or wrongly she held that Poliander, the

reformed preacher who was now preaching in the convent church, had been

promised a reward if he persuaded her or her nuns to leave the convent (p.

67), and that his want of success aggravated his hatred of them. It was in

vain that Nützel wrote in praise of him (p. 67). Charitas now looked upon

Nützel as a dangerous enemy, and her sister Clara wrote to Wilibald[1173]

begging him to advise the convent how to get rid of the man. In another

letter[1174] she said that Charitas was seriously afraid of him.

In place of the Franciscans a number of reformed preachers now preached

before the nuns and the people in the convent church. Among them was

Osiander, formerly a Carthusian, whose violence at a later period was

censured and resented by his Protestant brethren; and the nuns were

obliged to attend and to listen to a torrent of abuse and imprecation by

him and others. ‘I cannot and will not detail,’ says Charitas in her

memoir (p. 70), ‘how they perverted Holy Writ to a strange meaning, how

they cast down the doctrines of the Church and discarded all ceremonies;

how they abused and reviled all religious orders and classes, and

respected neither Pope nor Emperor, whom they openly called tyrant, devil,

and Antichrist; how roughly and in what an unchristian-like spirit and

against all brotherly love they abused us and charged us with great

wickedness, for the purpose of rousing the people, whom they persuaded

that an ungodly set like ourselves should be destroyed, our cloister

broken open, ourselves dragged out by force, since we represented a

despicable class, heretics, idolatrous and blasphemous people, who were

eternally of the devil.’

One might be tempted to look upon this description as an exaggeration were

it not for a letter from Wilibald Pirckheimer to Melanchthon, in which he

describes the outrages to which the nuns were exposed in similar terms.

‘The preachers scream, swear, and storm, and do everything in their power

to rouse the hatred of the masses against the poor nuns; they openly say

that as words were of no avail, recourse should be had to force,’ and he

wonders the cloister has not yet been attacked[1175].

Under the pressure of popular opinion and increasing restlessness the

Austin monks gave over their house, and they were followed by the

Carmelites, the Benedictines, and the Carthusians. The Dominicans

hesitated; the Franciscans refused to go. Charitas expresses wonder that

the ‘spiritual poison,’ as she calls it, which the preachers several times

a week tried to infuse into the nuns, took no effect, and that none of

them expressed a desire to leave the convent (p. 85).

Things had now come to such a pass that convents outside the city

disbanded before the peasants’ rising; and nuns from Pillenreuth and

Engelthal sought refuge in the town with the nuns of St Clara (p. 86).

These lived in daily fear of their house being stormed, for the people

shouted and swore at them from below, threw stones into the choir, smashed

the church windows, and sang insulting songs in the churchyard outside.

But the nuns, nothing daunted, continued to keep the hours and to ring the

bells, though they were every moment prepared for the worst. Clara in a

letter to Wilibald described her own and her sister’s fears in eloquent

terms[1176]; and the nun Felicitas Grundherrin wrote to her father

entreating him to abide by the old faith[1177]. In these days the nuns

seem to have read a good deal of pamphlet literature, but they failed to

see anything beyond an encouragement to violence and disorder in the whole

Lutheran movement.

A further attempt was made by the council to coerce the convent. A number

of injunctions were sent to the abbess which were to be carried out within

a month (p. 88). The first of these commanded her to absolve the nuns from

their vow that they might enjoy ‘Christian freedom’; another that she

should send the young nuns home though they refused, ‘since children

should obey their parents.’ The deputies who laid these injunctions before

the abbess assured her that the council was prepared to restore to the

nuns what they had brought to the convent; that they would give money to

those who had brought nothing, and provide a dower for those who married.

To these arguments Charitas replied that the nuns had made a vow not

before her but before God, that it was not in her power to dispense them

from it and that she would not urge them to disobedience. With a touch of

bitterness she added that their mothers were continually at the convent

grating urging them to go (p. 87). For the matrons of the town especially

sided with the reformed preachers and cried shame on convent life. ‘If it

were not for the women and the preachers things would not be so bad,’

Clara wrote on one occasion to Wilibald[1178], and on another she spoke of

the sharp tongues and violent behaviour of the women.

The deputation further claimed that the nuns should take off their convent

clothes (p. 93), the sight of which they said gave umbrage. ‘We are

continually told,’ Charitas replied, ‘that our vows and our clothes

threaten to cause a rising, but it is your preachers, to whom we are

forced to listen, who try to provoke one by abusing and condemning us from

the pulpit and charging us with vices and impurity to humour the people.’

The command was also given to do away with the convent grating; and it was

backed by the threat that if Charitas failed to comply with it the town

authorities would throw open the house to all visitors. The heaviness of

this blow was such that after the deputation had left Charitas summoned

the nuns and asked their intentions severally. In the eyes of the whole

convent throwing open the house involved turning it into a public resort

of bad character. They felt they must yield or leave the house

altogether, but they promised to abide by the decision of Charitas if she

would stay and advise them. The intrepid abbess decided to do away with

the grating at one window, declaring that they acted against the rule

under protest and only temporarily. On the other points she sought the

advice of learned men outside, but they advised compromise, for, to give

her own words (p. 95), ‘they said all chance was gone of gaining anything

by opposition; we must yield if we did not want the house to go to ruin.

People now did things by main force regardless of justice or equity,

fearful neither of Pope nor Emperor, nor even of God except in word;

things were such that these people said, What we will must be done, thus

and not otherwise, declaring themselves more powerful than the Pope

himself.’

In the meantime the feelings against the nunnery were by no means

unanimous. Geuder, the brother-in-law of Charitas, was emphatic at the

council meeting in denouncing the throwing open of convents, which in his

eyes also meant turning them into disreputable houses[1179]. But no amount

of opposition made by him and others could prevent a scene from being

enacted in the convent chapel, which was afterwards looked upon as

disgraceful, not only by those who provoked it, but by outsiders whether

partisans of the Lutheran movement or not. The repeated attempts to

persuade the nuns to leave having failed and Charitas refusing to bid them

go, two of the chief councillors, one of them Nützel, the representative

of the convent’s interests, and the widow of a councillor who had long

clamoured for her daughter’s release, repaired to the convent with a

number of other persons, claimed to be admitted, and declared they had

come to fetch their daughters away. The three nuns, who were between

nineteen and twenty-three years of age, tried to hide, but Charitas bade

them come forth, and they then sought refuge with her in the convent

chapel. She has described in full how the young women besought her to

protect them, how their parents and others abused and reviled them, and

how in spite of their protests, their indignation and their tears, their

relations at last resorted to violence. Four persons seized each nun and

dragged and pushed her out of the chapel, while the women present shouted

approval, and once outside their convent clothes were torn off and others

substituted in their stead. After a scuffle and a scramble in which one

nun was knocked over and her foot injured, they were carried to a

chariot waiting outside and conveyed away.

