FISH OUT OF WATER
De sorte qu'une Religieuse hors de sa cloture est comme une pierre
hors de son centre; comme un arbre hors de terre; comme Adam et Eve
hors du Paradis terrestre; comme le corbeau hors de l'arche qui ne
s'arreste qu'a des charognes; comme un poisson hors de l'eau, selon le
grand Saint Antoine et Saint Bernard; comme une brebis hors de sa
bergerie et en danger d'estre devoree des loups, selon Saint Theodore
Studite; comme un oiseau hors de son nid et une grenouille hors de son
marais, selon le meme Saint Bernard; comme un mort hors de son
tombeau, qui infecte les personnes qui s'en approchent, selon Pierre
le Venerable et la Regle attribuee a Saint Jerome; et par consequent
dans un etat tout a fait oppose a la vie Reguliere qu'elle a
embrassee.
J. B. THIERS (1681).
The famous chapter LXVI of the Benedictine Rule enunciated the principle
that the professed monk should remain within the precincts of his cloister
and eschew all wandering in the world[1067]. It is clear, however, that
the Rule allowed a certain latitude and that monks and nuns were to be
allowed to leave their houses under certain conditions and for necessary
causes. Brethren working at a distance or going on a journey may be
excused attendance at the divine office, if they cannot reach the church
in time[1068]. Brethren sent upon an errand are forbidden to accept
invitations to eat outside the house without the consent of their
superior[1069]. Moreover longer journeys are plainly contemplated, in
which they might have to spend a night or more outside their
monastery[1070]. But no one might ever leave the cloister bounds without
the permission of the superior; and it was the obvious intention of St
Benedict to reduce to a minimum all wandering in the world. Strictly
speaking this system of enclosure applied equally to monks and to nuns;
but from the earliest times it was considered to be a more vital necessity
for the well being of the latter; and the history of the enclosure
movement is in effect the history of an effort to add a fourth vow of
claustration to the three cardinal vows of the nun[1071]. The reasons for
this severity are sufficiently obvious, and show that curious
contradiction of ideas which is so common in all general theories about
women. On the one hand the immense importance attached by the medieval
Church to the state of virginity, exemplified in St John Chrysostom's
remarks that Christian virgins are as far above the rest of mankind as are
the angels, made it all important that this priceless jewel should not be
exposed to danger in a wicked world[1072]. On the other hand the medieval
contempt for the fragility of women led to a cynical conviction that only
when they were shut up behind the high walls of the cloister was it
possible to guarantee their virtue; _aut virum aut murum oportet mulierem
habere_[1073]. Both views received support from the deep-rooted idea as
old as the Greeks and an unconscionable time in dying, that "a free woman
should be bounded by the street door"[1074]. Medieval moralists were
generally agreed that intercourse with the world was at the root of all
those evils which dimmed the fair fame of the conventual system, by
affording a constant temptation to frivolity and to grosser misconduct.
Moreover the tongue of scandal was always busy and the nun's reputation
was safe only if she could be placed beyond reproach. Hence those
regulations which Mr Coulton compares to "the minutely ingenious and
degrading precautions of an oriental harem"[1075].
Based upon such considerations as these, the movement for the enclosure of
nuns began very early in their history and continued with unabated vigour
long after the Reformation[1076]. Some years before the compilation of the
Benedictine Rule St Caesarius of Arles, in his Rule for nuns, had
forbidden them ever to leave their monastery; and from the sixth to the
eleventh century decrees were passed from time to time by various
provincial councils, advocating a stricter enclosure of monks and nuns,
but especially of the latter. Already by the twelfth century monasticism
had declined from its first fervour, and it is significant that the
reformed orders which sprang up during the great renaissance of that
century all made a special effort to enforce enclosure upon their nuns.
The nuns of Premontre and Fontevrault were strictly enclosed and in the
middle of the following century the statutes promulgated by the
Chapter-General of the Cistercian Order (1256-7) contain a clause ordering
nuns to remain in their convents, except under certain specified
conditions, while the rule given by Urban IV to the Franciscan nuns (1263)
went further than any previous enactments in binding them by a vow of
perpetual enclosure, against which no plea of necessity might avail.
Various synods and councils continued to repeat the order that nuns were
not to leave their houses, except for a reasonable cause, but it is plain
from the evidence of ecclesiastics, moralists and episcopal visitations
that the nuns all over Europe paid small heed to their words. Finally, at
the beginning of the new century, came the first general regulation on the
subject which was binding as a law upon the whole church, the famous Bull
_Periculoso_, promulgated by Boniface VIII about the year 1299.
This decree, often afterwards confirmed by Popes and Councils, remained
the standard regulation upon the subject and in view of its cardinal
importance its terms are worthy of notice:
Desiring to provide for the perilous and detestable state of certain
nuns, who, having slackened the reins of decency and having
shamelessly cast aside the modesty of their order and of their sex,
sometimes gad about outside their monasteries in the dwellings of
secular persons, and frequently admit suspected persons within the
same monasteries, to the grave offence of Him to Whom they have, of
their own will, vowed their innocence, to the opprobrium of religion
and to the scandal of very many persons; we by the present
constitution, which shall be irrefragably valid, decree with healthful
intent that all and sundry nuns, present and future, to whatever order
they belong and in whatever part of the world, shall henceforth remain
perpetually enclosed within their monasteries; so that no nun tacitly
or expressly professed in religion shall henceforth have or be able to
have the power of going out of those monasteries for whatsoever reason
or cause, unless perchance any be found manifestly suffering from a
disease so great and of such a nature that she cannot, without grave
danger or scandal, live together with others; and to no dishonest or
even honest person shall entry or access be given by them, unless for
a reasonable and manifest cause and by a special licence from the
person to whom [the granting of such a licence] pertains; that so,
altogether withdrawn from public and mundane sights, they may serve
God more freely and, all opportunity for wantonness being removed,
they may more diligently preserve for Him in all holiness their souls
and their bodies.
The Bull further, in order to avoid any excuse for wandering abroad in
search of alms, forbids the reception into any non-mendicant order of more
sisters than can be supported without penury by the goods of the house;
and, in order to prevent nuns being forced to attend lawcourts in person,
requires all secular and ecclesiastical authorities to allow them to plead
by proctors in their courts; but if an Abbess or Prioress has to do
personal homage to a secular lord for any fief and it cannot be done by a
proctor, she may leave her house with honest and fit companions and do the
homage, returning home immediately. Finally Ordinaries are enjoined to
take order as soon as may be for proper enclosure where there is none to
provide that it is strictly kept according to the terms of the decree, and
to see that all is completed by Ash Wednesday, notifying any reasonable
impediment within eight days of Candlemas[1077].
For the next three centuries Councils and Bishops struggled manfully to
put into force the Bull _Periculoso_, but without success; the constant
repetition of the order that nuns should not leave their convents is the
measure of its failure. In the various reformed orders, which were founded
in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the insistence upon enclosure
bears witness to the importance which was attached to it as a vital
condition of reform: Boniface IX's ordinances for the Dominicans (1402),
St Francis of Paula's rule for his order in Calabria (1435), the rule of
the Order of the Annunciation, founded by Jeanne, daughter of Louis XI, at
the close of the fifteenth century, Johann Busch's reforms in Saxony, the
reformed rules given by Etienne Poncher, Bishop of Paris, to the nuns of
Chelles, Montmartre and Malnoue (1506) and by Geoffrey de Saint Belin,
Bishop of Poitiers, to the nuns of the Holy Cross, Poitiers (1511), all
insist upon strict enclosure[1078]. Similarly a long list might be drawn
up of general and provincial councils and synods which repeated the
ordinance, culminating in the great general Council of Trent, which
renewed the decree _Periculoso_ and was itself followed by another long
series of provincial councils, which endeavoured to put its decree into
force. But these efforts were still attended by very imperfect success,
for the worldly nuns of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries chafed at
the irksome restriction no less than did their predecessors of the middle
ages. When, in 1681, Jean-Baptiste Thiers published his treatise on the
enclosure of nuns he announced his reason to be that no point of
ecclesiastical discipline was in his day more completely neglected and
ignored[1079].
This brief sketch of the enclosure movement in the Western Church is
necessary to a right understanding of the special attempts which were made
in England to keep the nuns in their cloisters by means of an absolute
enforcement of the Benedictine Rule. Visitatorial injunctions on this
subject during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and up to the
Reformation were based upon three enactments: the constitutions of the
legate Ottobon in 1268, the vigorous reforms of Archbishop Peckham
(1279-92) and the Bull _Periculoso_. The Cardinal Legate Ottobon had come
to England in 1265, on the restoration of Henry III after Evesham, with
the purpose of punishing bishops and clergy who had supported the party of
Simon de Montfort and the barons. When peace was finally signed in 1267,
largely by his intervention, he was able to turn his attention to general
abuses prevalent in the English church and one of the reforms which he
attempted to enforce was the stricter enclosure of nuns. Chapter LII of
his _Constitutions_ [_Quod moniales a certis locis non exeant_] is an
amplification of the Benedictine rule of enclosure, made far more rigid
and severe. "Lest by repeated intercourse with secular folk the quiet and
contemplation of the nuns should be troubled," minute regulations were
laid down as to their movements. They were allowed to enter their chapel,
chapter, dorter and frater at due and fixed times; otherwise they were to
remain in the cloister; and none of these places were to be entered by
seculars, save very seldom and for some sufficient reason. No nun was to
converse with any man, except seriously and in a public place, and at
least one other nun was always to be present at such conversations. No nun
was to have a meal outside the house except with the permission of the
superior and then only with a relative, or some person from whose company
no suspicion could arise. All other places, beyond those specified, were
entirely forbidden to the nuns, with the exception, in certain
circumstances, of the infirmary. No nun was to go to the different
offices, except the obedientiaries, whose duties rendered it necessary and
they were never to go without a companion. The Abbess or head of the house
was never to leave it, except for its evident advantage or for urgent
necessity, and she was always to have an honest companion, while the
lesser nuns were never to be given licence to go out, except for some fit
cause and in company with another nun. Finally nuns were not to leave
their convents for public processions, but were to hold their processions
within the precincts of their own houses. The legate strictly enjoined
that "the prelates to whose jurisdiction belonged the visitation of each
nunnery should cause these statutes to be observed"[1080].
