CHAPTER XIII

THE NUN IN MEDIEVAL LITERATURE

"Or dient et content et fablent."

_Aucassin et Nicolette._

"La science," said a wise Frenchman, "atteint l'exactitude; il appartient

a l'art seul de saisir la verite." And another, "L'histoire vit de

documents, mais les documents sont pareils aux lettres ecrites avec les

encres chimiques; ils veulent, pour livrer leur secret, qu'on les

rechauffe, et les eclaire par transparence, a la flamme de la vie." The

quotations are complementary, for what, after all, is literature but a

form of life; the quintessence of many moods and experiences, the diffused

flame concentrated and burning clearly in a polished lamp. The historian

who wishes to reach beyond accuracy to truth must warm those invisible

writings of his at the flame of literature, as well as at his own life. He

must vitalise the visitation reports for himself (it is not difficult,

they move and live almost without him); but he must make use also of the

life of writers long since dead. There is hardly a branch of literature

which has not its contribution for him. The story-teller has his tale,

which holdeth children from play and old men from the chimney corner. The

ballad-man has his own pithy judgment in the guise of an artless rhyme.

The teacher has his admonitions, whence may be learnt what men conceived

to be the nun's ideal and purpose in this cloistered life. The moralist

has his satire, to show wherein she fell short of such lofty heights. And

the poet himself will hold his mirror up to nature, that we may see after

five hundred years what he saw with his searching eyes, when Madame

Eglentyne rode to Canterbury, or when the nuns of Poissy feasted a

cavalcade from court. The world was subject matter for all these, whether

they wrote with a purpose or without one; there is life even in the

crabbed elegiacs of Gower, grumbling his way through the _Vox Clamantis_;

there is much life in the kindly counsels of the _Ancren Riwle_; there is

God's plenty indeed in the stories and songs which the people told. It is

the historian's business to call in these literary witnesses to supplement

his documents. To the account-roll and the bishop's register must be added

the song, the satire and the sermon. Alnwick's visitations, with the story

of "Beatrix the Sacristan" behind them, have twice as much significance;

Madame Eglentyne and Margaret Fairfax lend to each other a mutual

illumination; little captured Clarice Stil needs Deschamps' Novice of

Avernay by her side before her case can be well understood. It is of these

composite portraits that truth is put together and history made.

An analysis of the classes of medieval literature in which there is

mention of nuns shows from how wide a field the historian can draw. The

most obvious of these classes is that which contains biographies and

autobiographies of saints and famous women who were nuns. Such are the

writings of the great trio who made famous the nunnery of Helfta in the

thirteenth century, the beguine Mechthild of Magdeburg and the nuns

Mechthild of Hackeborn and Gertrud the Great[1539]; the lives and writings

of Luitgard of Tongres[1540], of St Clare[1541] and of St Agnes of

Bohemia[1542]; the memoir and letters of Charitas Pirckheimer, Abbess of a

Franciscan convent at Nuremberg, who was a sister of the humanist

Wilibald Pirckheimer and herself a scholar of repute[1543]. The

autobiographies of one or two nuns in the later sixteenth century (for

instance St Theresa[1544] and Felice Rasponi[1545]) have a certain

retrospective value; and the lives of the three beguine mystics, St

Douceline[1546], St Lydwine of Schiedam[1547] and St Christina of

Stommeln[1548] afford supplementary evidence, which is interesting as

showing the similarities and dissimilarities between regular and secular

orders. For present purposes, however, these works may be neglected. Their

interest is always rather particular than general, since they deal with

great individuals, and the information which they give as to the life of

the average nun is conditioned always by the fact that a woman of genius

will mould her surroundings to her own form, even in a convent. This is

true of the medieval saints; while the careers of women such as Charitas

Pirckheimer, Felice Rasponi and St Theresa owe much of their significance

to the special circumstances of the time. An additional reason for

neglecting biographies and autobiographies lies in the fact that the class

is unrepresented in English literature belonging to this period. The short

panegyric of Euphemia of Wherwell is the sole approach to a biography of

an English nun which has survived, unless we are to count the description

of Joan Wiggenhall's building activities. For some reason which it is

impossible to explain, monasticism did not produce in England during the

later middle ages any women of sanctity or genius who can compare with the

great Anglo-Saxon abbesses[1549].

Outside the personal records of great individuals, our informants fall (as

has already been suggested) into four classes: the people, with their

songs and stories, the teachers, with their didactic works, the moralists,

with their satires and complaints, and finally the men of letters, poets

and "makers," for whom the nun is sometimes subject-matter. First, and

perhaps most interesting of all, must come the people and the people's

songs, for in the literature of the continent there exists a class of

lyrics ("Klosterlieder," "Nonnenklagen," "Chansons de Nonnes") which is

specially concerned with nuns[1550]. There is much to be learned about all

manner of things from such popular poetry. So the people feel about life,

and so (reacting upon them) it makes them feel. Songs crooned over the

housework or shouted at the plough steal back into the singer's brain and

subtly direct his conscious outlook; this was the wise man's meaning, who

said that he cared not who made the laws of a nation if he might make its

ballads. Now it is extremely significant that almost all the popular songs

about nuns, the songs which

The spinsters and the knitters in the sun,

And the free maids that weave their thread with bones

Do use to chant,

are upon one theme. They deal always with the nun unwillingly professed.