Charitas remained behind in grief and despair. ‘I and all my nuns are so

distressed at all this,’ she wrote a few days later[1180], ‘that I have

almost wept out my eyes.... Nothing ever so went to my heart.’ Indignation

at the violence of the act became general in the town and spread beyond

its confines. ‘I never could have imagined women acting in such a cruel

manner,’ Sabina, the abbess of Bergen, wrote to Wilibald; and in another

letter, apprehending the destruction of the convent at Nürnberg, she

proposed that Charitas and her nuns should seek refuge with her[1181].

But Charitas persisted in holding her ground, though with an aching heart.

When the men who had fetched away their daughters sent word offering to

pay for their maintenance during the time they had lived with her, she

refused. Her trials in one direction had reached their climax,--the

councillor Nützel, who admitted that things had gone too far, henceforth

acted in a conciliatory spirit, and some approximation took place between

them. Not that he ever tired of urging Charitas to desert her convent and

her cause, but he now confined himself to persuasion and argument, and

when one of the young nuns who had been carried off was so far reconciled

to the world that she came to the convent window and urged her step-sister

to return home, pretending that Nützel had sent her (p. 123), the

councillor disclaimed having done so. His correspondence with Charitas,

which she has faithfully inserted in her memoir, shows that she patiently

listened to every argument in favour of the new doctrines. She had a

conversation with the preacher Osiander which lasted four hours (p. 128),

she listened to over a hundred sermons preached by the Lutherans, and she

read their writings, yet she could find nothing to her taste and it seemed

easy to her to confound their arguments. Her letters show that her

unhappiness was great, for on one occasion she went so far as to put

before Nützel (p. 122) what the result would be if women like themselves,

many of whom were over sixty and several over seventy, returned to the

world and tried to earn their living, as everyone said they ought to do.

She declared she detained no one, the nuns were at liberty to go if they

chose; everyone was giving her advice, she said, but she saw no salvation

in the new doctrines, which did not appeal to her. Her readiness to listen

to argument caused Nützel to set his hopes on a conference between

Melanchthon and her (p. 133), and probably at the instigation of Wilibald,

who was deeply grieved at the injustice done to his sisters without being

able to give them direct help, Melanchthon, who was well known for his

uprightness and conciliatory influence, came to Nürnberg towards the close

of the year 1525. ‘I am glad to hear Melanchthon is coming,’ Charitas

wrote; ‘since I have heard he is an irreproachable, upright and

justice-loving man, I do not suppose he can approve of what has been done

here.’

Nützel at once (p. 149) brought him to the convent. ‘A few days later our

representative came with Philip Melanchthon,’ Charitas wrote, ‘who spoke

much about the new faith, but finding that we set our hopes more on the

grace of God than on our works, he said we might as well seek our

salvation in the cloister as in the world.’ They had a long talk together

and agreed on all points except on the subject of vows, for these the

reformer declared were not binding, while Charitas maintained that a

promise made to God must be kept. She describes Melanchthon as more

moderate in his speech than she had ever known a Lutheran to be.

Melanchthon, on hearing the various points of the case, blamed the

councillors for having forbidden the Franciscans to confer with the

convent, and for forcibly taking the nuns out of the cloister. ‘I trust

God has sent this Lutheran at the right hour,’ Charitas wrote, ‘for they

were discussing whether or not to expel nuns generally, pull down their

houses, and put the older inmates of those convents which would not

surrender into one house, driving back the younger ones into the world’

(p. 171).

According to her account Melanchthon represented to the council that no

convent at Wittenberg had been destroyed by force, and after a great deal

of argument it was decreed to make one more effort to persuade the nuns to

go, and failing this to leave them alone. No concessions were made with

regard to the friars, the nuns remained without a minister to take their

confessions and to administer the sacrament, but after all the nuns had

been severally asked if they wished to stay or to go, and only one

declared herself ready to leave the house, the rest were left in

possession till the end of their days.

With the account of the last visitation, which took place in 1528, the

memoir of Charitas ends. From other sources we hear that short of

annoyances about her income and a tax levied on the convent she remained

unmolested, and passed the last few years of her life in peace. At the

close of 1528, the fiftieth anniversary of her entering the convent, and

the twenty-fifth year of her appointment as abbess, was celebrated with

some amount of cheerfulness. Wilibald and others sent presents, and after

dinner the nuns danced to the sound of the dulcimer (hackbrett), which the

abbess played[1182]. Wilibald’s interest in the convent continued, and

towards the close of his life we find him busy writing a pamphlet in

justification of the nuns[1183], in which he developed at some length the

arguments against those who had oppressed and coerced them. He died in

1530, and within a couple of years was followed by his sister Charitas

(1533). Her sister Clara ruled the convent for a few months after her and

was succeeded by Wilibald’s daughter Charitas. The number of nuns was

slowly but steadily dwindling; before the close of the century the house

had fallen into the hands of the town council by default.

The abbess Charitas Pirckheimer worthily represents the monastic life of

women at the close of the Middle Ages. Faithful to the system she had

embraced, she remained true to her convictions to the last, with a

fearlessness, candour, and determination which give her attitude a touch

of heroism. She is one among many staunch adherents to the old faith who

experienced hardships which simple humanity and feelings of equity and

justice alike condemned, but whose steadfastness could not save their

cause from being lost.

CONCLUSION.

My task has drawn to its close. In a series of chapters, incompletely no

doubt but I trust not superficially, the position of woman under

monasticism has been brought before the reader, and some account has been

given of the various aspects of convent life. In conclusion it seems well

to pause and look back over the ground traversed, to take in at a glance

what Catholic tradition, convent-life and saint-lore have done for women

in the past. The area over which the reader has been taken is a wide one,

and the ground in many directions remains unexplored. Still some of the

most prominent landmarks have been noted, and some districts carefully

examined. Thus while further information might be sought concerning many

special points, it still seems legitimate to form a general survey and to

draw certain conclusions.

Turning back to the earliest period when Christianity with its new

conceptions first came into contact with beliefs dating from a distant

heathen era, we have seen how many sentiments and associations of ideas

peculiar to pre-Christian times lived on and were absorbed into the new

religion. The early representatives of Christianity, with a keen-sighted

appreciation of the means by which a change of religion is most

successfully effected, treated the older conceptions with tolerance, and

by doing so made possible the establishment of new ideas in the old

heathen setting. The legends and the cult of the saints contain a mine of

wealth as yet little explored by the student of primitive civilization and

folk-lore, a mine which has here been tapped at one vein only,--namely for

the information it yields on the antiquity of beliefs which attach to

certain women who are reckoned among the saints.

Passing from the ground of tradition to that of history we have seen how

the convent was looked upon with favour by women of the newly converted

barbarian races, and how readily they availed themselves of the protection

which the Christian religion held out to them. This development also

needed to be studied side by side with previous social conditions in order

to stand out in its true light, and it gained a new meaning when

considered in connection with the elements of older folk tradition which

it absorbed. The representatives of Christianity, profiting by a surviving

love of independence among womankind, turned the energies of women into

new channels, and giving scope to their activity in new directions,

secured their help in the cause of peaceful progress. The outward

conditions of life were such that the woman who joined the convent made

her decision once for all. But provided she agreed to forego the claims of

family and sex, an honourable independence was secured to her, and she was

brought into contact with the highest aims of her age. At a period when

monasteries, placed in the remote and uncultivated districts, radiated

peace and civilization throughout the neighbourhood, many women devoted

themselves to managing settlements which in the standard they attained,

vied in excellence with the settlements managed by men.