It will be realised that these injunctions were exceedingly severe and
that the visitors were not likely to find their task a sinecure. There is
little evidence for determining how far any serious attempt was made to
enforce the legate's Constitutions[1081], but if we may judge from the
language of Peckham, some ten years later, any attempts which may have
been made had not been strikingly successful. One of the first actions of
this energetic archbishop on his elevation to the see of Canterbury was to
carry out a visitation of the nunneries of Barking and Godstow and to
send to both houses injunctions laying great stress on strict enclosure
(1279). In 1281 he followed up these injunctions by two general decrees
for the enclosure of nuns; and in 1284 he visited the three nunneries of
Romsey, Holy Sepulchre (Canterbury) and Usk and sent injunctions enforcing
the Constitutions of 1281[1082]. In these injunctions he laid down with
great exactness the conditions to be observed in granting nuns permission
to leave their convents. The Godstow injunction runs thus:
For the purpose of obtaining a surer witness to chastity, we ordain
that nuns shall not leave the precincts of the monastery, save for
necessary business which cannot be performed by any other persons.
Hence we condemn for ever, by these present [letters] those sojourns
which were wont to be made in the houses of friends, for the sake of
pleasure and of escaping from discipline [_ad solatium et ad
subterfugium disciplinae_]. And when it shall befall any [nuns] to go
out for any necessity, we strictly order these four [conditions] to be
observed. First, that they be permitted to go out only in safe and
mature company, as well of nuns as of secular persons helping them.
Secondly that having at once performed their business, so far as it
can be by them performed, they return to their house; and if the
performance of the business demand a delay of several days, after the
first or second day it shall be left to proctors to finish it. Thirdly
that they never lodge in the precincts of men of religion or in the
houses of clergy, or in other suspected habitations. Fourthly that no
one absent herself from the sight of her companion or companions, in
any place where human conversation might be held, nor listen to any
secret whispering, except in the presence of the nuns her companions,
unless perchance father or mother, brother or sister have something
private to say to her[1083].
The Barking injunctions are slightly different and the first condition
imposed therein is interesting: "That they be sent forth only for a
necessary and inevitable cause, that is in particular the imminent death
of a parent, beyond which cause we can hardly imagine any other which
would be sufficient"[1084]. These injunctions are very severe, since they
limit the occasions upon which a nun might leave her convent to the
performance of some negotiation connected with the business of the house
and to attendance at the deathbeds of relatives and entirely forbid all
visits for pleasure to the houses of friends.
In 1281 Peckham published a mandate directed against the seducers of nuns;
after excommunicating all who committed or attempted to commit this crime
and declaring that absolution for the sentence could be given only by a
Bishop or by the Pope (except on the point of death), he proceeded to deal
with the question of the enclosure of nuns, on the ground that their
wandering in the world gave opportunity for such crimes, and sternly
forbade them to pay visits for the sake of recreation, even to the closest
relatives, or to remain out of their houses for more than two days on
business[1085]. The same year he also dealt with the subject in the course
of a set of constitutions, concerning various abuses, which he considered
to be in need of reform. The language of the chapter in which he treats of
the claustration of nuns is in parts the same as that of the ordinance
against seducers, but it is less severe, for it enacts only that nuns
shall not stay "more than three natural days for the sake of recreation,
or more than six days for any necessary reason, save in case of illness."
Moreover the Archbishop adds: "we do not extend this ordinance to those
who are obliged to beg necessities of life, while they are begging"[1086].
It was this modified version of his ordinance which he tried to impose in
his visitation of 1284, for at Romsey he recognised that the nuns might be
leaving the house for recreation and not merely upon the business of the
convent; the Abbess, for instance, is to take her three coadjutresses with
her when she goes out on business, and two of them if she go _causa
solatii_. At this house he forbade nuns to go out without a companion, or
to stay for more than three days with seculars and condemned their
practice of eating and drinking in the town: no nun, either on leaving or
returning to the convent, was to enter any house in the town of Romsey, or
to eat or drink there, and no cleric or secular man or woman was to give
them any food outside the precincts[1087]. At St Sepulchre (Canterbury)
Peckham regulated the visits of nuns to confessors outside the house, and
at Usk he ordered that no nun was to go out without suitable companions,
or to stay more than three or four days in the houses of secular
persons[1088].
The next effort made in England to enforce enclosure upon nuns was the
result of Boniface VIII's Bull _Periculoso_. Bishops' registers about the
year 1300 sometimes contain copies of this severe enactment. One of the
earliest efforts to carry it out was made by Simon of Ghent, Bishop of
Salisbury, who on November 28th, 1299, issued a long letter to the Abbess
of Wilton (obviously inserted in the register as a specimen of a circular
sent to each nunnery in the diocese), embodying the text of the bull and
ordering her to put it into force, and in 1303 he issued a mandate for the
enclosure of the nuns of Shaftesbury, Wilton, Amesbury, Lacock, Tarrant
Keynes and Kington[1089]. The Register of Godfrey Giffard, Bishop of
Worcester, contains a note in the year 1300:
As to the shutting up of nuns. It is expedient that a letter of
warning be sent according to the form of the constitution and directed
to every house of nuns, that they do what is necessary for their
inclusion and cause themselves to be enclosed this side the Gule of
August.
The Bishop seems however from the beginning to have doubted his capacity
to carry out the decree, for further on the register contains another
note, "As to whether it is expedient to enclose the nuns of the diocese of
Worcester"[1090]. An undated note of _Inhibiciones facte monialibus de
Werewell_ in the Register of John of Pontoise, Bishop of Winchester, among
other documents belonging to 1299-1300, is probably in part a result of
_Periculoso_:
We forbid on pain of excommunication any nun or sister to go outside
the bounds of the monastery until we have made some ordinance
concerning enclosure. Item let no one be received as nun or sister
until we have enquired more fully into the resources of the house.
Item we order the abbess to remove all secular women and to receive
none henceforth as boarders in their house. Item let her permit no
secular clerk or layman to enter the cloister to speak with the
nuns[1091].
But the most detailed information as to the efforts of a conscientious
bishop to enforce Boniface VIII's decree in England is contained in the
Register of Bishop Dalderby of Lincoln. Dalderby was a new broom in the
diocese and he determined to sweep clean. On June 17th, 1300, he directed
a mandate to the archdeacons of his diocese ordering each to associate
with himself some other mature and honest man and to visit the religious
houses in his own archdeaconry, explaining the terms of the new bull
intelligibly to the nuns and ordering them to remain within their
nunneries and to permit no one to enter the precincts contrary to the
tenour of the decree, until the Bishop should be able to visit them in
person; the heads of the houses were to be specially warned to carry out
the decree and for better security a sealed copy of it was to be deposited
in each house by the commissioners[1092].
In the course of the next two months Dalderby visited, either in person or
by commissioners, Marlow, Burnham, Flamstead, Markyate, Elstow, Goring,
Studley, Godstow, Delapre (Northampton) and Sewardsley[1093]. At each
house the bull was carefully explained to the nuns in the vulgar tongue,
they were ordered to obey it and a copy was left with them. But this
campaign was not unattended with difficulties. The nuns were bitterly
opposed to the restriction of a freedom to which they were accustomed and
which they heartily enjoyed, and an entry in Dalderby's Register,
describing his visitation of Markyate, shows that even in the middle ages
a bishop's lot was not a happy one:
On July 3rd, in the first year [of his consecration], the Bishop
visited the house of nuns of Markyate and on the following day he
caused to be recited before the nuns of the same [house] in chapter
the statute put forth by the lord Pope Boniface VIII concerning the
enclosure of nuns, explained it in the vulgar tongue and giving them
a copy of the same statute under his seal, ordered them in virtue of
obedience henceforth to observe it in the matter of enclosure and of
all things contained in it, and especially to close all doors by which
entrance is had into the inner places of their house and to permit no
person, whether dishonest or honest, to enter in to them, without
reasonable and manifest cause and licence from the person to whom [the
granting of such a licence] pertains. Furthermore he specially
enjoined the Prioress to observe the said statute in all its articles
and to cause it to be observed by the others. But when the Bishop was
going away, certain of the nuns, disobedient to these injunctions,
hurled the said statute at his back and over his head, and as well the
Prioress as the convent appeared to consent to those who threw it,
following the bishop to the outer gate of the house and declaring
unanimously that they were not content in any way to observe such a
statute. On account of which, the Bishop, who was then directing his
steps to Dunstable, returned the next day and having made inquisition
as to the matters concerned in the said statute, imposed a penance on
four nuns, whom he found guilty and on the whole convent for their
consent, as is more fully contained in his letters of correction sent
to the aforesaid house.
Afterwards he sent letters to the recalcitrant convent warning them for
the third time (they had already been warned once by the Official of the
Archdeacon of Bedford and a second time at the visitation which has just
been described) to keep the new decree, on pain of the major
excommunication, from which only the Pope could absolve them[1094].