It was the complaint of the cloistered love-birds which these knitters

sang.

How can a bird that is born for joy

Sit in a cage and sing?

What, one may ask, is the reason for this unanimity of outlook? Why do the

people see a nun only as a love-bird shut within a cage and beating its

wings against the bars? Partly, no doubt, because such songs always "dally

with the innocence of love"; the folk are capable of a deep melancholy, as

of a gaiety which is light as thistledown; but Love is and was their lord

and king, and so even the nun must be in love when they sing her. It may

be, however, that there is a deeper meaning in the _chansons de nonnes_.

The nunneries were aristocratic; the ideal of the religious life was out

of the reach of women who lived among fields and beasts of the field.

These spinsters and these knitters in the sun, who seem so gay and

peaceful, we know what their lives were like:

Poure folke in cotes,

Charged with children, and chef lordes rente,

That thei with spynnynge may spare spenen hit in hous-hyre,

Bothe in mylk and in mele to make with papelotes[1551];

carding and combing, clouting and washing, suffering much hunger and woe

in winter time; no time to think, and hardly time to pray; but always time

to sing. "The wo of those women that wonyeth in cotes" solaced itself in

song; but when the echo of the convent bell came to the singer at her

clouting, or to her husband, as he drove his plough over the convent

acres, they recognised a peace which was founded upon their labours and

which, though it could not exist without them, they could never

share[1552]. If the songs which the slaves of Athens sang among

themselves in the slave quarter at night had come down to us, they would

surely have thrown a new light upon those grave philosophers, artists and

statesmen, to whom the world owes almost all that it cherishes of wisdom

and of beauty. Nor would the Athenians be less great because we knew the

slaves. Even so it is no derogation to the monastic ideal to say that the

common people, shut out of it, looked at it differently from the great

churchmen, who praised it; and, unlike those of the Athenian slaves, their

songs still live. The popular mind (these songs would seem to say) had

little sympathy for that career in which the daughters of the people had

no share. It is immaterial whether they looked upon it with the eye of the

fox in the fable, declaring that the grapes were sour, or whether the

lusty common sense of those living close to nature gave them a contempt

for the bloodless ecstasies they could not understand. At all events the

cloister mirrored in their songs is a prison and a grave:

Mariez-vous, les filles,

Avec ces bons drilles,

Et n'allez ja, les filles,

Pourrir derrier' les grilles[1553].

That was how the people and the nightingale envisaged it; and no mystic

will be the less wise for pondering that brutal last line, the eternal

revolt of common sense against asceticism.

All over western and southern Europe this theme was set to music, now with

gaiety and insouciance, now with bitterness. The wandering clerk goes

singing on his way:

Plangit nonna fletibus The nun is complaining,

Inenarrabilibus, Her tears are down raining,

Condolens gemitibus She sobbeth and sigheth,

Dicens consocialibus: To her sisters she crieth:

Heu misella! Misery me!

Nichil est deterius O what can be worse than this

Tali vita, life that I dree,

Cum enim sim petulans When naughty and lovelorn,

Et lasciva. and wanton I be.

And he can tell the nun's desire

Pernoctando vigilo All the night long I unwillingly wake,

Cum non vellem How gladly a lad in mine arms would I take.

Iuvenem amplecterer

Quam libenter![1554]

For those who know no Latin it is the same. "In this year," [1359] says a

Limburg chronicle, "Men sang and piped this song":

Gott geb im ein verdorben jar God send to him a lean twelve months

der mich macht zu einer nunnen Who in mine own despite,

und mir den schwarzen mantel gab A sooty mantle put on me,

der weissen rock darunten! All and a cassock white!

Soll ich ein nunn gewerden And if I must become a nun,

dann wider meinen willen Let me but find a page,

so will ich auch einem knaben jung And if he is fain to cure my pain

seinen kummer stillen, His pain I will assuage.

Und stillt he mir den meinen nit His be the loss, then, if he fail

daran mag he verliesen[1555]. To still my amorous rage.

In Italy at Carnival time in the fifteenth century the favourite songs

tell of nuns who leave their convents for a lover[1556]. But above all the

theme is found over and over again in French folk songs: "the note, I

trowe, y maked was in Fraunce." Two little thirteenth century poems have

survived to show how piquant an expression the French singers gave to it.

In one of these the singer wanders out in the merry month of May, that

time in which the "chanson populaire" is always set, in deep and

unconscious memory of the old spring festivals, celebrated by women in the

dawn of European civilisation. He goes plucking flowers, and out of a

garden he hears a nun singing to herself:

ki nonne me fist Jesus lou maldie.

je di trop envie vespres ne complies:

j'amaisce trop muels moneir bone vie

ke fust deduissans et amerousete.

Je sant les douls mals leis ma senturete.

malois soit de deu ki me fist nonnete.

Elle s'escriait comceux esbaihie!

e deus, ki m'ait mis en cest abaie!

maix ieu en istrai per sainte Marie;

ke ne vestirai cotte ne gonnette.

Je sant les douls mals leis ma senturete.

malois soit de deu ki me fist nonnete.

Celui manderai a cui seux amie.

k'il me vaigne querre en ceste abaie;

s'irons a Parix moneir bone vie,

car it est jolis et je seux jonete.