At the outset many married women left their husbands for the purpose of

founding and governing convents; sometimes they founded convents the

management of which they left to others, and themselves retired to them

later in life. The prestige and advantages enjoyed by the heads of

religious settlements were such that kings and queens frequently installed

their daughters as abbesses in preference to seeking for them matrimonial

alliances, and these princesses were joined by many daughters of the most

influential families, who gladly availed themselves of the opportunity of

embracing the religious vocation. Through their close contact with

high-born women, convents maintained a high tone in manners, morals and

general behaviour, and grew into important educational centres, the

beneficent influence of which was generally recognised.

The career open to the inmates of convents both in England and on the

continent was greater than any other ever thrown open to women in the

course of modern European history; abilities might raise the nun to the

rank of abbess, a position of substantial authority. In the Kentish

charter, to which reference has been made, the names of the abbesses as

representatives of religion follow those of the bishops. In Saxony it fell

to an abbess to act as representative of the emperor during his absence.

As independent landowners, who held their property of and from king and

emperor, the abbess took rank with the lords temporal and spiritual in the

right of jurisdiction which they exercised, and in the right of being

represented in Parliament or at the Imperial Diet as the case might be.

While fulfilling the duties which devolved on them in virtue of their

station, abbesses did not neglect their opportunities of keeping in touch

with culture and of widening their mental horizon. In Anglo-Saxon England

men who attained to distinction received their training in settlements

governed by women. Histories and a chronicle of unique value were inspired

by and drafted under the auspices of Saxon abbesses. For nuns Ealdhelm

wrote his most famous treatises, and several valuable contemporary

biographies, such as those of Sturmi and of Robert of Fontevraud, were

written at the express desire of nuns. And while eager in encouraging

productiveness in others, they were not slow in trying to develop their

own literary powers. In the 6th century Radegund was writing epistles in

verse under the tuition of an exiled Latin poet; to an Anglo-Saxon nun

whose name is not recorded we owe one of the earliest and most interesting

accounts extant of a journey to Palestine. In the 8th century the nun

Lioba was trying her hand at Latin verse in a convent in Thanet; in the

10th century the nun Hrotsvith in Saxony was composing Latin dramas on the

model of Terence. The contributions of nuns to literature as well as

incidental remarks show that the curriculum of study in the nunnery was as

liberal as that accepted by monks, and embraced all available writing,

whether by Christian or profane authors. While Scripture and the writings

of the Fathers of the Church at all times formed the groundwork of

monastic studies, Cicero at this period was read by the side of Boethius,

Virgil by the side of Martianus Capella, Terence by the side of Isidor of

Sevilla. From remarks made by Hrotsvith we see that the coarseness of the

later Latin dramatists made no reason for their being forbidden to nuns,

though she would have seen it otherwise; and Herrad was so far impressed

by the wisdom of the heathen philosophers of antiquity that she pronounced

this wisdom to be the ‘product of the Holy Spirit also.’ Throughout the

literary world as represented by convents, the use of Latin was general,

and made possible the even spread of culture in districts that were widely

remote from each other and practically without intercourse.

The educational influence of convents during centuries cannot be rated

too highly. Not only did their inmates attain considerable knowledge, but

education in a nunnery, as we saw from the remarks of Chaucer and others,

secured an improved standing to those who were not professed. The fact

that a considerable number of women’s houses after the monastic revival of

the 11th and 12th centuries were founded largely at the instigation of

men, proves that the usefulness of these institutions was generally

recognised.

While devoted to reading and study which pre-eminently constituted the

religious vocation, nuns during their leisure hours cultivated art in

several of its branches. Spinning and weaving were necessarily practised

in all settlements during many centuries, for the inmates of these

settlements made the clothes which they wore. But weaving and embroidery,

always essentially woman’s work, found a new development in the convent,

and works of marked excellence were produced both in England and abroad.

The painstaking industry, which goes far in the production of such work,

was reflected in the activity of women as scribes and illuminators, and

the names of several nuns who were famous for their writing have been

handed down to posterity. In the twofold domain of learning and art the

climax of productiveness was reached in the person of Herrad, in whom a

wide range of intellectual interests and a keen appreciation of study

combined with considerable artistic skill and a certain amount of

originality.

Side by side with literary and artistic pursuits nuns were active in the

cause of philanthropy. Several women who had the sufferings of their

fellows at heart are numbered among the saints; and under the auspices of

Hildegard a book was compiled on the uses of natural products in health

and disease, which forms a landmark in the history of mediæval medicine.

With the consciousness of the needs of others came too a keener power of

self-realisation. The attention of nuns was turned to the inner life, and

here again their productiveness did not fail them. The contributions to

mystical literature by nuns are numerous, and their writings, which took

the form of spiritual biography, legendary romance, or devotional

exercise, were greatly appreciated and widely read by their

contemporaries. Even now-a-days they are recommended as devotional works

by the Catholic Church.

We have seen that the position of the convent was throughout influenced by

the conditions of the world outside it; changes in outside political,

intellectual and social life necessarily made themselves felt in the

convent. Consequent upon the spread of the feudal system of land tenure,

which in the interest of an improved military organisation reserved the

holding of property for men, women forfeited their chance of founding and

endowing independent monasteries, and the houses founded after the

monastic revival never attained a position comparable with that of those

dating from the earlier period. As monasteries were theoretically safe

against infringement of their privileges by prince or bishop owing to

their connection with Rome, the relation of the Pope to temporal rulers

and to the greater ecclesiastics directly affected them, and when the

power of the Pope was relaxed they were at the mercy of prince and bishop.

We have seen how kings of England appropriated alien priories, and how

wilfully princes abroad curtailed the privileges of nunneries, the support

of their prelates giving countenance to these changes. At a later period a

considerable number of women’s convents were interfered with by churchmen,

who on the plea of instituting reforms took advantage of their position to

appropriate the convent property.

A change of a different kind which affected the convent in its educational

and intellectual standing was the growth of university centres, and the

increased facilities afforded to the student of visiting different centres

in succession. In the 9th century Bede who never stirred from his convent

might attain intellectual excellence; such a course was impossible in the

13th and 14th centuries when the centre of education lay in the

disputations which animated the lecture room. Some of the progressive

monasteries of men lessened the loss they felt by securing a house at the

university to which they sent their more promising pupils, but the tone at

the mediæval university was such that one cannot wonder that no attempt

was made in this direction by the convents of women. As a natural result

their intellectual standard for a time remained stationary, and then,

especially in the smaller and remoter settlements, it fell. This led to a

want of interest in intellectual acquirements among nuns, and it was

accompanied by a growing indifference in the outside world to the

intellectual acquirements of women generally.