There was opposition at other convents, too, though we hear of no more
attacks on the episcopal shoulders. On August 19th Dalderby wrote as
follows to Master Benedict de Feriby, rector of Broughton, Northants (a
church in the presentation of the Abbess and Convent of Delapre):
It has come to our ears, by clamorous rumour, that some of the nuns of
our diocese, spurning good obedience, slackening the reins of honesty
and shamelessly casting aside the modesty of their sex, despise the
papal statute concerning enclosure directed to them, as well as our
injunctions made to them upon the subject, and frequent cities and
other public places outside their monasteries, and mingle in the
haunts of men;
he proceeded to order Feriby to visit nunneries wherever he considered it
expedient to do so, and to punish those who were guilty of breaking the
statute, signifying to the Bishop, by a certain date, the names of all
who had been accused of doing so, whether they had been found guilty or
not[1095]. This mandate is no doubt in part explained by two other letters
which he dispatched on the same day; one of them was directed to the
Archdeacon of Northampton and set forth (in language which often repeats
_verbatim_ the phrases of the papal bull) that at the Bishop's recent
visitation of Delapre (Northampton) he had found three nuns in apostasy,
having cast off their habits after being a long time professed, and left
their house to live a secular life in the world[1096]. The other letter
contains a sentence of the greater excommunication against a nun of
Sewardsley, for similar conduct[1097]. These cases of apostasy were less
rare than might be imagined; Dalderby had to deal with two others during
his episcopate, one at St Michael's, Stamford[1098], and the other at
Goring[1099]; and during the rule of his predecessor Sutton three nuns had
escaped from Godstow and one from Wothorpe[1100]. They illustrate the
undoubted truth that it was only the existence (already in the thirteenth
century) of very grave disorders, which led reformers like Ottobon,
Peckham and Boniface VIII to "beat the air" with such severe restrictions.
These three documents, the Constitutions of Ottobon and of Peckham and the
Bull _Periculoso_, were the standard decrees on the subject of the
claustration of nuns in England and were used as a model by visitors in
the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. William of Wykeham, for example,
in the exceptionally full and formal injunctions which he sent to Romsey
and to Wherwell in 1387 continually refers by name to Ottobon and to
Peckham, and the wording of the Bull _Periculoso_ is followed _verbatim_
in the mandate directed by Bishop Grandisson of Exeter to Canonsleigh in
1329 and in the commission sent by his successor Bishop Brantyngham to two
canons of Exeter in 1376, concerning the wanderings of the nuns of
Polsloe. But a study of the visitation documents of the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries makes it clear that the nuns never really made any
attempt to obey the regulations which imposed a strict enclosure upon
them; and that the bishops upon whom fell the brunt of administering
_Periculoso_ themselves allowed a considerable latitude, directing their
efforts towards regulating the conditions under which nuns left their
convents, rather than to keeping them within the precincts. _Le mieux est
l'ennemi du bien_ and the steady opposition of the nuns forced a
compromise upon their visitors. The canonist John of Ayton, reciting the
decrees of Ottobon and of Boniface, with their injunction that bishops
shall "cause them to be observed," exclaims
Cause to be observed! But surely there is scarce any mortal man who
could do this: we must therefore here understand "so far as lieth in
the prelate's power." For the nuns answer roundly to these statutes or
to any others promulgated against their wantonness, saying "In truth
the men who made these laws sat well at their ease, while they laid
such burdens upon us by these hard and intolerable restrictions!"
Wherefore we see in fact that these statutes are a dead letter or are
ill-kept at the best. Why, then, did the holy fathers thus labour to
beat the air? Yet indeed their toil is none the less to their own
merit; for we look not to that which is but to that which of justice
should be[1101].
Dalderby's experience at Markyate shows that John of Ayton's picture was
not too highly coloured, and since it was impossible to enforce "hard and
intolerable restrictions" without at least a measure of co-operation from
the nuns themselves, the bishops took the only course open to them in
trying to minimise the evil. Their expedients deserve some study, and as a
typical set of episcopal injunctions dealing with journeys by nuns outside
their cloisters it will suffice to quote those sent by Walter Stapeldon,
Bishop of Exeter, to the nunneries of Polsloe and Canonsleigh. These rules
were drawn up in 1319, only twenty years after the publication of the Bull
_Periculoso_, but they are already far removed from the strict ideal of
Boniface VIII. Stapeldon was a practical statesman and he evidently
realised that the enforcement of strict enclosure was impossible in a
diocese where the nuns had been used to considerable freedom and where all
the counties of the West saw them upon their holidays.
The clauses dealing with the subject run as follows:
_De visitacione amicorum._ No lady of religion is to go and visit her
friends outside the priory, but if it be once a year at the most and
then for reasonable cause and by permission; and then let her have a
companion professed in the same religion, not of her own choice, but
whomsoever the Prioress will assign to her and she who is once
assigned to her for companion shall not be assigned the next time, so
that each time a lady goes to visit her friends her companion is
changed; and if she have permission to go to certain places to visit
her friends, let her not go to other places without new permission.
_De absencia Dominarum et regressu earum._ Item, when any lady of
religion eats at Exeter, or in another place near by, for reasonable
cause and by permission, whenever she can she ought to return the same
or the following day and each time let her have a companion and a
chaplain, clerk or serving-man of good repute assigned by the
prioress, who shall go, remain and return with them and otherwise they
shall not go; and then let them return speedily to the house, as they
be commanded, and let them not go again to Exeter, wandering from
house to house, as they have oftentimes done, to the dishonour of
their state and of religion. _De Dominabus "Wakerauntes"_ [i.e.
_vagantibus_]. Item, a lady who goes a long distance to visit her
friends, in the aforesaid form, should return to the house within a
month at the latest, or within a shorter space if it be assigned her
by the Prioress, having regard to the distance or proximity of the
place, where dwell the friends whom she is going to visit, but a
longer term ought the Prioress never to give her, save in the case of
death, or of the known illness of herself or of her near friends.
_Pena Dominarum Vagancium._ And if a lady remain without for a long
time or in any other manner than in the form aforesaid, let her never
set foot outside the outer gate of the Priory for the next two years;
and nevertheless let her be punished otherwise for disobedience, in
such manner as is laid down by the rule and observances of the order
of St Benet for the fault; and leave procured by the prayer of her
friends ought not to excuse her from this penance[1102]. No lady of
your religion, professed or unprofessed, shall come to the external
offices outside the door of the cloister to be bled or for any other
feigned excuse, save it be by leave of the Prioress or of the
Subprioress, and then for a fit reason and let her have with her
another professed lady of your religion, to the end that each of them
may see and hear that which the other shall say and do[1103].
The main lines along which the bishops attempted to regulate the movements
of the nuns outside their houses appear clearly in these injunctions. It
was their invariable practice to forbid unlicensed visits, in accordance
with the Benedictine rule; no nun might leave her house without a licence
from her superior and such licences were not to be granted too
easily[1104] or with any show of favouritism[1105]; sometimes the licence
of the Bishop was required as well[1106]. Such licences were not to be
granted often (once a year is usually the specified rule)[1107] and the
bishops sometimes tried to confine the visits of nuns to parents or to
near relatives[1108]. An attempt was also made to regulate the length of
the visits. A maximum number of days was fixed and the nun was to be
punished if she outstayed her leave[1109], except when she was detained by
illness. This maximum differed from time to time and from place to place.
Bishop Stapeldon, it will be recalled, allowed the nuns in his diocese to
remain away for a month and longer; how he reconciled such laxity with his
conscience and the Bull _Periculoso_ is not plain. Archbishop Greenfield,
at the same date, permitted his Yorkshire nuns a maximum visit of fifteen
days[1110], and in 1358 Bishop Gynewell of Lincoln forbade the nuns of
Godstow to remain away for longer than three weeks[1111]. When Alnwick
visited the diocese of Lincoln in 1440-5, he made careful inquiry into
the length of the visits paid by the nuns and at Goring, Gracedieu,
Markyate, Nuncoton and St Michael's, Stamford, he found that the superior
usually gave the nuns licence to remain away a week, though the Prioress
of Studley gave exeats for three or four days only[1112]. A week does not
seem a very lengthy absence, but Alnwick would have lifted horrified
eyebrows at the action of his predecessor Gynewell, for he ordered the
superiors "that ye gyfe no sustere of yowres leue to byde wythe thaire
frendes whan thai visite thaym, overe thre dayes in helthe, and if thai
falle seke, that he do fecche thaym home wythe yn sex dayes"[1113]. He
shared the views of an even stricter reformer, Peckham[1114]. It was often
stipulated that the nuns, whether they went on long or on short journeys,
were to go only to the place which they had received permission to
visit[1115]; and sometimes they were specially told that if they were
obliged to spend the night away from their friends they were to do so,
whenever possible, in another nunnery[1116]. But they were strictly
forbidden to harbour in the houses of monks, friars, or canons[1117]. On
short journeys, or on errands which could be speedily accomplished, they
were forbidden to eat or drink out of their monasteries or to make
unnecessary delay, but were to return at once and in no case to be out
after nightfall[1118]. Moreover it was invariably ordered that a nun was
on no account to leave her house, without another nun of mature age and
good reputation who would be a constant witness to her behaviour[1119];
and both were to wear monastic dress[1120].
The chief aim of the ecclesiastical authorities was, however, to secure
that leave of absence should be granted only for a reasonable cause. All
conciliar and other injunctions for enclosure added a saving clause of
"manifest necessity" and this gave an opening for an infinite variety of
interpretation. The nuns, indeed, could fall back upon a threefold line of
defence against the intolerable restrictions. They could appeal to the
undoubted fact that strict and perpetual enclosure went beyond the
requirements of their rule. They could adduce the custom by which, as long
as their memory ran, nuns had been allowed to leave their convents under
conditions. Finally they could with a little skill, stretch the "manifest
necessity" clause to cover almost all their wanderings. Thus it happened
that in enforcing the Bull _Periculoso_ the visitors of the later middle
ages found themselves obliged to define, more or less widely according to
local conditions, what was and what was not a reasonable cause, and to
combat one after another certain specific excuses put forward by the nuns.