Je sant les douls mals leis ma senturete.

malois soit de deu ki me fist nonnete.

quant ces amis ot la parolle oie,

de joie tressaut, li cuers li fremie,

et vint a la porte do celle abaie:

si en gatait fors sa douce amiete.

Je sant les douls mals leis ma senturete.

malois soit de deu ki me fist nonnete[1557].

"The curse of Jesus on him who made me a nun! All unwillingly say I

vespers and compline; more fain were I to lead a happy life of gaiety

and love. _I feel the delicious pangs beneath my bosom. The curse of

God on him who made me be a nun!_ She cried, God's curse on him who

put me in this abbey. But by our Lady I will flee away from it and

never will I wear this gown and habit. _I feel, etc._ I will send for

him whose love I am and bid him come seek me in this abbey. We will go

to Paris and lead a gay life, for he is fair and I am young. _I feel,

etc._ When her lover heard her words, he leapt for joy and his heart

beat fast. He came to the gate of that abbey, and stole away his

darling love. _I feel, etc._"

In the other song the setting is the same;

L'autrier un lundi matin

m'an aloie ambaniant;

s'antrai an un biau jardin,

trovai nonette seant.

ceste chansonette

dixoit la nonette

"longue demoree

faites, frans moinnes loialz

Se plus suis nonette,

ains ke soit li vespres,

je morai des jolis malz"[1558].

"Lately on a Monday morn as I went wandering, I entered into a fair

garden and there I found a nun sitting. This was the song that the nun

sang: 'Long dost thou tarry, frank, faithful monk. If I have to be a

nun longer I shall die of the pains of love before vespers.'"

The end hardly ever varies. The nun is either taken away by a lover (as in

the first of these songs), or finds occasion to meet one without leaving

her house (as in the second); or else she runs away in the hope of finding

one like the novice of Avernay in Deschamps' poem, who had learned nothing

during her sojourn "fors un mot d'amourette," and who wanted to have a

husband "si comme a Sebilette."

Adieu le moniage:

Jamaiz n'y entreray.

Adieu tout le mainage

Et adieu Avernay!

Bien voy l'aumosne est faitte:

Trop tart me suy retraitte,

Certes, ce poise my,

Plus ne seray nonnette

(Oez de la nonnette

Comme a le cuer joly:

S'ordre ne ly puet plere)[1559].

"Farewell nunhood, never shall I enter thy state. Farewell all the

household and farewell Avernay! The alms are given, too late have I

left the world. Of a truth this wearies me; I will be a nun no more.

(Hear this tale of the nun, whose heart was gay and whose order could

not please her)."

It is but rarely that the singer's sympathy is against the prisoned nun;

and although one or two charming songs may be found which convey a

warning, the moral sits all awry. A Gascon air (intended, like so many, to

accompany a dance and having the favourite refrain "Va leger, legere, va

legerement") threatens an altogether inadequate punishment for a nun who

enjoys the sweets of this world.

"Down in the meadow, there is a convent. In it a nun lies ill." "Tell

me, little nun, for what do you hunger?" "For white apples and for a

young lad." "Do not eat, little nun, they will bury you not in the

church, nor even in the convent, but out in the graveyard with the

poor people"[1560].

A Provencal song with a haunting air tells how the Devil carried off a nun

who rebelled against her imprisonment:

Dedins Aix l'y a'no moungeto,

Tant pourideto,

Di que s'avie soun bel amic

Sera la reino dou pays....

"In Aix there is a little nun, a wicked little nun; she says that with

her handsome lover she will be queen of all the land. She weeps and

weeps, that wicked little nun, and every day she grows thinner and

thinner, because she may not put off her habit. But her father has

sent her a message, a solemn message, that she cannot do as she would,

that in the convent she must stay. The little nun has cursed her

father, who made her leave her handsome lover and take the veil and

habit. The little nun has cursed the trowel that made the church and

the mason who built it and the men who worked for him. The little nun

has cursed the priest who said mass and the acolytes who served him

and the congregation who listened to him. The little nun has cursed

the cloth which made the veil and the cord of St Francis and the vow

of poverty. One day when she was all alone in her room, the devil

appeared to her. 'Welcome, my love!' 'I am not your love whom you

desire, my pretty. I am the devil, don't you see? I am come to rescue

you from the convent.' 'You must first ask my father and also my

mother and my friends and my kinsmen, to see if they will consent.'

'No, I will not ask your father, nor yet your mother, nor your friends

nor your kinsmen. Now and at once we will go.' 'Farewell, my sister

nuns, so little and young, do not do as I did, but praise God well in

the convent.' The devil has taken the little nun, the wicked little

nun; he has carried her high up into the sky and then he has hurled

her down into hell, down, down into hell"[1561].

There is a moral here to be sure, but it is the moral of a fairy tale, not

of a sermon. As to the many variants of the "Clericus et Nonna" theme in

which sometimes the nun makes love to a clerk and is repulsed and

sometimes the clerk makes love to a nun and is repulsed[1562] it is

possible that the Church had a hand in them all. Wandering clerks and

cloistered monks were capable of the most unabashed love-poetry; but

sometimes they chose to set themselves right with heaven.