Not that the desire to maintain a high standard had passed away from

women’s convents. The readiness with which many houses adopted the chance

of betterment held out to them by the congregations of the 15th century,

goes far to prove that nuns continued to identify the idea of salvation

with a high moral tone and an application to study. But study now ran

along a narrow groove, for the monastic reformers favoured devotional

study only. The nuns, who were impressed by the excellence of the

reformers’ motives, and prevented by circumstances from forming opinions

of their own in the matter, showed an increasing readiness to adopt their

views. The friars led the way in this direction by cutting off the nuns,

given into their care, from the management of outside affairs; they were

followed by the order of Sion, and by the congregations of Bursfeld and

Windesheim, all of which alike urged that the primary duty of a nun was

sanctification of self. The interest of this movement lies in the

voluminous devotional literature it called forth, a literature full of

spiritual beauty, but in the production of which nuns, so far as we know,

took no share. By writing out oral sermons they helped, however, to

preserve and spread them. The change which had come over the convent life

of women cramped rather than stimulated their intellectual vitality, and

the system of which they made part was apparently beyond their control.

The author of ‘Holy Maidenhood’ in the 13th century called the nun the

free woman, and contrasted her with the wife who in his eyes was the

slave. But Erasmus at the beginning of the 16th century urged that the

woman who joined the convent by doing so became a slave, while she who

remained outside was truly free. Erasmus also insisted on the fact that

there was no reason why a woman should enter a convent, as she might as

well stay in the world and remain unmarried if she so preferred. In point

of fact social conditions had so far changed that society no longer called

to the Church for protection of its daughters. For a time the convent

ranked high as an educational establishment; then this use began to pass

away also, and it was largely on account of the provision religious houses

made for unmarried women that they still continued in favour with a

portion of the community.

Many historians have advocated the view that the Protestant reformers

discovered the abuses of the monastic system, and finding these

intolerable, swept the whole system away. The evidence adduced above in

connection with the dissolution shows that matters were far otherwise,

that the dissolution of convents was accompanied by many regrettable

incidents, and that as far as England is concerned, it may confidently be

called premature. For many years those who sought progress by peaceful

educational means seemed to be confronted only by hopeless and sanguinary

confusion; they passed away with the belief that the whole movement they

had witnessed was opposed to real progress, holding the view that the

Protestants were innovators of the worst and most dangerous kind.

However, as far as convents are concerned, it seems as though the

Protestant reformers, far from acting as innovators, had done no more than

give violent and extreme application to forces which had for some time

been at work. The dissolution was led up to by a succession of conventual

changes, and before the outbreak of the Lutheran agitation, at least one

well-wisher of the system in Germany, Tritheim, had despaired of putting

this system to new and effective uses. Not that monasticism can be said to

have generally outlived its purposes at the time of the Reformation. In

some countries, as in France and Spain, it subsequently chronicled

important developments. But where German elements were prevalent, convents

were either swept away, or put to altogether different uses by the

Protestants, or else allowed to continue on a very much narrowed basis by

the Catholics. Many convents fell utterly to decay in course of time and

ceased to exist at the beginning of this century, others again still

linger on but are mere shadows of their former brilliant selves.

The reason for these changes lay not altogether with those who professed

religion in convents, they were part of a wider change which remoulded

society on an altered basis. For the system of association, the groundwork

of mediæval strength and achievement, was altogether giving way at the

time of the Reformation. The socialistic temper was superseded by

individualistic tendencies which were opposed to the prerogatives

conferred on the older associations. These tendencies have continued to

the present with slight abatements, and have throughout proved averse to

the continuation of monasticism which attained greatness through the

spirit of association.

Repelled through the violence and aggressiveness of the reformers, and

provoked by the narrowness of Protestantism generally, some modern writers

take the view that the Reformation was throughout opposed to real

progress, and that mankind would have been richer had the reformers left

undisturbed many of the institutions they destroyed. The revenues of these

institutions would now have been at the disposal of those who would put

them to public and not to personal uses. As far as convents, especially

those of women, are concerned, I cannot but feel sceptical on both

points. Granting even that these houses had been undisturbed, a

possibility difficult to imagine, experience proves that it is hardly

likely they could now be used to secure advantages such as they gave to

women in the past. Certainly it is not in those districts where women’s

convents have lived on, securing economic independence to unmarried women

as in North Germany, nor where they have lingered on along old lines as in

Bavaria, that the wish for an improved education has arisen among women in

modern times, nor does it seem at all likely that their revenues will ever

be granted for such an object. It is in those countries where the change

in social conditions has been most complete, and where women for a time

entirely forfeited all the advantages which a higher education brings, and

which were secured in so great a measure to women by convents in the past,

that the modern movement for women’s education has arisen.

APPENDIX

(to accompany p. 253).

RHYTHMUS HERRADIS ABATISSAE PER QUEM HOHENBURGENSES VIRGUNCULAS AMABILITER

SALUTAT ET AD VERI SPONSI FIDEM DILECTIONEMQUE SALUBRITER INVITAT.

Salve cohors virginum

Hohenburgiensium,

Albens quasi lilium

Amans dei filium.

Herrat devotissima,

Tua fidelissima,

Mater et ancillula,

Cantat tibi cantica.

Te salutat millies

Et exoptat indies,

Ut laeta victoria

Vincas transitoria.

O multorum speculum,

Sperne, sperne seculum,

Virtutes accumula,

Veri sponsi turmula.

Insistas luctamine,

Diros hostes sternere,

Te rex regum adjuvat,

Quia te desiderat.

Ipse tuum animum

Firmat contra Zabulum.

Ipse post victoriam

Dabit regni gloriam.

Te decent deliciae,

Debentur divitiae,

Tibi coeli curia,

Servat bona plurima.

Christus parat nuptias

Miras per delicias,

Hunc expectes principem

Te servando virginem.

Interim monilia

Circum des nobilia,

Et exornes faciem

Mentis purgans aciem.

Christus odit maculas,

Rugas spernit vetulas,

Pulchras vult virgunculas,

Turpes pellit feminas.

Fide cum turturea

Sponsum istum reclama,

Ut tua formositas

Fiat perpes claritas.

Vivens sine fraudibus

Es monenda laudibus,

Ut consummes optima

Tua gradus opera.

Ne vacilles dubia

Inter mundi flumina,

Verax deus praemia

Spondet post pericula.

Patere nunc aspera

Mundi spernens prospera.

Nunc sis crucis socia,

Regni consors postea.

Per hoc mare naviga,

Sanctitate gravida,

Dum de navi exeas

Sion sanctam teneas.

Sion turris coelica

Bella tenens atria,

Tibi fiat statio,

Acto vitae spatio.

Ibi rex virgineus

Et Mariae filius

Amplectens te reclamet

A moerore relevet.

Parvi pendens omnia

Tentatoris jocula,

Tunc gaudebis pleniter

Jubilando suaviter.

Stella maris fulgida,

Virgo mater unica,

Te conjugat filio

Foedere perpetuo.

Et me tecum trahere

Non cesses praecamine,

Ad sponsum dulcissimum

Virginalem filium.

Ut tuae victoriae,

Tuae magnae gloriae,

Particeps inveniat

De terrenis eruat.