The sternest reformers were agreed that enclosure might be broken, when
the lives of the nuns were endangered. Fire, flood, famine, war and the
ruin of their buildings were universally accepted as reasonable
excuses[1121]. A nun could leave her house to be superior of another
nunnery (a not infrequent practice), or to found new houses or to
establish reform elsewhere.[1122] Moreover when a culprit stood in need
of condign punishment, she might be and often was sent to another house
to do penance among strangers, who would neither sympathise with her nor
run the risk of being contaminated by her[1123].
At this point, however, agreement ceased. The question of illness was
beset with difficulties. It was agreed that a nun might leave her house,
if she suffered from some contagious disease which threatened the health
of her sisters[1124], but opinions differed as to whether any relaxation
was to be allowed in less severe cases, when only her own health was in
question. The visitors sometimes issued licences for nuns to leave their
houses in order to recruit their health; thus in 1303 Josiana de Anelaby,
Prioress of Swine, had licence to absent herself from her house on account
of ill-health[1125], in 1314 Archbishop Greenfield licenced a nun of
Yedingham, who was suffering from dropsy, to visit friends and relatives
with honest company, for the sake of improving her health[1126] and in
1368 Joan Furmage, Abbess of Shaftesbury, actually received a dispensation
to leave the abbey for a year, and reside in her manors, for the sake of
air and recreation[1127]. It is significant that the _Novellae
Definitiones_ of the Cistercian Order in 1350 strictly forbade nuns to go
to the public baths outside their houses, which shows that they had been
in the habit of doing so[1128]. But strict reformers were always opposed
to such licences, and the specific prohibition of exeats for purposes of
cures and convalescences was common in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, when the practice had become almost universal in France[1129].
Again there was some difference of opinion as to whether a nun might leave
her house, in order to enter one professing a stricter rule. Such a desire
was in theory laudable and by Innocent III's decretal _Licet_ the
principle was laid down that a bishop was bound _de jure_ to grant leave
for migration "sub praetextu majoris religionis et ut vitam ducant
arctiorem," as long as the motive of the petitioner was love of God and
not merely _temeritas_[1130]. But _temeritas_ was often to be suspected;
women, as St Francis de Sales complained, were full of whimsies[1131];
ennui, fancy, a craving for change, a friend in another house, might
masquerade as a desire to lead a stricter life elsewhere. Moreover a nun
who desired to remove herself was not unlikely to encounter opposition
from her own convent. An interesting case of such opposition occurred at
Gracedieu in 1447-8. Margaret Crosse, a nun of that house, desired to be
transferred to the Benedictine Priory of Ivinghoe "of a straiter order of
religion and observance, not for a frivolous or empty reason, but that she
may lead a life altogether and entirely harder." She obtained letters of
admission from the Prioress of Ivinghoe, but when she came to ask for
leave to migrate, the Prioress and Convent of Gracedieu refused to release
her from her obedience and confiscated the letters. Bishop Alnwick then
wrote to Gracedieu, requiring the Prioress either to let her go, or to
furnish him with a reason for their refusal. The Prioress and Convent
replied with some acerbity. Margaret, they said, desired to lead a life of
less and not of more restraint and her real object was to join her sister,
who was at that time Prioress of Ivinghoe, if indeed her request were not
a mere pretext for apostasy; for
the said Margaret Crosse has caused and commanded certain goods,
property and jewels belonging to our priory to be stealthily conveyed
by certain of the said Margaret's friends in the flesh from our priory
to foreign and privy places, and to such conveyance done in her name
has lent her authority, with the purpose, as is strongly suspected, of
taking advantage of the darkness one night ... and transferring
herself utterly and entirely of her own motion to places wholly
strange, without having or asking and against our will[1132].
Moreover had the holy father considered the merits of their house and the
loss to it, if Margaret seceded?
Inasmuch as in our priory according to the observances of the rule God
is served and quire is ruled both in reading and singing and chanting
the psalms and toiling in the vineyard of the Lord of Sabaoth at the
canonical hours by day and night, while we also patiently endure
grievous cares, fastings and watchings and further are instant
together in contemplation, even as the holy Spirit designs to give us
His inspiration. And the said Margaret Crosse, who is sufficiently
trained in such regular observances and is very needful for the
service of God in our priory aforesaid, wherein such regular
observances and contemplations are not so fully kept as in our
aforesaid priory ... would give herself to secular business in all
matters, rather than to such contemplation or observance of the rule;
and thereout shall arise to us and our priory not only grievous ill
repute, but also no small loss, especially in that such chantings and
regular observances would in likelihood suffer damage by reason of the
said Margaret's absence[1133].
There is an air of verisimilitude about the injured convent's argument,
though the visitation report of 1440-1 does not show them as the strict
and pious community which they claim to be; but what came of the affair we
do not know.
One plea to lead a stricter life was, however, less open to suspicion;
that was the request to be enclosed as an anchoress. Sometimes an
anchoress had a companion, sometimes a servant[1134], but in any case her
life was stricter than that of a nun, for she devoted herself to constant
prayer and was bound to remain always in her little cell, which was
usually attached to a church. There are several instances of nuns who left
their communities to lead a solitary life in some anchorage. On one
occasion when the nuns of Coldingham had been dispersed by the Scots,
Beatrice de Hodesak left her convent and with the permission of the
Archbishop and of her Prioress retired to an anchorage at St Edmund's
Chapel, near the bridge of Doncaster; another anchoress Sibil de Lisle was
already living there (c. 1300)[1135]. Twenty years later Archbishop Melton
gave Margaret de Punchardon, nun of Arden, permission to be enclosed, as
an anchoress, in the cell attached to St Nicholas' Hospital at Beverley,
in company with Agnes Migregose [? Mucegrose, i.e. Musgrave] already a
recluse there[1136]. The register of Bishop Gray of Lincoln contains an
interesting commission (1435-6) addressed to the Abbot of Thornton,
bidding him enclose Beatrice Franke, a nun of Stainfield, in the parish
church of Winterton, together with the Abbot's certificate that he has
examined her and found her steadfast in her purpose and therefore
shutting up the aforesaid sister Beatrice in a building and enclosure
constructed on the north side of the church and making fast the door
thereof with bolts, bars and keys, we left her in peace and calm of
spirit, as it is believed by the more part, in the joy of her
Saviour[1137].
Some nunneries themselves had anchorages attached, for instance
Davington[1138], Polesworth[1139] and Carrow; and Julian of Norwich,
anchoress at the parish church of Carrow in the fourteenth century, was
one of the most famous mystical writers of the middle ages[1140].
Anchoresses do not seem always to have been content with their life and
the strict preliminary examination of Beatrice Franke "concerning her
withdrawal from the life of a community to the solitary life, concerning
the length of time wherein she had continued in this purpose, concerning
the perils of them that choose such a life and afterwards repent thereof"
was probably a necessary precaution. The register of Bishop Dalderby of
Lincoln contains a mandate to the nuns of Marlow, to readmit one such
faint-heart, Agnes de Littlemore, a lay sister of the house, who had left
it to become an anchoress and had repented of her decision[1141].
Illness and the desire to embrace a stricter rule were exceptional causes
for a temporary breach of enclosure. The great difficulty in administering
_Periculoso_ arose over more usual pretexts. The least objectionable
occasion for leaving cloistral precincts was when convent business
demanded it and this happened frequently to the superior and the
treasuress or cellaress. The journeys which were frequently taken by the
head of a house have already been considered[1142]; but the obedientiaries
also found much scope for wandering in the duties of their offices. The
treasuress and cellaress might be obliged day by day to visit, in the
course of their duties, offices and buildings which lay outside the walls,
and if they were not sober minded women there were ample opportunities for
lingering and gossiping with secular persons and with servants. The
Constitutions of the Legate Ottobon in 1268 attempted to minimise this
danger by enacting that no nun was to go into the different _officinae_,
except those whose offices rendered it necessary to do so, and they were
never to go unaccompanied[1143]. The complaints brought by the nuns of
Gracedieu in 1440-1 against their self-confident cellaress Margaret Belers
show that some such regulation was necessary; it was said that she was
accustomed to visit all the offices by herself, even the granges and other
places where menfolk were working, and that she went there (good zealous
housewife!) "over early in the morning before daybreak"; whereupon Bishop
Alnwick ordered the Prioress to "suffre none of thaym, officiere ne other,
to go to any house of office wythe owte the cloystere, but if ther be an
other nunne approveded in religyone assigned to go wythe hire, eyther to
be wytnesse of others conversatyon"[1144]. Convent business, however,
frequently took the officials further afield than outlying granges and
they undertook journeys hardly less often than did the head of the house.
The Cistercian statutes of 1256-7, in forbidding nuns to leave their
convents, make exception "for the Abbess with two or at most three nuns
and for the cellaress with one, who are permitted to go forth to look
after the business of the house or for other inevitable causes"[1145]. The
evidence of account rolls is invaluable in this connection and shows us
the nuns going marketing or seeking tithes from recalcitrant farmers, or
interviewing tenants about rent. The Chambress of Syon went to London
three times in 1536, doubtless to buy the russets, white cloth, kerseys,
friezes and hollands which figure so largely in her account and to take
the spectacles to be mended; she was a thrifty lady and her expenses were
only 6_d._, 2_d._ and 20_d._ respectively. Her sister the cellaress also
went to London that year and spent 6_d._ on the jaunt[1146]. The nuns of
St Michael's, Stamford, sometimes took long journeys on convent business;
in 1372-3 Dame Katherine Fitzaleyn went "to London and other places about
our tithes," at the heavy cost of 15_s._ 8_d._[1147] From Stamford to
London was a considerable journey, but the convent could not afford to
lose its tithes. The same business took Dame Katherine to the capital
another year; she hired three horses for six days and a serving man to go
with them and she took with her Dame Ida, in accordance with the
regulations; the whole cost of the expedition was L2. 11_s._, a very large
sum, and we will hope that the tithes brought in more than enough to cover
it[1148].