In England the theme of the nun unwillingly professed is not found in

popular songs, such as abound in France, Italy and Germany. It received,

however, a literary expression towards the close of the fourteenth

century. In the pseudo-Chaucerian _Court of Love_ the lover sees among

those who do sacrifice to the King and Queen of Love a wailing group of

priests and hermits, friars and nuns:

This is the courte of lusty folke and gladde,

And wel becometh hire abite and arraye;

O why be som so sory and so sadde,

Complaynyng thus in blak and white and graye?

Freres they ben, and monkes, in gode faye:

Alas for rewth! grete dole it is to sene,

To se hem thus bewaile and sory bene.

Se howe thei crye and wryng here handes white,

For thei so sone wente to religion!

And eke the nonnes with vaile and wymple plight,

Here thought is, thei ben in confusion.

"Alas," thay sayn, "we fayne perfeccion,

In clothes wide and lake oure libertie

But all the synne mote on oure frendes be.

For, Venus wote, we wold as fayne do ye,

That ben attired here and wel besene,

Desiren man and love in oure degree

Ferme and feithfull right as wolde the quene:

Oure frendes wikke in tender youth and grene,

Ayenst oure wille made us religious;

That is the cause we morne and waylen thus."

* * * * *

And yet agaynewarde shryked every nonne,

The pange of love so strayneth hem to cry:

"Now woo the tyme" quod thay "that we be boune!

This hatefull order nyse will done us dye!

We sigh and sobbe and bleden inwardly

Fretyng oure self with thought and hard complaynt,

That ney for love we waxen wode and faynt"[1563].

A kindred poem, _The Temple of Glas_, by Lydgate (who seems himself to

have become a monk of Bury at the age of fifteen) contains the same idea.

Among the lovers in the Temple are some who make bitter complaint, youth

wedded to age, or wedded without free choice, or shut in a convent:

And right anon I herd oşer crie

With sobbing teris and with ful pitous soune,

To fore şe goddes, bi lamentacioun,

That were constrayned in hir tender youşe

And in childhode, as it is ofte couşe,

Y-entred were into religioun,

Or şei hade yeris of discresioun,

That al her life cannot but complein,

In wide copis perfeccion to feine,

Ful couertli to curen al hir smert,

And shew şe contrarie outward of her hert.

Thus saugh I wepen many a faire maide,

That on hir freendis al şi wite şei liede[1564].

The same idea is also repeated in King James I of Scotland's poem, _The

King's Quair_[1565], and later (with more resemblance to the continental

songs) in the complaint of the wicked Prioress in Sir David Lyndesay's

morality play, _Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaits_ [c. 1535]:

I gif my freinds my malisoun

That me compellit to be ane Nun,

And wald nocht let me marie.

It was my freinds greadines

That gart me be ane Priores:

Now hartlie them I warie.

Howbeit that Nunnis sing nichts and dayis

Thair hart waitis nocht quhat thair mouth sayis;

The suith I ghow declair.

Makand ghow intimatioun,

To Christis Congregatioun

Nunnis ar nocht necessair.

Bot I sall do the best I can,

And marie sum gude honest man,

And brew gude aill and tun.

Mariage, be my opinioun,

It is better Religioun

As to be freir or Nun[1566].

The concentrated bitterness of _The Court of Love_ and the social satire

of Lindesay are only a literary expression of the theme treated more

lightheartedly in the popular _chansons de nonnes_. The songs are one side

of the popular view of asceticism, the gay side. The serious side may be

found in the famous story of _The Nun who Loved the World_:

Some time there was a nun that hight Beatrice, a passing fair woman,

and she was sacristan of the kirk, and she had great devotion unto our

Lady; and ofttimes men desired her to sin. So at last she consented

unto a clerk to go away with him when compline was done, and ere she

departed she went unto an altar of our Lady and said unto her; "Lady,

as I have been devout unto thee, now I resign unto thee these keys,

for I may no longer sustain the temptation of my flesh." And she laid

the keys on the altar and went her ways unto the clerk. And when he

had defouled her, within a few days he left her and went away; and she

had nothing to live on and thought shame to gang home again unto her

cloister and she fell to be a common woman. And when she had lived in

that vice fifteen years, on a day she came unto the nunnery gate, and

asked the porter if he knew ever a nun in that place that hight

Beatrice, that was sacristan and keeper of the kirk. And he said he

knew her on the best wise and said she was a worthy woman and a holy

from when she was a little bairn, "and ever has kept her clean and in

good name." And she understood not the words of this man and went her

ways. And our Lady appeared unto her and said: "Behold, I have

fulfilled thine office these fifteen years and therefore turn again

now into thy place and be again in thine office as thou wast, and

shrive thee and do thy penance, for there is no creature here that

knows thy trespass, for I have ever been for thee in thy clothing and

in thine habit." And anon she was in her habit and went in and shrove

her and did her penance and told all that was happened unto her[1567].