Vale casta concio,

Mea jubilatio,

Vivas sine crimine,

Christum semper dilige.

Sit hic liber utilis,

Tibi delectabilis

Et non cesses volvere

Hunc in tuo pectore.

Ne more struthineo

Surrepat oblivio,

Et ne viam deseras

Antequam provenias.

Amen Amen Amen

Amen Amen Amen

Amen Amen Amen

Amen Amen Amen.

INDEX.

The women here designated as saints are either included in the _Acta

Sanctorum Bollandorum_, or else, this work waiting completion, are entered

as saints in the ‘Table Hagiographique’ of Guérin, _Les Petits

Bollandistes_, 1882, vol. 17.

abbess, position of, 87, 152, 203, 365 ff., 388

Abra, St, 14

Achachildis or Atzin, 34

Adela, 40, _see_ Adolana

Adelheid, abbess at Gandersheim, 273

Adelheid, abbess at Nivelles, 152 footnote

Adelheid, abbess at Quedlinburg, 152

Adelheid Helchen, abbess at Oberwerth, 421

Adelitia, nun, 213

Adeliz, abbess at Winchester, 210

Admunt, convent at, 237

Adolana, St, abbess at Pfälzel, 124

Aebbe, St, abbess at Coldingham, 97, 101-103

Aebbe, mother of Lioba, 134

Aelfgifu or Emma, queen, makes a gift of hangings, 226

Aelflaed, abbess at Whitby, 90, 93, 94, 103-106, 124, 126, 225

Aelflaed, queen, makes a gift of hangings, 226

Aelfthrith, abbess at Repton, 108

Aethelburg, St, abbess at Barking, 111, 112

Aethelburg St, or Aubierge, abbess at Brie, 78

Aethelburg, abbess (at Hackness?), 94, 106

Aethelburg, queen, founds a convent at Liming, 84

Aetheldritha, abbess at Southminstre in Thanet, 87

Aethelthrith, St, or Etheldred or Awdry, 96-99, 101, 225

Aette, abbess at Folkestone, 87

Afra, St, of Augsburg, 31, 32-33

Afra von Velseck, nun, 425 ff.

Agatha, St, of Catania, 16, 17, 141

Agilbert, St, 76

Agius, interested in nuns, 154, 155, 157-159

Agnes, St, of Rome, 18, 167, 314, 327

Agnes, St, abbess at Poitiers, 52, 55-65

Agnes, St, princess of Bohemia, 293, 296-297, 298

Agnes, abbess at Quedlinburg, 233, 234

Agnes Ferrar, abbess at Shaftesbury, 365

Agnes Litherland, prioress at Gracedieu, 449

Agnes Merrett, cellaress at Sion, 393

Agnes Seyntel, prioress at Cambridge, 367

Agnes Terry, prioress at Catesby, 369

Ailred, his connection with nuns, 215, 218, 313-314, 321, 325

Alburgh or Aethelburgh, convent of St, _see_ Barking

Alena, St, 26

Aleydis, lay sister at Bronope, 419

Aleydis Ruyskop, nun at Rolandswerth, 428

Alice Fitzherbert, abbess at Polesworth, 447

Alice Henley, abbess at Godstow, 360

Alice Wafer, prioress at Prée, 410

alien priories, their number and appropriation, 386-387

Altwick, convent at, 273

Alwid, embroideress, 226

Amalberga, St, 23

Ambrosius, bishop of Milan, on Virginity, 14,

on St Agnes, 167

Amesbury, convent at, 194, 201, 203, 205, 454

ancre, defined, 312

‘Ancren Riwle,’ 311-325, 357

Angiltrud, nun, 138

Ankerwyke, convent at, 357, 443

Anna, duchess of Silesia, 295-296, 298

Anne Boleyn, intends to retire to a nunnery, 437

Anne Seton, prioress at Chatteris, 449

anonymous nun, author of ‘Hodoeporicon’ etc., 139 ff.

Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury, in connection with women, 184, 208-211

Anselma, nun, 213

Ansterbert, St, or Austreberta, 76

Anstrud, St, or Austrudis, 77

Apollonia Tucher, nun at Nürnberg, 460

Arles, convent at, 48-50, 52, 56, 226

armarium or bookcase, 216, 223

Armengard von Rheden, abbess at Fischbeck, 418

Atzin or Achachildis, 34

Augustine, rule of St, 196

Augustine, canons of, _see_ Austin or Black

Aurea, St, 76

Austreberta, _see_ Ansterbert

Austin or Black canons, 186, 196, 197, 209

Austin canonesses, 150, 197, 364, 371, 420

Austrudis, _see_ Anstrud

Awdry, _see_ Aethelthrith

Balbine, St, 30

Balthild, St, 71, 73, 74-78

Bamberg, convent of St Clara at, 459

Barbara Dalberg, nun at Marienberg, 429

Barbara Schöndorfer, abbess at Sonnenburg, 427

Barking, convent at, 111, 112, 113, 116, 121, 201, 203, 358, 363, 372,

377, 378, 443, 455

Basina, nun at Poitiers, 65, 67-69

Baudonivia, nun at Poitiers, 46, 52, 65

Bega, St, 89

Begu, nun at Hackness, 89, 93

beguine, defined, 331

Benedict, St, rule of, 50, 73, 74, 77, 186, 198, 215;

Anglo-Saxon version of, 312;

rhymed version of, 358 ff.

Benedictine nunneries, number of, in England, 204, 364

Bergen, convent at, 204, 460, 474

Berkley on Severn, convent at, 202

Berlindis, St, 26, 27, 31

Bernard of Clairvaux, 190, 258, 260

Berthegund, 69-70

Berthgit, nun, 139, also footnote

Berthild, St, or Bertilia, abbess at Chelles, 77

Bilihild, St, 29

Bingen, convent at, 263 ff.

Bischofsheim, convent at, 136, 137, 138

Bona, 211

Boniface, his correspondence with women, 118-142, 225, 232

Bourges, convent at, 230

Breslau, convent of St Clara at, 295

Bridget, St, of Ireland, 14 footnote

Bridget, St, of Sweden, 383 ff.

Bridget Belgrave, chambress at Sion, 392

Brie or Faremoutiers, convent at, 76, 77

Brixen, convent of St Clara at, 424, 459

Bromhall, convent at, 369, 436

Bronope, convent at, 418

Brunshausen, convent at, 155

Brusyard, convent at, 447

Buckland, convent at, 365

Bugga, correspondent of Boniface, 131-133

Bugga, daughter of King Centwin, 113

Bugga or Heaburg, 131

Burngith, nun at Barking, 113

Bursfeld, congregation of, 415

Busch, reformer of nunneries, 417 ff.