Sometimes, again, nuns left their houses to take part in ecclesiastical
ceremonies, such as processions. There does not seem much harm in the
whole convent sallying forth on these solemn occasions and indeed bishops
sometimes gave orders that they were to do so. In 1321 Rigaud de Asserio,
Bishop of Winchester, sent a letter to the Prior of St Swithun's monastery
"to pray for peace, with solemn processions"; he was to cause the Abbot
and Convent of Hyde, the Abbess and Convent of St Mary's, Winchester, and
all the other religious houses and parish priests of Winchester to come
together in the Cathedral and then to proceed in solemn procession through
the town[1149]. The strictest disciplinarians, however, looked with
suspicion even upon religious processions and sought to keep nuns within
the precincts of their cloister. Ottobon's Constitutions contain a proviso
that nuns are not to go out for public processions, but are to hold their
processions within the bounds of their own house[1150] and the prohibition
was repeated by Thomas of Cantilupe, Bishop of Hereford, writing to
Lymbrook in 1277[1151], and by William of Wykeham (who specifically based
his words upon Ottobon), writing to Romsey in 1387[1152]. A century later
the custom was forbidden in France at the provincial Council of Sens, in
1460 and again in 1485, where it was referred to as "a dangerous and evil
abuse"[1153]. Some explanation of this severity, which seems excessive,
may perhaps be gleaned from an injunction sent by Bishop Longland to
Elstow in 1531:
Moreover forasmoche as the ladye abbesse and covent of that house be
all oon religious bodye unite by the profession and rules of holy
sainct benedicte, and is nott conuenyent ne religious to be disseuerd
or separate, we will and Inioyne that frome hensforth noon of the said
abbesse seruauntes nor no ther secular person or persones, whatsoeuer
he or they be, goo in eny procession before the said abbesse betwene
hir and hir said covent, undre payne of exccommunycacon, and that the
ladye abbesse ne noon of hir successours hereafter be ladde by the
arme or otherwise in eny procession ther as in tymes paste hath been
used, undre the same payne[1154].
Other religious ceremonies of a less formal nature occasionally called
nuns, in a body or individually, out of their cloister. For instance some
of the greater abbeys were accustomed to receive into their fraternity
benefactors and persons of distinction, both men and women, whom they
wished to honour, nor were kings too proud to call themselves the
_confratres_ of Bury St Edmunds or St Albans and to receive from the monks
the kiss of peace[1155]. The ceremony took place with great solemnity in
the chapter-house and it is recorded that on one occasion (in 1428), when
the Earl of Warwick and the Duke of Gloucester and their households were
received into the Fraternity of St Albans, Cecilia Paynel and Margaret
Ewer, nuns of Sopwell, were also admitted. At another time the Prioress of
Sopwell, together with a certain John Crofton and his wife, were received
and gave the abbey a pittance and wine and a sum of money; while on
another occasion still the Prioress and another nun of St Mary de Pre were
similarly made _consorores_ of the abbey, and marked their appreciation by
the gift of a frontal for the high altar in the lady chapel[1156]. Sopwell
and St Mary de Pre were dependents of St Albans and it is not improbable
that their superiors and seniors often visited it on great occasions such
as this; certainly the great magnates of the realm often called at Sopwell
on their way from St Albans, and nuns of the house figure in its book of
benefactors as donors of embroidery to the church[1157], while in matters
of government the Abbot always kept a tight hand upon both houses. Again
nuns sometimes attended the funerals of great folk; not only priors and
prioresses, but also canons and nuns were expected to be present at Sir
Thomas Cumberworth's funeral and "month's-mind"[1158] and in an account
roll of St Michael's, Stamford, there is an entry "paye a nos
compaygnounes alaunt a Leycestre al enterment la Duchesse ij s"[1159].
Attendance at religious processions and ceremonies might be, and
attendance at funerals undoubtedly was, regarded by the more moderate and
reasonable visitors as a legitimate reason for going outside the precincts
of the cloister. One other excuse of the same nature, however, sometimes
took a nun away from her convent for a considerable length of time and was
never looked upon with any favour by the authorities of the church. Yet it
is an excuse which we have the best of reasons for recognising, which is,
indeed, bound up with all that most people know of the medieval nun--for
Chaucer has taught us that nuns were wont to go upon pilgrimages. All
pilgrimages did not, indeed, involve as long a journey as that taken by
Madame Eglentyne. The ladies of Nuncoton could make a pilgrimage to St
Hugh of Lincoln, without being away for more than a night and the ladies
of Blackborough would not have to follow for a long distance the milky way
to Walsingham[1160]. Nevertheless it is unnecessary to go further than
Chaucer to understand why it was that medieval bishops offered a strenuous
opposition to the practice; one has only to remember some of the folk in
whose company the Prioress travelled and some of the tales they told. If
one could be certain that she rode with her nun and her priests, or at
least between the Knight and the poor Parson! But there were also the
Miller and the Summoner and, worst of all, that cheerful and engaging
sinner the Wife of Bath. If one could be certain that she listened only to
the tale of Griselda, or of Palamon and Arcite, or yawned over Melibeus,
and that she fell discreetly to the rear when the company laughed over the
"nyce cas of Absalon and hende Nicholas"! If one could be certain that it
was to the Wife of Bath alone that the Merchant made his apology
Ladies, I prey yow that ye be nat wrooth;
I can nat glose, I am a rude man.
Certainly the Wife of Bath was a host in herself, but the plural is
ominous and the two nuns were the only other ladies in the company. The
sterner moralists of the middle ages bear out Chaucer's picture of a
typical pilgrimage with most unchaucerian denunciation[1161]. Pilgrims got
drunk at times, as drunk as the Miller, "so that vnnethe up-on his hors he
sat," on the very first day of the journey, as drunk as the "sory palled
gost" of a cook, when the cavalcade reached that
litel toun
Which that y-cleped is Bob-up-&-doun
Under the Blee in Canterbury weye.
Again, there are pilgrims, says Etienne de Bourbon, "who when they visit
holy places sing lecherous lays, whereby they inflame the hearts of such
as hear them and kindle the fire of lechery"; and like an echo rise the
well-known words:
Ful loude he song "Come hider, love, to me,"
This somnour bar to him a stif burdoun
Was never trompe of half so greet a soun,
and shrill and clear sound the miller's bagpipes, bringing the pilgrims
out of town[1162]. No place for a cloistered nun was the inn though one
feels that mine host's wife, "big in arme," would have kept the Tabard
respectable, whatever might be said of the Chequer-on-the-Hoop. No place
for her the road to Canterbury, nor yet Canterbury itself, where the monk
with the holy-water sprinkler was so anxious for a peep at her face and
where she hobnobbed over wine in the parlour, with the hostess and the
Wife of Bath[1163].
Madame Eglentyne, for all her simplicity, must have circumvented her
Bishop before she got there. For the Bishops were quite clear in their
minds that pilgrimages for nuns were to be discouraged. They were of
Langland's way of thinking:
Right so, if thow be religious, renne thow neuere ferther,
To Rome ne to Rochemadore, but as thi reule techeth,
And holde the vnder obedyence, that heigh wey is to heuene[1164].
As early as 791 the Council of Frejus had forbidden the practice[1165] and
in 1195 the Council of York decreed "In order that the opportunity of
wandering about may be taken from them [the nuns], we forbid them to take
the road of pilgrimage"[1166]. In 1318 Archbishop Melton strictly forbade
the nuns of Nunappleton to leave their house "by reason of any vow of
pilgrimage, which they might have taken; if any had taken such vows she
was to say as many psalters as it would have taken days to perform the
pilgrimage so rashly vowed"[1167]. One has a melancholy vision of Madame
Eglentyne saying psalters interminably through her "tretys" nose, instead
of jogging along so gaily with her motley companions and telling so
prettily her tale of little St Hugh. But the nuns of Nunappleton retained
their taste for pilgrimages and nearly two centuries later (in 1489) we
find Archbishop Rotherham admonishing their successors:
yat ye prioresse lycence none of your susters to goe pilgremage or
visit yer frendes w{t}oute a grete cause, and yen such a sister
lycencyate by you to have w{t} her oon of ye most sadd and well
disposid sistirs to she come home agayne[1168].
At Wix, twenty years later, the nuns were forbidden to undertake
pilgrimages without the consent of the diocesan[1169], and in 1531 Bishop
Longland wrote to the Prioress of Nuncoton:
Forasmoche as by your negligent sufferaunce dyuers of your susters
hath wandred a brode in the world, some under the pretence of
pylgrymage, some to see ther frends, and otherwise whereby hath growen
many Inconuenyences insolent behauiours and moche slaunder, as well to
your house as to those susters, as by the texts of my said visitation
doth euydently appere, I chardge you lady priores that from hensforthe
ye neyther licence ne suffre eny your susters to goo out of your
monastery,
without good cause and company of a "wise sobre and discrete suster," and
an injunction not to "tary out of the monastery in the nighte tyme"[1170].
But most significant of all is a case which occurred at the little
Cistercian priory of Wykeham in Yorkshire in the fifteenth century. In
1450 Archbishop Kemp wrote to the Prioress, bidding her readmit an
apostate nun Katherine Thornyf:
who, seduced by the Angel of Darkness, under the colour of a
pilgrimage in the time of the Jubilee, without leave of the
archbishop, or officials or even of the prioress, set out on a
journey to the court of Rome, in the company of another nun of the
house, who, as it was reported, had gone the way of all flesh and on
whose soul the Archbishop prayed for mercy. After the death of this
nun, Katherine Thornyf had lived in sin with a married man in London.