This tale is interesting, because it is much more than a piece of naive

piety. The story of Beatrice is intimately connected with the _chansons de

nonnes_; it is the serious, as they are the gay, expression of a whole

philosophy of life. The songs are, indeed, purely materialistic and do not

attempt (how should the spinsters and the knitters in the sun attempt it?)

to give a philosophical justification for their attitude. The miracle is

simple and seems on the surface to draw no moral, save that devotion to

the Virgin will be rewarded. Nevertheless the philosophy and the moral are

there; they are those of the most famous of all medieval songs, _Gaudeamus

igitur, juvenes dum sumus_. The theme of the miracle and of the songs

alike is the revolt against asceticism, the revolt of the body, which

knows how short its beauty and its life, against the spirit which lives

forever, and yet will not allow its poor yokefellow one little hour. The

fact that the story of Beatrice takes the form of a Mary-miracle is itself

significant. For the "Nos habebit humus" argument can be interpreted in

two ways. On the one hand stands the human multitude, gathering rosebuds

while it may, crying up and down the roads of the world to all who pass to

rejoice today, for "ubi sunt qui ante nos in mundo fuere?" On the other

hand stands the moralist, singing the same song:

Were beth they biforen us weren,

Houndes ladden and hauekes beren,

And hadden feld and wode,

That riche _levedies_ in _hoere_ bour, [ladies, their

That wereden gold in hoere tressour,

With hoere _brightle_ rode?-- [complexion

--but drawing how different a moral,

_Dreghy_ here man, thenne, if thou wilt [endure

A luitel _pine_, that me the _bit_ [pain, bid

Withdrau thine _eyses_ ofte[1568]. [ease

Often for long stretches at a time the wandering clerks and the singers

were willing to leave to the moralist this heaven which was to be won by

despising earthly beauty; they were content to go to hell singing with

Aucassin and Nicolete and all the kings of the world. But at other times

they ached for heaven too and would not believe that they might win there

only by the narrow path of righteousness. So they invented a philosophical

justification for their way of life. The Church had forgotten the love

which sat with publicans and sinners; the people rediscovered it, and

attributed it not to the Son but to the Mother. At one blow they outwitted

the moralist by inventing the cult of the Virgin Mary[1569]. In their

hands this Mary worship became more than the worship of Christ's mother;

it became almost a separate religion, a religion under which jongleurs and

thieves, fighters and tournament-haunters and the great host of those who

loved unwisely found a mercy often denied to them by the ecclesiastical

hierarchy. The people created a Virgin to whom justice was nothing and law

less than nothing, but to whom love of herself was all. "Imperatrix

supernorum, supernatrix infernorum," hell was emptied under her rule and

heaven became a new place, filled with her disreputable, faulty, human

lovers. She was not only the familiar friend of the poor and humble, she

was also the confidante of the lover, of all the Aucassins and Nicoletes

of the world. It is not without significance that so great a stress was

always laid upon her personal loveliness. Her cult became the expression

of mankind's deep unconscious revolt against asceticism, their love of

life, their passionate sense of "beauty that must die." The story of

Beatrice has kept its undiminished attraction for the modern world largely

because in it, more than in all the other Mary-miracles, life has

triumphed and has been justified of heaven[1570]. Even the cold garb given

to it by ecclesiastics such as Caesarius of Heisterbach cannot conceal its

underlying idea that all love is akin, the most earthy to the most divine;

the idea which Malory expressed many years later, when he wrote of Queen

Guinevere "that while she lived she was a true lover and therefore she had

a good end." The theme most familiar to us in the didactic literature of

the middle ages is the theme of the soul "here in the body pent"; for the

moralist has his deliberate purpose and sets down his idea more directly

and with more point than do the story-teller and the singer, who have no

aim but to say and speak and tell the tale. But when we have been moved by

the theme of the soul, let us not fail also to recognise when we meet

it--whether in the wandering scholar's _Gaudeamus_ or in the miracle of

the nun who loved the world--the theme of the body, despised and maimed

and always beautiful, crying out for its birthright. Even in the middle

ages the Greeks had not lived in vain.

The miracle of Sister Beatrice leads to the consideration of another type

of popular literature, which throws much light on convent life. Sometimes

the people grow tired of singing to themselves; they want to be told

stories, which they can repeat in the long evenings, when the sun goes

down and the rushlight sends its wan uneven flicker over the floor. Even

in the households of rich men story-telling round the fire is the

favourite after-dinner occupation[1571]. These stories come from every

conceivable source, from the East, from the Classics, from the Lives of

the Fathers, from the Legends of the Saints, from the Miracles of the

Virgin, from the accumulated experience of generations of story-tellers.

At first their purpose is simply to amuse, and the jongleur can always get

a hearing for his _fabliau_; from village green to town market, from the

ale house to the manor and the castle hall he passes with his repertoire

of grave, gay, edifying, ribald, coarse or delightful tales and when he

has gone his enchanted audience repeats and passes on all that he has

said[1572]. Then another professional story-teller begins to compete with

the jongleur, a story-teller whose object is to point a moral rather than

to adorn a tale. The Church, observing that attentive audience, adopts the

practice. Preachers vie with jongleurs in illustrating their sermons by

stories, "examples" they call them. Often they use the same tales;