Butzbach, his correspondence with nuns, 428

Caesaria, St, abbess at Arles, 48, 52, 56

Caesaria II, abbess at Arles, 56

Caesarius, St, rule of, 48-50, 226

Cambridge, convent of St Radegund at, 367, 380, 435 and footnote

cameraria, _see_ chambress

Campsey, convent at, 360, 376, 377, 378

Cangith, 128 footnote

Canonlegh, _see_ Legh

cantarista, _see_ leader of the choir

Canterbury, convent of St Sepulchre at, 403, 439

capellanissa, _see_ chaplain

Carrow, convent at, 378

Catesby, convent at, 368-369, 447-448

Cathari, 273, 281

Catherine de la Pole, abbess at Barking, 378

Cecil Bodman, abbess at Wilton, 438 footnote, 441

Cecilia, St, legend of, in English, 326

cellaress or celleraria, office of, 216, 368, 371 ff., 393

celleraria, _see_ cellaress

Celtes, his connection with nuns, 183, 461 ff.

chambress or cameraria, office of, 378, 392

Charitas Pirckheimer, abbess at Nürnberg, 458 ff.

Chartreuse, order of, 186, 199

chaplain, female, or capellanissa, office of, 376-378

Chatteris, convent at, 381, 401, 449

Chaucer on nuns, 361, 362

Chelles or Cala, convent at, 75, 77, 78, 82, 86

Chester, convent of St Mary at, 448

Chicksand, convent at, 445

Chlotildis, 41

Christiane, St, 25, 29

Christina, nun, 213

Christina, nun at Romsey, 207, 208

Christina, prioress at Mergate, 227

Christina Basset, prioress at St Mary Prée, 365, 410

Christine, abbess at Gandersheim, 159

Christine Strölin, abbess at Söflingen, 422

Chrodield, nun at Poitiers, 50, 66-69, 226

Chrothild, St, queen, 51

Chunigundis, abbess at Göss, 235

Chunihild, nun, 138, 139 footnote

Chunitrud, nun, 139

Citeaux, order of, 186, 189-192

Cistercian nunneries, number of, in England, 363

Clara, St, of Assisi, 296

Clara, St, convent of, at Brixen, Nürnberg, etc., _see_ Brixen,

Nürnberg, etc.

Clara Gundelfingen, abbess at Nürnberg, 459

Clara Pirckheimer, nun at Nürnberg, 459 ff.

Clares, Poor, or Nuns Minoresses, 364

Clemence, nun at Barking, 357

Clement, St, convent of, at York, _see_ York

Clugni, order of, 186, 187-189

Clugniac nunneries, number of, in England, 363

Coldingham, convent at, 97, 101, 102

Cöln, convent of St Maria at, 152 footnote, 421

Columban, St, rule of, 72, 73, 77

consecration of nuns, 380

Cordula, St, 283

Crabhouse, convent at, 358

Cunera, St, 21, 29, 43

Cusanus, as monastic reformer, 416, 422 ff.

Cuthberht, his connection with abbesses, 102-105, 225

Cuthburg, St, of Wimbourne, 106, 113, 116

Cuthburg, suffering torments in hell, 121

Cwenburg, St, of Wimbourne, 116

Cwenburg, nun at Watton, 91

Cyneburg, St, of Castor, 106, 107

Cynehild, nun, 135

Cyneswith, St, of Castor, 107

Cynethrith, abbess, 225

Davington, convent at, 357, 380

Delapray, convent at, 447

Dennis, convent at, 449, 450

Derneburg, convent at, 417, 420

Didimia, abbess at Poitiers, 65

Diemud, scribe, 236-237

Disibodenberg, nuns’ convent attached to, 262

Dollendis, _see_ Rolendis

Dominican friars, abroad, 291, 295, 332;

in England, 309

Dominican nuns, 364

Dominican nunneries, number of, in England, 364

Dorothy Barley, abbess at Barking, 455

Dorstad, convent at, 418

Eadburg, abbess at Thanet, 120, 121, 122, 123, 225

Eadburga, 84

Eadgifu, abbess at Leominster, 202

Eadgith, nun at Barking, 112

Ealdgith, nun at Barking, 113

Ealdhelm, interested in nuns, 112-115, 172, 226

Eangith, correspondent of Boniface, 118, 128-131

Eanswith, St, of Folkestone, 83

Earcongotha, St, 78, 85

Easebourne, convent at, 360, 366, 376, 403, 404-406

Easington, convent at, 93

East Dereham, convent at, 96

ebdomary, office of, 390

Ebsdorf, convent at, 236

Ecgburg, abbess at Repton, 109, 126

Edelind, abbess at Niedermünster, 241

Edigna, St, 27

Edward’s, St, convent of, at Shaftesbury, _see_ Shaftesbury

Eger, convent of St Clara at, 466

Eichstätt, convent of St Walburg at, 421

Einbeth or Einbetta, St, 40

Eleanor, queen, takes the veil at Amesbury, 201

elemosinaria, office of, 378

Elisabeth, St, of Thüringen and Hungary, 285, 295, 298-304

Elisabeth, St, nun at Schönau, 257, 277-285, 429

Elisabeth Krelin, abbess at Heggbach, 421

Elisabeth von Mansfeld, nun at Helfta, 329

Elisabeth von Seckendorf, abbess at Eichstätt, 421

Elizabeth Barton, 439

Elizabeth Shelley, abbess at Winchester, 448, 449, 454, 455

Elizabeth Zouche, abbess at Shaftesbury, 455

Elizabeth Throgmerton, abbess at Dennis, 450

Elizabeth Walton, nun at Cambridge, 367, 368

Elizabeth Webb, prioress at Sopwell, 410

Ellandune, convent at, _see_ Wilton

Elstow, convent at, 204 footnote, 377

Ely, convent at, 95-106, 202, 225, 226

embroidery done by nuns, 224 ff.

Engelthal, convent at, 471

Eormenhild, St, abbess at Sheppey and Ely, 100

Erasmus, on canons, 195,

on the position of women, 429 ff.

Erfurt, convent at, 236

eruditrix, office of, 379

Essen, convent at, 148, 149, 151, 232

Ethel-, _see_ under Aethel-

Eufemia, abbess at Winchester, 366

Eulalia, abbess at Shaftesbury, 210

Eulalia, nun at Barking, 113

Euphemia Pirckheimer, abbess at Bergen, 460

Eustadiola, St, abbess at Bourges, 230

Eutropia, 35, _see_ Ontkommer

Eva, recluse, 211

Everhild, St, 111

‘Exercitia Spiritualia,’ by St Gertrud, 351 ff.

‘Explanatio regulae St Benedicti,’ by St Hildegard, 270

‘Explanatio symboli St Athanasii,’ by St Hildegard, 270

‘Expositiones Evangeliorum,’ by St Hildegard, 270

Fara, St, abbess at Brie, 76

Faremoutiers, convent at, _see_ Brie

Fécamp, convent at, 77

Felicitas Grundherrin, nun at Nürnberg, 460, 471

Fischbeck, convent at, 418

‘Fliessende, das, Licht der Gottheit,’ by Mechthild, 332 ff.

Flixton, convent at, 369, 377

Florence Bannerman, abbess at Amesbury, 454

Folkestone, convent at, 83, 87

Fontevraud, order of, 193-194, 205

Fortunatus, his connection with nuns, 58-64

Framehild, St, 76

Francis, St, of Assisi, 285, 291, 296, 301, 364

Franciscan friars and nuns, 291, 295, 302, 309, 364, 422

Frankenberg, convent at, 418

French, use of, in convents, 357 ff.