Then she had been moved to penitence, after who knows what agony of soul,
and had gone to the Archbishop seeking absolution; and so the prodigal,
weary of her husks, came back to the nunnery she had left[1171]. The
melancholy tale is borne out by all we know about medieval pilgrimages.
Centuries before--in 774--an Archbishop of Milan had written to an
Archbishop of Canterbury, advising that the Synod should prohibit women
and nuns from travelling to Rome, on account of the dangers and
temptations of the journey, "for very few are the cities in Lombardy ...
France ... Gaul, wherein there is not to be found a prostitute of English
race"[1172]; and the trouvere Rutebeuf, in the thirteenth century, spoke
with less pity and a more biting satire of the pilgrimages of French nuns
to Paris and Montmartre[1173].
Excursions on convent business or for attendance at ecclesiastical
ceremonies (other than pilgrimages) were regarded as legitimate, though
strict disciplinarians sought to restrict them to occasions of real
urgency. But for the most part we hear about journeys undertaken for
pleasure and not for business, or at any rate the elastic term business is
stretched to cover some very pleasant wandering in the world and much
hobnobbing with friends. In spite of the Bull _Periculoso_[1174] bishops
were never able to prevent nuns from going to stay with their friends, and
sometimes the ladies made very long journeys for this purpose. Bishop
Stapeldon, for instance, ordained that when the nuns of Canonsleigh in
Devon went to visit their friends "in Somerset, Dorset, Devonshire or in
Cornwall" they might not stay for longer than a month; but if they went
outside these four counties the Abbess might allow them to stay longer
still, having regard to the distance of their destination and to the time
which would be spent in travelling[1175]. The bishops indeed were forced
to regard such visits as "reasonable occasions" for a breach of enclosure,
and their efforts, as has already been shown, were confined to regulating
rather than to stopping the practice; for the relatives of the nuns, as
well as the ladies themselves, would have been the first to resent any
interference with their visits. Whatever might be the theory of the Church
on the subject, blood was thicker than holy water; family affections and
family interests persisted in the cloister and the nun was welcomed at
many a hospitable board for her family's sake as well as for her own. All
this seems natural and obvious today and few would think the worse of the
nuns for their opposition to the stricter form of enclosure. Nevertheless
the authorities of the Church had reason for their distrust of these
absences from the convent. Once away from the cloister and staying in a
private house there was nothing to keep a nun from joining in the secular
revelries of friends, and though her behaviour might be exemplary the
convent rule aimed at keeping her unspotted even by temptation. An
anecdote related by Erasmus in his dialogue "Ichthyophagia" shows that the
danger of allowing nuns to visit their friends might be a real one. Two
nuns had gone to stay with their kinsfolk, and at supper
they began to grow merry with wine; they laughed and joked and kissed
and not over-modestly neither, till you could hardly hear what was
said for the noise they made.... After supper there was dancing and
singing of lascivious songs and such doings I am ashamed to speak of,
inasmuch as I am much afraid the night hardly passed very
honestly[1176].
Moreover even if nuns visited their friends for a very short time, staying
only one night, or even returning before nightfall to the convent, there
was danger that they might join in the various revelries practised among
secular folk, and reprobated by the Church as occasions for unseemly and
licentious behaviour. Bishop Spofford of Hereford, indeed, found it
necessary in 1437 to send a special warning against doing so to the nuns
of Lymbrook; the Prioress was to "yife no lycence too noon of hur sustres
her after to go to no port townes, no to noon othir townes to comyn wakes
or festes, spectacles and othir worldly vanytees, and specially on
holy-dayes, nor to be absent lyggying oute by nyght out of thair
monastery, but with fader and moder, except causes of necessytee"[1177].
The words which the Good Wife spoke to her daughter come to mind:
Go not to şe wrastelings ne schotynge at cok
As it were a strumpet or a giggelot,
Wone at hom, doughter, and love şi work myche[1178].
Clemence Medforde, Prioress of Ankerwyke, went to a wedding at
Bromhale[1179]; yet weddings were of all those "comyn wakes and festes"
most condemned by the Church for the unseemly revelries which followed
them. _The Christen State of Matrimony_, written in 1543, throws a flood
of light upon the subject:
When they come home from the Church, then beginneth excesse of eatyng
and dryncking--and as much is waisted in one daye, as were sufficient
for the two newe maried Folkes halfe a yere to lyve upon.... After the
Bancket and Feast, there begynnethe a vayne, madde and unmanerlye
fashion, for the Bryde must be brought into an open dauncynge place.
Then is there such a rennynge, leapynge, and flyngynge among them,
then is there suche a lyftynge up and discoverynge of the Damselles
clothes and other Womennes apparell, that a Man might thynke they were
sworne to the Devels Daunce. Then muste the poore Bryde kepe foote
with al Dauncers and refuse none, how scabbed, foule, droncken, rude
and shameles soever he be. Then must she oft tymes heare and se much
wyckednesse and many an uncomely word; and that noyse and romblyng
endureth even tyll supper[1180].
It may be urged that the Brides of Heaven need not necessarily have
attended these merry-makings after the ceremony; but the example of Isabel
Benet, nun of Catesby, and the tenour of certain episcopal injunctions,
show that nuns by no means despised dancing[1181]. The strict
disciplinarian's view of weddings is shown in the fact that members of the
Tertiary Order of St Francis were forbidden to attend them; and even the
civic authorities of London found it necessary to regulate the disorders
which were prevalent on such occasions[1182].
Again not only weddings, but also christenings, often involved unseemly
revels and this could not fail to affect nuns who, despite canonical
prohibition, were somewhat in demand as godmothers. Christening parties
were gay affairs; the gossips would return to the house of the child's
parents to eat, drink and make merry: "adtunc et ibidem immediate venerunt
in domam suam ad comedendum et bibendum et adtunc sibi revelaverunt de
baptismo"[1183]. If Antoine de la Sale's witty account of the "third joy
of marriage" has any truth[1184], and it is upheld by more sober
documents, bishops did well to mislike the christening parties for nuns;
Mrs Gamp was quite at home in the middle ages; she was probably a crony of
the Wife of Bath. It was in fact forbidden for monks and nuns to become
godparents, not only, as Mr Coulton has pointed out, "because this
involved them in a fresh spiritual relationship incompatible with their
ideal, but because it entangled them with worldly folk and worldly
affairs"[1185]. Thus in 1387 William of Wykeham wrote to the nuns of
Romsey: "We forbid you all and singly to presume to become godmothers to
any child, without obtaining our licence to do so, since from such
relationships expense is often entailed upon religious houses"[1186]. At
Nuncoton in 1440 two nuns asked that their sisters might be forbidden the
practice and Alnwick enjoined "that none of yowe have no children at the
fount ne confirmyng"[1187] and nearly a century later a similar injunction
was sent by Bishop Longland to Studley[1188].
There does indeed seem a certain incongruity in the presence of one who
had renounced the world at a wedding or a christening, even had such
ceremonies not been accompanied by very worldly revels. But they were less
incongruous than was the attendance of Mary, daughter of Edward I, the
nun-princess of Amesbury, upon her step-mother Queen Margaret and later
upon her niece Elizabeth de Burgh, during their confinements. A king's
daughter, however, could not be subjected to ordinary restraints; Mary led
a particularly free life, constantly visiting court and going on
pilgrimages, and there is no reason to suppose that ordinary nuns shared
her privileges[1189].
Naturally occasions when a nun was away from her convent for the night,
whether on business or on pleasure, were comparatively rare. For the most
part the bishops had to deal with casual absences during the day and it
was found extraordinarily difficult to confine such excursions to the
"convent business" and "necessary reasons" laid down by the various
enactments on enclosure. There seems to have been a great deal of
wandering about without any specific purpose. Short errands perhaps took
the nuns out for a few hours, or they went simply for air and exercise.
Their rule and their bishops would have had them hear the "smale fowles
maken melodye" and tread "the smalle, softe, sweete grass" within the
narrow cloister court, or at least in the privacy of their own
gardens[1190]. But the nuns liked highways and hedges, and often in
springtime it was farewell their books and their devotion. Certainly the
convent often did come out to take the air in its own meadows; John Aubrey
(in a much-quoted passage) tells of the nuns of Kington in Wiltshire, and
how "Old Jacques" could see them from his house
come forth into the nymph-hay with their rocks and wheels to spin: and
with their sewing work. He would say that he had told threescore and
ten, but of nuns there were not so many, but in all, with lay sisters
and widows, old maids and young girls, there might be such a
number[1191].
Sometimes, indeed, at the busy harvest-time, when every pair of hands was
needed on the manor farm, the nuns even went hay-making in the meadows.
The visitations of Bishop Alnwick provide two instances of this and show
also the abuses to which it might give rise, since the fields were full of
secular workers. At Nuncoton in 1440 the subprioress deposed that
in the autumn season the nuns go out to their autumn tasks, whereby
the quire is not kept regularly[1192], and ... in seed time the nuns
clear the crops of weeds in the barns, and there secular folks do come
in and unbecoming words are uttered between them and the nuns,
wherefrom, as is feared, there are evil consequences[1193].
At Gracedieu the subprioress mentioned that "sometimes the nuns do help
secular folk in garnering their grain during the autumn season," but the
most amusing revelations concern the conduct of the haughty cellaress
Margaret Belers, who, whether on account of her autocratic government or
because she was of better birth than they, was regarded by her sisters
with the utmost jealousy. Belers, ran one of the _detecta_ to the Bishop,
goes out to work in autumn alone with Sir Henry [the chaplain], he
reaping the harvest and she binding the sheaves, and at evening she
comes riding behind him on the same horse. She is over friendly with
him and has been since the doings aforesaid.