anything so that the congregation keep awake; and though the examples are

sometimes very edifying, they are sometimes but ill-disguised buffoonery,

and moralists cry out against the preacher, who instead of the Gospel

passes off his own inventions, jests and gibes, so that the poor sheep

return from pasture wind-fed[1573]. But the greatest preachers win many

souls by a judicious use of stories[1574], and diligent clerks make huge

collections of such _exempla_, wherein the least skilled sermon-maker may

find an illustration apt to any text[1575]. Didactic writers and

theologians also adopt the practice; they trust to example rather than to

precept; their ponderous tomes are alive with anecdotes, but one

half-pennyworth of bread to this intolerable deal of sack[1576]. Then the

literary men begin to seize upon the _fabliaux_ and _exempla_ for the

purpose of their art; they borrow plots from this bottomless

treasure-house; and so come the days of Boccaccio and _Les Cent Nouvelles

Nouvelles_ and the short story is made at last[1577]. They all,

jongleurs, preachers, theologians and men of letters repeat each other,

for a tale once told is everyone's property; the people repeat them; and

so the stories circulate from lip to lip through the wide lands of Europe

and down the echoing centuries. And since these tales deal with every

subject under the sun (and with many marvels which the sun never looked

upon), it is not surprising that several of them deal with nuns.

Across six centuries we can, with the aid of a sympathetic imagination,

slip into the skins of these inquisitive and child-like folk, and hear

some of the stories to which they lent such an absorbed attention. Let us

Forget six counties overhung with smoke,

Forget the snorting steam and piston stroke,

Forget the spreading of the hideous town;

Think rather of the pack-horse on the down,

And dream of London, small and white and clean,

The clear Thames bordered by its gardens green.

Or rather, let us imagine not London but some other little English town,

on just such an April morning as moved Chaucer and his fellow-voyagers to

seek the holy blissful martyr by way of the Tabard Inn. Having sloughed

the film of those six hundred years from off our eyes, we can see more

clearly the shadowy forms of our fathers that begat us. We can see a

motley crowd gathered in the market place, chiefly made up of women. There

are girls, demure or wistful or laughing, fresh from their spinning wheels

or from church; there are also bustling wives, in fine well-woven wimples

and moist new shoes, arm in arm with their gossips. By craning a neck we

may see that flighty minx Alison, the carpenter's wife, "long as a mast

and upright as a bolt," casting about her with her bold black eyes and

looking jealously at the miller's wife from across the brook, who is as

pert as a pye and considers herself a lady. There is a good wife of beside

Bath, with a red face and ten pounds' weight of kerchiefs on her head; a

great traveller and a great talker she is--we can hear her chattering

right across the square; it is a pity she is so deaf. There, under her own

sign-board, is the inn-keeper's ill-tempered dame, who bullies her husband

and ramps in his face if her neighbours do not bow low to her in church;

and there is the new-made bride of yonder merchant with the forked

beard--they say she is a shrew too. There is Rose the Regrater, who also

weaves woollen cloth and cheats her spinsters. There is Dame Emma, who

keeps the tavern by the river--our neighbour Glutton's wife would like to

scratch out her eyes, for Glutton always has to be carried home from that

inn. There also are Elinor, Joan and Margery, Margaret, Alice and Cecily,

merry gossips, their hearts well cherished with muscadel. Mingled with

these good wives of the town we see, as we look about us, other folk;

portly burgesses, returning from a meeting of the borough court, full of

wine and merchant law; a couple of friars, their tippets stuffed with

knives and pins, and a fat monk, with a greyhound slinking at his heel; an

ale-taster, reeling home from duties performed too well; a Fleming or two,

ever on the lookout for snarls and sharp elbows from the true-born native

craftsmen; several pretty supercilious ladies "with browen blissful under

hood," squired by a gay young gentleman, embroidered all over with

flowers; two giggling curly-haired clerks (Absolon and Nicholas must be

their names) ogling the carpenter's wife and sniggering at their solemn

faced companion--that youth there, with the threadbare courtepy and a book

of Aristotle under his arm; a bailiff buying tar and salt for the home

farm and selling his butter and eggs to the townsmen; numbers of beggars

and idlers and children; and on the outskirts of the crowd little sister

Joan from St Mary's Convent, who ought not to be out alone, but who cannot

resist stopping to hear the sermon.

For we have all come running together in this year of our Lord 1380 to

hear a sermon[1578]. We look upon sermons as an excellent opportunity "for

to see and eek for to be seen"; in the same spirit, compact one-third of

sociability, one-third of curiosity and one-third of piety, we always

crowd

To vigilies and to processiouns,

To preaching eek and to thise pilgrimages,

To pleyes of miracles and mariages[1579].

There is the preacher under the stone market cross. He is bidding us shun

the snares of the world; if we cannot shut ourselves up in a cloister

(which is best), he says, we must make our hearts a cloister, where no

wickedness will come. He will have to tell us a story soon, for we are

restless folk and do not love to sit still on the cobbles at his feet, but

with a story he can always hold us. Sure enough he has left his theme now

and is giving us an example:

Jacobus de Vetriaco tells how some time there was a mighty prince that

was founder of a nunnery that stood near hand him; and he coveted

greatly a fair nun of the place to have her unto his leman. And not

withstanding neither by prayer nor by gift he could overcome her; and

at the last he took her away by strong force. And when men came to

take her away, she was passing feared and asked them why they took her

out of her abbey, more than her other sisters. And they answered her

again and said, because she had so fair een. And anon as she heard

this she was fain and she gart put out her een anon and laid them in a

dish and brought them unto them and said: "Lo, here is the een that

your master desires and bid him let me alone and lose neither his soul

nor mine." And they went unto him therewith and told him and he let

her alone; and by this mean she kept her chastity. And within three

years after she had her een again, as well as ever had she, through

grace of God[1580].