Frideswith, St, of Oxford, 110

Frigith, nun at Hackness, 93

Fuller, on nunneries, 457

Gandersheim, convent at, 148, 151, 152, 154 ff.

Gehulff, 35, _see_ Ontkommer

Geiler, as a reformer of convents, 428

Geisenfeld, convent at, 460

Geneviève, St, of Paris, 26, 43, 51

Genovefa, 26

Georg, St, convent of, at Halle, _see_ Halle

Gerald Barri, on monasticism, 199

Gerberg I, abbess at Gandersheim, 159

Gerberg II, abbess at Gandersheim, 151, 153, 160, 162, 163, 166, 167,

182

Germana, St, 25, 29

Gertrud, St, nun at Helfta, 329, 346 ff.

Gertrud, St, of Nivelles, 7, 23

Gertrud, 26

Gertrud, abbess at Helfta, 329

Gertrud, abbess at Trebnitz, 293, 295, 296

Gertrud von Büchel, nun at Rolandswerth, 429

Gilbert of Sempringham, St, order of, 186, 213-221

Gisela, 147

Gisela, queen of Hungary, 233

Gisleberga, St, 43

Godam Hampton, nun at Barking, 366

Godeleva, St, or Godeleina, 24, 25, 29, 30

Godstow, convent at, 204 footnote, 206, 357, 360, 400, 447, 453

Göss, convent at, 235

Gracedieu, convent at, 449

Grandmont, order of, 186, 199

Gredanna von Freyberg, abbess at Urspring, 421

Gregory of Tours, his connection with nuns, 51 ff.

Gudila, St, 23

Gunthild, St, 7, 27, 35, 139 footnote

Guthlac, his connection with nuns, 108-110, 225

Gutta, scribe, 237

Hackness, convent at, 93, 94, 106

Hadewy, abbess at Herford, 147

‘Hali Meidenhad,’ 326-328

Halle, convent of St Georg at, 418

Hanbury, convent at, 100

Harwold, convent at, 446

Hartlepool, convent at, 88, 89, 90, 94

Hathumod, abbess at Gandersheim, 149, 154-159

Heaburg, called Bugga, nun, 128, 131

Hedwig, St, of Silesia, 291 ff., 298, 299

Hedwig, abbess at Neuss, 152 footnote

Hedwig, duchess of Swabia, 162, 233

Heggbach, convent at, 421

Heiningen, convent at, 236, 418, 419

Heiu, abbess at Hartlepool, 88, 89

Helen, St, 114

Helen, St, convent of, in London, _see_ London

Helena von Iltzen, prioress at Marienberg, 418

Helena Meichnerin, abbess at Nürnberg, 463

Helfta, convent at, 328 ff.

Hereswith, St, 78, 82, 96, 97

Hereswytha, abbess at Sheppey, 87

Herford, convent at, 147, 148, 149, 155

Heriburg, abbess at Watton, 91

Herlind, St, abbess at Maaseyck, 230-232

Hersende, abbess at Fontevraud, 194

Heyninges, convent of St Mary at, 449

Hidburg, nun at Barking, 113

Hilarius, verses on recluses, 211

Hild, St, of Whitby, 82, 89 ff., 96

Hildegard, St, of Bingen, 256 ff., 429

Hildelith, St, abbess at Barking, 112, 113, 121

Hildemarque, 77

Hilp, 11, 35, _see_ Ontkommer

‘Hodoeporicon’ by anonymous nun, 139 ff.

Hohenburg, convent at, 22, 24, 238 ff.

‘Hortus Deliciarum,’ by Herrad, 238 ff.

Hrotsvith, abbess at Gandersheim, 160

Hrotsvith, nun at Gandersheim, 143, 153, 154-183, 429

Ida, St, ancestress of Liudolfings, 23 footnote

Ida, abbess at St Maria (on the Münzenberg?), 152 footnote

Ida, ancestress of Karlings, 23

Ida, nun at Bronope, 419

Ida, nun at Gandersheim, 151, 152 footnote

Idonea, nun, 212

Iduberga, 43

Idung, on nuns, 198

infirmaria, 378

Ingetrud, abbess at Tours, 51, 58, 69, 70

Inthware or Iuthware, 30

Irmina, St, 40

Isabel Jordan, abbess at Wilton, 438

Isengard von Greiffenklau, 421

Itta, 43

Jane Gowryng, 443

Jane Messyndyne, 447

Joan Ashcomb, nun at Shaftesbury, 366

Joan Chapell, prioress at Sopwell, 410

Joan Darrell, abbess at Amesbury, 454

Joan Formage, abbess at Shaftesbury, 366

Joan Lancaster, prioress at Cambridge, 367, 368

Joan Sandford, prioress at Heyninges, 449

Joan Rawlins, prioress at Bromhall, 436

Johan or Jane Arundell, abbess at Legh, 368

Johanna de Northampton, prioress at Catesby, 368

John of Salisbury, on monks and nuns, 200, 201

Jouarre, convent at, 76

Joyce Bykeley, prioress at Catesby, 448

Juliana, St, legend of, 326, 327

Juliana, prioress at Bromhall, 369

Juliana Baucyn, abbess at Shaftesbury, 365

Justina, nun at Barking, 113

Juthware, _see_ Inthware

Jutta, St, 338

Jutta, ‘magistra,’ at Disibodenberg, 262

Katharina Pirckheimer, prioress at Geisenfeld, 460

Katharine, St, life of, by Clemence of Barking, 357

Katherine Babington, nun at Campsey, 360

Katherine Bulkeley, abbess at Godstow, 453

Katherine Sayntlow, nun at Cambridge, 367

Katheryne Wyngate, nun at Elstow, 377

Kilburn, convent at, 206, 360, 376

Kirkless, convent at, 452, 453

kitchener or cook, office of, 216, 375

Kizzingen, convent at, 138, 273, 292, 293, 303

Kleinfrankenthal, convent at, 420

Krischmerge, 41

Kümmerniss, _see_ Ontkommer

Kunigund, St, empress, 232

Kunigundis, St, 40

‘Land of Cockayne,’ 411

Langendorf, convent at, 415

Langland, on nuns, 406

Laon, convent at, 77

Las Huelgas, convent at, 191

Laycock, convent at, 441, 448

leader of the choir or precentrix, succentrix, cantarista, 216, 368,

378, 391

‘Legatus Divinae Pietatis,’ by St Gertrud, 348 ff.

Legbourne, convent at, 446

Legh, convent of, or Canonlegh or Minchenlegh, 358, 368

legister or reader, office of, 391

Leobgith, _see_ Lioba

Leominster, convent at, 202

Leonard, St, convent of, _see_ Stratford

Leubover, abbess at Poitiers, 65 ff., 226

Leukardis, scribe, 237

Liberata, St, or Liberatrix, 35, 37, _see_ Ontkommer

Lillechurch, convent at, 212, 436

Liming, convent at, 84, 87

Lindesay on convent life, 456

Linthildis, _see_ Lufthildis

Lioba, St, 117, 134 ff.