Here was a pretty scandal; the Bishop (hiding, we will hope, a smile) made
inquiries; Sir Henry was charged with the heinous crime of going
hay-making with Dame Belers. But Sir Henry specifically denied his
solitary roaming in the fields with the cellaress; he said however "that
he has been in the fields with the others and Belers, carting hay and
helping to pile the sheaves in stacks in the barns"; and Alnwick contented
himself with enjoining the Prioress "that ye suffre none of your susters
to go to any felde werkes but alle onely in your presence"[1194].
Such field work, when it was undertaken, must have afforded not only
wholesome exercise, but a very pleasant relaxation from the cramping life
of the cloister; and the necessities of harvest overrode all rules.
Whether the nuns took part in farm work at other seasons of the year is
more difficult to discover; one is tempted to think that they must
sometimes have given a helping hand with their own cattle and poultry,
especially at very poor houses. The private cocks and hens which
occasioned such rivalry at Saint-Aubin[1195], the never-to-be-forgotten
donkey of Alfrad[1196], bear witness not only to the sin of _proprietas_,
but also to the personal care of the nuns for such livestock. But
authority discouraged the practice at a later date, partly because it
encouraged private property, partly because it brought the nuns into too
close contact with the world[1197]. Nowhere has the attitude been better
stated than in the amusing description given in the _Ancren Riwle_ of the
anchoress' cow:
An anchoress that hath cattle appears as Martha was, a better
housewife than anchoress: nor can she in any wise be Mary, with
peacefulness of heart. For then she must think of the cow's fodder and
of the herdsman's hire, flatter the heyward, defend herself when her
cattle is shut up in the pinfold and moreover pay the damage. Christ
knoweth it is an odious thing when people in the town complain of the
anchoresses' cattle. If, however, any one must needs have a cow, let
her take care that she neither annoy, nor harm any one, and that her
own thoughts be not fixed thereon[1198].
The more human bishops made allowance for a natural instinct by giving the
convent permission to go for walks, though as a rule the grounds of the
nunnery were specified:
"Let the door be closed at the right time," wrote Archbishop Courtenay
to Elstow in 1390, "And let no nun go out without licence of the
abbess or other president, yet so that leave of walking for recreation
in the orchard or in any other seemly and close place at suitable
times be not out of malice denied to the nuns provided that the
younger do not go without the society of the elder"[1199].
Bishop Spofford of Hereford went even further; after forbidding any
revelries to be held in the nunnery of Lymbrook, he added:
"and what dysport of walkyng forward in dewe tyme and place, so that
yee kepe the dewe houres and tymes of dyuyne seruyce with inforth, and
with honest company, and with lycence specyally asked and obteyned
[from] the pryoresse or suppryoresse in her absence, and at yee be two
to geder at the leest, we holde us content" (1437)[1200].
So in 1367 Robert de Stretton, Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, forbade
any nun of Fairwell to go into Lichfield without the Prioress' leave,
ordering that she should be accompanied by two sisters and should "make no
vain and wanton delays," but added that "this is not intended to interfere
with the laudable custom of the whole or greater part of the convent
walking out together on certain days to take the air"[1201]. This
forerunner of the schoolgirls' "crocodile" was not, however, what the nuns
desired. It was wandering about the roads in twos and threes (sometimes,
alas, in ones also) that they really enjoyed, and against this freedom the
bishops continually fulminated. It must be remembered that walking in the
public streets in the middle ages was very different from what it is
today; it is impossible otherwise, as Mr Coulton has pointed out, to
explain the extraordinary severity of all rules for the deportment of
girls[1202]. The streets were full of rough pastimes, hocking and
hoodsnatching, football and the games of noisy prentices in the town; and
in the country villages they resounded with the still more boorish sports
of country folk and with the shrill quarrels of alewives and regrateresses
and all the good-natured but short-tempered people, whom court rolls show
us raising the hue and cry upon each other and drawing blood from each
other's noses. There is perhaps solicitude for the nuns in the injunction
which Bishop Fitzjames sent in 1509 to the convent of Wix in Essex,
forbidding them to permit "any public spectacles of seculars,
javelin-play, dances or trading in streets or open places"[1203]. Manners
were free in that age and the nuns would see and hear much that were best
hidden from their cloistered innocence. Moreover if once they began to
stop and pass the time of day with their neighbours, religious and
secular, or to go into houses for some more private gossip, there was no
knowing where such perilous familiarity would end; and the outspokenness
with which bishops condemned such conduct by references to Dinah, the
daughter of Jacob, leaves no doubt as to what they feared[1204].
But nothing availed to keep the nuns within their cloisters; and hardly a
set of episcopal injunctions but bears witness to the freedom with which
they wandered about the streets and fields. The nuns of Moxby are not to
go out of the precincts of their monastery often, nor at any time to
wander about the woods[1205]. Alas, poor ladies:
In somer when the shawes be sheyne,
And leves be large and long,
Hit is full mery in feyre foreste
To here the foulys song.
The nuns of Cookhill are more urban; they are not to wander about in the
town (1285)[1206] and the nuns of Wroxall are not to go on foot to
Coventry or to Warwick "cum eles ount fet desordement en ces houres"
(1338)[1207]. The nuns of White Hall, Ilchester, "walk through the strets
and places of the vill of Ilchester and elsewhere, the modesty of their
sex being altogether cast off and they do not fear to enter the houses of
secular men and suspected persons" (1335)[1208]. The nuns of Polsloe are
not to go without permission into Exeter and are to return at once when
their errand is accomplished, instead of "wascrauntes de hostel en hostel,
si come eles unt maynte foiz fait, en deshonestete de lur estat et de la
Religioun" (1319)[1209]--an echo here of the Good Wife's advice, "and run
thou not from house to house, like a St Anthony's pig"[1210], or of the
reminiscences of that other Wife of Bath:
For ever yet I lovede to be gay,
And for to walke, in March, Averille and May,
Fro hous to hous, to here sondry talis[1211].
The nuns of Romsey "enter houses of laymen and even of clerics in the
town, eating and drinking with them" (1284)[1212]. The nuns of Godstow
"have often access to Oxford under colour of visiting their friends"
(1445)[1213]. The nuns of Elstow are a great trial to their diocesan;
Bishop Gynewell finds that "there is excessive and frequent wandering of
nuns to places outside the same monastery, whereby gossip and laxity are
brought about" (1359)[1214]; Bishop Bokyngham boldly particularises:
We order the nuns on pain of excommunication, to abstain from any
dishonest and suspicious conversation with secular or religious men
and especially the access and frequent confabulations and colloquies
of the canons of the Priory of Caldwell or of mendicant friars, in the
monastery or about the public highways and fields adjoining
(1387)[1215].
But the sisters of Elstow remain on good terms with their neighbours;
Bishop Flemyng forbids the nuns "to have access to the town of Bedford or
to the town of Elstow or to other towns or neighbouring places" and
straitly enjoins the canons "that no canon of the said priory, under what
colour of excuse soever, have access to the monastery of the nuns of
Elstow; nor shall the same nuns for any reason whatever be allowed to
enter the said priory, save for a manifest cause, from which reproach or
suspicion of evil could in no way arise; nor even shall the same canons
and nuns meet in any wise one with another, in any separate or private
places; nor shall they talk together anywhere one with another, save in
the presence and hearing of more than one trustworthy, who shall bear
faithful witness of what they say or do" (1421-2)[1216]. The nuns of
Nuncoton in the sixteenth century are even more addicted to the society of
canons and Bishop Longland writes to them in stern language:
And that ye, lady prioresse, cause and compell all your susters (those
oonly excepte that be seke) to kepe the quere and nomore to be absent
as in tymes past they haue been wont to use, being content yf vj haue
been present, the residue to goo att lybertie where they wold, some
att thornton [Augustinian house at Thornton-upon-Humber], some at
Newsom [or Newhouse, a Premonstratensian house close to Nuncoton, in
the same parish of Brocklesby], some at hull, some att other places
att their pleasures, which is in the sight of good men abhomynable,
high displeasur to God, rebuke shame and reproache to religion and due
correction to be doon according unto your religion frome tyme to
tyme[1217].
Indeed these colloquies with monks and canons in their own monastery were
nothing unusual. Bishops and Councils constantly forbade nuns to frequent
houses of monks, or to be received there as guests, but the practice
continued. Sometimes they had an excuse; the nuns of St Mary's,
Winchester, were in the habit of going to St Swithun's monastery to
confess to one of the brothers, who was their confessor and in ill-health,
and Bishop Pontoise appointed another monk in his place, who should come
to the nuns when summoned, thus avoiding the risk of scandal[1218].
Similarly Peckham forbade the nuns of Holy Sepulchre, Canterbury, to enter
"any place of religious men or elsewhere, under colour of confessing,"
unless they had no other confessor, in which case they were to return
directly their business was accomplished and not to stay eating and
drinking there[1219]. But sometimes the nuns had less good reason. At
Elstow, as we know, they gossiped in the fields and highways; and if nuns
were sometimes frivolous, so were monks. What are we to think of that nun
of Catesby (gone to rack and ruin under the evil rule of Margaret Wavere),
who
on Monday last did pass the night with the Austin friars at
Northampton and did dance and play the lute with them in the same
place until midnight (saltauit et citherauit usque ad mediam noctem)
and on the night following she passed the night with the Friars
preachers at Northampton, luting and dancing in like manner[1220].