A shudder of horror and admiration runs through us, but the preacher

continues with a second example:

"How different," he says, "Was this most chaste and wise virgin from

that wretched nun who was sought by a noble knight, that he might

seduce her, and her abbess hid her in a certain very secret place in

the monastery. And when that knight had sought her in all the offices

and corners of the monastery and could in no wise find her he grew at

length weary and tired of the quest and turned to depart. But she,

seeing that he had stopped looking for her, because he had been unable

to find her, began to call 'Cuckoo!', as children are wont to cry when

they are hidden and do not wish to be found. Whereupon the knight,

hearing her, ran to the place, and having accomplished his will

departed therefrom, deriding the miserable girl"[1581].

"See how evil are the ways of the world," says our preacher; "how much

better to be simple and unworldly, like that nun of whom you may read in

the book of the wise Caesarius which he wrote to instruct novices. I will

tell you of her,"

In the diocese of Treves is a certain convent of nuns named Lutzerath,

wherein by ancient custom no girl is received, but at the age of seven

years or less; which constitution hath grown up for the preservation

of that simplicity of mind, which maketh the whole body to shine.

There was lately in that monastery a maiden full-grown in body, but

such a child in worldly matters that she scarce knew the difference

twixt a secular person and a brute beast, since she had had no

knowledge of secular folk before her conversion. One day a goat

climbed upon the orchard wall, which when she saw, knowing not what it

might be, she said to a sister that stood by her: "What is that?" The

other, knowing her simplicity, answered in jest to her wondering

question, "That is a woman of the world," adding, "when secular women

grow old they sprout to horns and beards." She, believing it to be the

truth, was glad to have learned something new[1582].

All this time the preacher has been illustrating his sermon with any story

that came into his head. But he has been doing more; he has been

describing for the information of posterity the raw material (so utterly

different in different individuals), out of which the unchanging pattern

of the nun had to be moulded. However we are not (for the moment)

posterity; and we grow weary of this praise of austerity and simplicity.

But, brother John, we say (interrupting) here are we, living in the world;

you would not have us tear out our eyes when our husbands would be

fondling us? You would not have us take our good Dame Alison for a goat,

which is (heaven save us) but a brute beast and no Christian? and what if

we cry cuckoo sometimes, we girls, for a lover? there are some we know

that have married five husbands at the church door, and still think

themselves right holy women, and make pilgrimages to St James beyond the

sea, and will ever go first to the offering on Sunday. What have your nuns

to do with us? Tell us rather what we young fresh folk may do to be saved;

or how we good housewives should bear ourselves day by day. And that I

will (says the preacher with some acerbity). Shame upon you, with your

chattering tongues. You cannot even keep quiet at mass; and at home it is

well known to me how ye pester your husbands, with your screeching and

scolding, and how ye chatter all day to your gossips, not minding what

lewd words ye speak. Remember therefore holy St Gregory's example of the

nun who spake naughty words, which brother Robert of Brunne of the order

of Sempringham found in the French book and set into fair English rhymes:

Seynt Gregori of a nunne tellys

Şat ghede to helle for no şyng ellys

But for she spake ever vyleyny

Among her felaws al ahy.

Şys nunne was of dedys chaste,

But şat she spake wurdys waste

She made many of here felawys

Şenke on synne for here sawys.

And then she died, and she was buried at the steps of the altar; and in

the night the sacristan of the place was awakened by a great crying and

weeping, and beheld fiends around that wretched nun, who burnt half her

body and left the other half unscathed:

Seynt Gregorye seyş şat hyt was synge

Şat half here lyfe was nat dygne;

for şoghe here dedys were chaste,

Here wurdys were al vyle and waste.

* * * * *

See how her tungge made here slayn

and foule wurdys broghte here to payn[1583].

Mind therefore your tongues, and do not whisper so lightly among

yourselves when you sit in the tavern (unknown to your husbands, fie upon

you!), and stuff yourselves with capons and Spanish wine. Nay more, have a

care that greed does not destroy you. _Gula_, he is one of the seven sins

that be most deadly. Look to it lest you one day receive the devil into

your bodies, with a mouthful of hot spices:

For the same blessed Gregory "telleth of a certain nun who omitted to

make the sign of the cross when she was eating a lettuce, and the

devil entered into her; and when he was ordered by a holy man to come

forth he replied: 'What fault is it of mine and why do you rebuke me?

I was sitting upon the lettuce and she did not cross herself and so

ate me with it'"[1584]. How different, now, was the reward of that

saintly nun of whom Caesarius telleth. For when "a pittance, to wit

fried eggs, was being distributed by the cellaress to the whole

convent, she was by some chance neglected. But indeed I deem not that

it befel by chance, but rather by divine ordering, that the glory of

God might be manifest in her. For she bore the deprivation most

patiently, rejoicing in the neglect, and therefore, when she was

returning thanks to God, that great Father-Abbot set before her an

invisible pittance; whereof the unspeakable sweetness so filled her

mouth, her throat and all her body, that never in her life had she

felt aught like to it. This was bodily sweetness, but next God visited

her mind and soul so copiously with spiritual sweetness ... that she

desired to go without pittances for all the days of her life"[1585].