Littlemore, convent at, 437

Little Marlow, convent at, 442

Liutberg, recluse, 147

Livrade, 35, _see_ Ontkommer

Liwid, embroideress, 226

London, convent of Poor Clares, or Minories, 364

London, convent of St Helen in, 378

Lucia, abbess at Shaftesbury, 366

Lucie, St, of Sampigny, 25

Lufthildis, St, 25, 26, 42

Lul, his correspondence with nuns, 134, 137, 138

Lüne, convent at, 236

‘Luve Ron,’ 310

Maaseyck, convent at, 231-232

magistra noviciarum, _see_ mistress of the novices

Mallersdorf, convent at, 237

Malling, convent at, 204 footnote, 363, 380, 443 footnote

Margaret, St, legend of, 326

Margaret, St, queen of Scotland, 207-208, 289

Margaret Punder, prioress at Flixton, 369

Margaret Tewkesbury, abbess at Delapray, 447

Margaret Vernon, prioress at Little Marlow, 443

Maria, St, convent of, at Cöln etc., _see_ Cöln etc.

Mariahilf, 11, 35

Mariasif, 11

Marienberg, convent at, in Saxony, 418-419

Marienberg, convent at, near Trier, 421

Marienborn, convent at, 420

Mariensee, convent at, 417

Marricks, convent of St Andrew, 449, 456

Mary, St, the Virgin, 9, 10, 11

Mary and Martha, as types of activity, 305, 314, 324, 325

Mary, St, convent of, at Chester etc., _see_ Chester etc.

Mary, daughter of St Margaret, 207, 209

Mary of Blois, abbess at Romsey, 201, 212

Mathea Fabyan, nun at Barking, 377

Mathilde, abbess at Essen, 151, 232

Mathilde, abbess at Kizzingen, 292, 303

Mathilde, abbess at Quedlinburg, 149, 151, 153, 232

Mathilde, abbess at Villich, 152 footnote

Matilda, abbess at Amesbury, 201

Matilda, abbess at Winchester, 210

Matilda, queen, 207 ff., 289 ff., 298

Matilda Sudbury, nun at Cambridge, 367

Maxima, abbess, 113

Mechthild, 7

Mechthild, beguine, 305, 329, 330, 331-340

Mechthild, nun at Helfta, 329, 330, 340-346

Mechthild von Wippra, nun, 329

Mechtund, St, 40

Mergate, convent at, 227

Mildburg, St, of Wenlock, 85, 121

Mildgith, St, 85

Mildthrith, St, of Thanet, 85-86

Minories, _see_ London, convent of Poor Clares

Minstre in Thanet, _see_ Thanet

mistress of the novices, magistra noviciarum, 217, 378

Modwen, St, 111 and footnote, 446 footnote

Montreuil-les-Dames, convent at, 191

Münich, convent of St Clara at, 460

Münzenberg, convent of St Maria on the, 152 footnote

mynchyn, use of word, 364 footnote, 368, 454

Neuss, convent at, 152 footnote

Neuwerk, convent at Erfurt, 418

Nider, on nuns, 459

Niedermünster, convent, 241

Nigel Wirecker on monks and nuns, 200

Nivelles, convent at, 152 footnote

Norbert, St, order of, _see_ Prémontré

Notburg, St, 34

Notburg, St, or Nuppurg, 26

Notburg, 24

Nunappleton, convent at, 452, 453

Nun-Cotham, convent at, 207 footnote

Nun-Kelyng, convent at, 453

Nun-Monkton, convent at, 357

Nunnaminster, _see_ Winchester, convent of St Mary at

Odilia, St, 22, 24, 240, 251

Ontkommer or Wilgefortis, St, 35-38, 43

‘opus anglicum,’ 228

‘Order of Fair Ease,’ on religious orders, 201

Osburg, 111 and footnote

Osburg, nun at Barking, 113

Osgith, 113 footnote

Osith, St, 110

Oswen, St, or Osman, 30

Oxenfurt, convent at, 138

Paris, convent at, 51, 76

Paula, St, of Avila, 36 footnote

Pavilly, convent at, 76

Pega, St, 109, 110

Pellmerge, 41

Peter of Blois, corresponding with nuns, 213

Petronille, abbess at Fontevraud, 194

Pfälzel or Palatiolum, convent at, 124

Pharaildis, St, 21, 22, 23, 27 footnote, 30, 34

Pietrussa, abbess at Trebnitz, 293, 295

Pillenreuth, convent at, 471

Poitiers, convent at, 51 ff.

Polesworth, convent at, 447

Pollesloe, convent at, 448

portress, office of, 217

Prague, convent of St Clara at, 296

precentrix, _see_ leader of the choir

Prée, convent of St Mary, 366, 408, 410

Prémontré, order of, 186, 193-194

prioress, position and office of, 204, 216, 370 ff.

profession and consecration of nuns, 379-380

Pusinna, St, 147

Quedlinburg, convent, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 232, 233

Radegund, St, of Poitiers, 45, 51-65, 225

Radegund, St, or Radiane, 27, 29, 34, 35

Radegund, St, convent of, _see_ Cambridge, convent of St Radegund

Ramsen, convent at, 420

Redlingfield, convent at, 363, 377, 378

refectuaria, office of, 378

Regenfled, 35, _see_ Ontkommer

Regenfrith, 35, _see_ Ontkommer

Regina, St, 29

Reinild, St, abbess at Maaseyck, 230-232

Reinildis, St, 23

Relind, abbess at Hohenburg, 241

Repton, convent at, 108, 126, 202

Richardis, nun at Bingen, 272

Richmondis van der Horst, abbess at Seebach, 428

Rikkardis, nun at Gandersheim, 161, 163

Robert, St, founder of the order of Fontevraud, 193

Rolandswerth, convent at, 429

Rolendis, St, 27, 42

Romsey, convent at, 201, 207, 208, 209, 212, 357, 360, 378

Rosa, 211

Rosalia, St, of Palermo, 18

Rusper, convent at, 380, 381, 403, 404

Ryhall, convent at, 107

Sabina Pirckheimer, abbess at Bergen, 460, 474

Saethrith, St, or Syre, 77, 85, 96

Salaberg, St, 77

Scheurl, his connection with nuns, 460, 464

Scholastica, nun at Barking, 113

Schönau, convent at, 278 ff.

Schönfeld, convent at, 420

Schwellmerge, 41

scrutatrix, _see_ sercher

Seebach, convent at, 428

Sempringham, order of, 186, 195, 201, 213-221

sercher or scrutatrix, 216

Seton, convent of, 403, 451

Sexburg, St, 84, 96, 100

sexton, office of, 370, 371, 390

Shaftesbury, convent of St Edward at, 203, 204, 210, 357, 365, 366, 376,

379, 455

Sheppey, convent at, 84, 87, 96, 100, 205, 379

Sigegith, 113

Sinningthwaite, convent at, 207

Sion, convent at, 360, 364, 383 ff., 439