There rises to the memory an irresistibly comic sonnet of Wordsworth:
Yet more--round many a convent's blazing fire
Unhallowed threads of revelry are spun;
There Venus sits disguised like a nun,--
While Bacchus, clothed in semblance of a friar
Pours out his choicest beverage high and higher
Sparkling, until it cannot choose but run
Over the bowl, whose silver lip hath won
An instant kiss of masterful desire--
To stay the precious waste. Through every brain
The domination of the sprightly juice
Spreads high conceits to madding Fancy dear,
Till the arched roof, with resolute abuse
Of its grave echoes, swells a choral strain,
Whose votive burthen is "Our kingdom's here."
Alack, had the nun of Catesby forgotten that "even as the cow which goeth
before the herd hath a bell at her neck, so likewise the woman who leadeth
the song and dance hath, as it were, the devil's bell bound to hers, and
when the devil heareth the tinkle thereof he feeleth safe, and saith he:
'I have not lost my cow yet'"?[1221] Had she forgotten the awful vision of
that holy man, to whom the devil appeared in the form of a tiny
blackamoor, standing above a woman who was leading a dance, guiding her
about as he wished and dancing on her head?[1222] But indeed Isabel (or
Venus) Benet was not the woman to care for so slight a matter as the rule
of her order or the dreams of holy men[1223]. Her case provides an
admirable illustration of the motives which prompted the extreme severity
of episcopal attempts to enforce enclosure and to cut nuns off from the
society of neighbouring monasteries[1224].
[Illustration: PLATE VII
"Isabel Benet did pass the night with the Austin friars at Northampton and
did dance and play the lute with them." (See page 388.)
The Legend of Beatrice the Sacristan. (See page 511.)
THE NUN WHO LOVED THE WORLD]
Even if they did not often go to such extremes as to spend a night dancing
with friars, the nuns foregathered sometimes in the most strange places.
The complaint that priests and monks and canons were tavern-haunters
occurs with wearisome iteration in medieval visitation documents, but
surely a tavern was the last place where one would expect to find a nun;
"Deus sit propitius isti potatori," were a strange invocation on lips that
prayed to "Our blisful lady, Cristes moder dere." Yet nuns sometimes
abused their liberty to frequent such places. Archbishop Rotherham wrote
to the Prioress of Nunappleton in 1489 "yat noon of your sistirs use ye
alehouse nor ye watirside, wher concurse of straungers dayly
resortes"[1225]; and at Romsey in 1492 Abbess Elizabeth Broke deposed that
she suspected the nuns of slipping into town by the church door and prayed
that they might not frequent taverns and other suspected places, while her
Prioress also said that they frequented taverns and continually went to
town without leave[1226]. Bald statements, but it is easy to call up a
picture of what lies behind them, for of medieval taverns we have many a
description touched by master hands. So we shall see nuns at the tunning
of Elynour Rummynge, edging in by the back way "over the hedge and pale,"
to drink her noppy ale[1227]. Or again we shall see Beton the Brewster
standing in her doorway beneath the ivy bush, hailing Dame Isabel and Dame
Matilda, as they patter along upon their "fete ful tendre"; and we shall
hear her seductive cry "I have good ale, gossip" (no nun ever despised
good ale--only when it was _valde tenuis_ did she object) "I have peper
and piones and a pounde of garlike, A ferthyngworth of fenel-seed for
fasting days." We shall never--thanks to Langland--have any difficulty in
seeing that interior, when the nuns have scuttled through the door, the
heat, the smell of ale and perspiring humanity, the babel of voices as all
the riff-raff of the village greets the nuns and gives them "with glad
chere good ale to hansel"; and the scene that follows, "the laughyng and
lowrying and 'let go the cuppe,'" the singing, the gambling, the drinking,
the invincible good humour and the complete lack of all decency. We can
only hope that Dame Isabel and Dame Matilda left before Glutton got
drunk[1228]. But it is consoling to reflect that the alehouses frequented
by the nuns of Nunappleton and of Romsey were probably less low places,
for it is not easy to picture Chaucer's Prioress on a bench between
Clarice of Cokkeslane and Peronelle of Flanders. Probably their taverns at
the waterside were more like the Chequer-on-the-Hoop, where Madame
Eglentyne and the Wife of Bath pledged each other in the hostess'
parlour[1229]; or like the tavern where the good gossips
Elynore, Jone and Margery
Margaret, Alis and Cecely
met and feasted, all unknown to their husbands and cherished the heart
with muscadel[1230]; or liker still, perhaps, to that lordly tavern kept
by Trick, where the city dames come tripping in the morning, as readily as
to minster or to market and where he draws them ten sorts of wine, all out
of a single cask, crying: "dear ladies, Mesdames, make good cheer, drink
freely your good pleasure, for we have leisure enough"[1231]. But however
select the house, whether they met there buxom city dames drinking away
their husbands' credit, or merely Tim the tinker and twain of his
prentices, whether they were quizzed by "those idle gallants who haunt
taverns, gay and handsome," or hobnobbed with "travellers and tinkers,
sweaters and swinkers," the alehouse was assuredly no place for
nuns[1232].
Enough has been said to show why the authorities of the Church tried so
hard to force enclosure upon nuns, and why they strove at least to limit
excursions to "necessary occasions" and "convent business," to prevent
unlicensed wandering and to provide that no nun went out without a
companion. And enough has perhaps also been said to show how completely
they failed. The modern student of monasticism, bred in an age which
regards freedom as its _summum bonum_ and holds discipline at a discount,
cannot but feel sympathy with the nuns. The enclosure movement did go
beyond the restriction imposed upon them by their rule; they were
themselves so often unsuited to the life into which circumstances, rather
than a vocation, had forced them; and they would have been something less
than human if they had not answered--as John of Ayton made them
answer--"In truth the men who made these laws sat well at their ease while
they laid such burdens upon us." It was the bishops, not the popes and the
councils, who knew where the shoe pinched. Dalderby, rubbing his insulted
shoulders, Alnwick, laboriously framing his minute injunctions, Rigaud,
going away from Saint-Saens "quasi impaciens et tristis," these had little
time to sit well at their ease; and the compromises which were forced upon
them are the best proof that the ideal of _Periculoso_ was too high.
Nevertheless sympathy with the nuns must not blind us to the fact that
hardly a moralist of the middle ages but inveighs against the wandering of
nuns in the world and adds his testimony to the fact (already clear from
the visitation _comperta_) that all the graver abuses which discredited
monasticism rose in the first instance from the too great ease with which
monks and nuns could leave their convents. "De la cloture," as St Francois
de Sales wrote long afterwards, "depend le bon ordre de tout le reste." It
is significant that on the very eve of the Reformation in England a last
attempt was made to enforce a strict and literal enclosure. That ardent
reformer of nunneries, Bishop Fox, frankly pursued the policy in his
diocese of Winchester and was apparently accused of undue severity, for in
1528 he wrote to Wolsey in defence of his action:
Truth it is, my lord, that the religious women of my diocese be
restrained of their going out of their monasteries. And yet so much
liberty appeareth some time too much; and if I had the authority and
power that your grace hath, I would endeavour me to mure and enclose
their monasteries according to the observance of good religion. And in
all other matters, concerning their living or observance of their
religion, I assure your grace they be as liberally and favourably
dealt with as be any religious women within this realm[1233].
Wolsey himself was driven to the same conclusion as to the necessity of
enclosure, and tried to enforce it at Wilton, after the scandals which
came to light there before the election of Isabel Jordan as Abbess. His
chaplain, Dr Benet, who had been sent to reform the nunnery, wrote to him
on July 18th and described his difficulty in "causing to be observed" the
unpopular decree:
Please it your grace to be advertised, that immediately after my
return from your grace I repaired to the monastery of Wilton, where I
have continually made mine abode hitherto and with all diligence
endeavoured myself to the uttermost of my power to persuade and train
the nuns there to the accomplishment of your grace's pleasure for
enclosing of the same; whom I find so untoward and refusal (_sic_) as
I never saw persons, insomuch that in nowise any of them, neither by
gentle means nor by rigorous,--and I have put three or four of the
captains of them in ward,--will agree and consent to the same, but
only the new elect and her sisters that were with your grace; which
notwithstanding, I have closed up certain doors and ways and taken
such an order there that none access, course or recourse of any person
shall be made there.[1234]
About the same time the Abbess-Elect herself wrote to Wolsey, telling him
that:
since my coming home I have ordered me in all things to the best of my
power, according to your gracious advertisement by the advice of your
chancellors and have ofttime motioned my sisters to be reclused within
our monastery; wherein they do find many difficulties and show divers
considerations to the contrary;
she besought him to have patience and promised to "order my sisters in
such religious wise and our monastery according to the rule of religion,
without any such resort as hath been of late accustomed"[1235]. Evidently
nuns had not changed since the day when the sisters of Markyate threw the
Bull _Periculoso_ at Bishop Dalderby's retreating back.
But their struggles were in vain and a worse fate awaited them. The
Dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII was preceded by an order to
his commissioners, that they should enforce enclosure upon the nuns. The
injunction met with the usual resistance at the time and later apologists
of the monastic houses have blamed the King for undue and unreasonable
harshness. But if Henry VIII was too strict, so also was Ottobon, so
Peckham, so Boniface VIII, so almost every bishop and council of the past
three hundred years. In this at least, low as his motives may have been,
the man who was to claim the headship of the English Church was the lineal
descendant of the most masterful of medieval popes. The instructions given
to the commissioners were the last of a long series of injunctions, in
which it was attempted to reform the nunneries by shutting them off from
the world. It is plain that even in the thirteenth century some such
reform was necessary, and the history of the fourteenth, fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries only shows the necessity becoming more urgent.
Whatever may have been Henry VIII's motives, however greedy, however
licentious, however unspiritual, it would be impossible to contend that
his decree of enclosure was not in accordance with the best ecclesiastical
tradition and amply justified by the condition of the monastic houses.