Thus our preacher might be supposed to speak, but all nun tales are not so

edifying; the ribald jongleur was fond of them too. A good example of the

nun theme used as a _conte gras_ is Boccaccio's famous tale of the abbess,

who went in the dark to surprise one of her nuns with a lover; but having,

when aroused, had with her in her own cell a priest (brought thither in a

chest) she inadvertently put upon her head instead of her veil the

priest's breeches. She called all her nuns, seized the guilty girl and

came to the chapter house to reprimand her; and

"the girl happened to raise her eyes, when she saw what the abbess

bore upon her head, and the laces of the breeches hanging down on each

side of her neck, and being a little comforted with that, as she

conjectured the fact, she said: "Please, madam, to button your coif,

and then tell me what you would have." "What coif is it that you

mean," replied she, "you wicked woman, you? Have you the assurance to

laugh at me? Do you think jests will serve your turn in such an affair

as this?" The lady said once more, "I beg, madam, that you would first

button your coif and then speak as you please." Whereupon most of the

sisterhood raised up their eyes to look at the abbess, and she herself

put up her hand. The truth being thus made evident, the accused nun

said, "The abbess is in fault likewise," which obliged the mother to

change her manner of speech from that which she had begun, saying that

it was impossible to resist the temptations that assail the flesh.

Therefore she bade them, as heretofore, secretly to make the best

possible use of their time"[1586].

Another famous tale of Boccaccio's concerns the young man who pretended to

be dumb and was made gardener at a nunnery[1587].

In a different category from these stories sacred and profane are the

didactic works, wherein churchmen set down the reasons for which a

conventual life was to be preferred to all others, or the spirit in which

such a life was to be lived. In this class fall poems and treatises in

praise of virginity and books of devotion or admonition addressed to nuns.

The former are fairly common in the middle ages[1588] and, since they

throw little light on the actual life of a professed nun, need not be

considered at great length. Among the most graceful are a series of little

German songs, probably composed by clerks and generally classed with

folk-songs, though they are as different as possible from the popular

_Nonnenklagen_. The longest of these poems tells of a fair and noble lady

who walked in a garden and cried out at the beauty of the flowers, vowing

that could she but see the artist who created so much loveliness, she

would thank him as he deserved. At that moment a youth entered the garden

and greeted her courteously, answering her cry of surprise by saying that

neither stone walls nor doors could withstand him, and that all the lovely

flowers in the garden were his and he made them, for "I am called Jesus

the flower-maker." Then the lady was stirred to the heart and cried: "O my

dearest lord, with all my faith I love thee and I will ever be true to

thee till my life ends." But "the youth withdrew himself and went his way

to a convent which lay close by, and by reason of his great power he

entered speedily into it." The lady did not linger, but fled after him to

the convent and in great woe knocked upon the gates, crying, "Ye have shut

him in who is mine only joy." Then the nuns in the convent bespake her

wrathfully saying:

"Why dost thou lament so loudly? thou speakest foolishness. Our

convent is locked and no man entered therein. If thou hast lost him,

the loss is thine and thou must bear it." "Ye have let in the man to

whom I am vowed. With mine own eyes I saw him pass through the gate.

Ye have let in mine own dear lord. Were the whole world mine I would

give it up ere I gave up him. Ye have let in the man to whom I am

vowed and truly I say to you that I will have him again. I will keep

the vow which I sware to him and never shall my deathless loyalty

fail."

Then the maidens in the convent became wroth and they said:

"Thou spakest foolish things and against our honour. Our convent is

shut and no man is allowed therein and the dear Lord Jesus knoweth

well that this is true." "How little ye know him," said the lovely

lady, "Ye have spoken the name of mine own dear lord. Ye have named

him and well is he known to me; he is also called Jesus the

flower-maker."

The maidens in the convent deemed then that her words were of God and

marvelled thereat:

"Let Jesus our beloved lord stay with us for ever, for all who are in

this convent have vowed themselves to him." "If all ye who are in the

convent have vowed yourselves to him, then will I stay with you all my

days and I will keep the troth I plighted with him and never will I

waver in my firm faith in him"[1589].

Another song contrasts the love of the lord of many lands with that of the

lord of life, to the disparagement of the former[1590]. A similar contrast

between earthly and heavenly love is the _motif_ of the beautiful English

poem called _A Luue Ron_, made by the Franciscan Thomas of Hales at the

request of a nun[1591]; of a somewhat similar (though poetically inferior)

poem entitled _Clene Maydenhod_[1592]; and of a coarse and brutal treatise

in praise of virginity known as _Hali Meidenhad_[1593]. This alliterative

homily of the thirteenth century is startlingly different from the two

other contemporary works in middle English, with which its subject would

cause it to be compared. It has none of the delicate purity of the _Luue

Ron_, nor even of the mystical, ascetic visions of Mary of Oignies,

Luitgard of Tongres, Mechthild of Magdeburg, and the many saints and song

writers who realised the marriage of the soul with Christ in the concrete

terms of human passion[1594]. Neither, on the other hand, has it the

moderation and urbanity of the _Ancren Riwle_, though the same hand was

once supposed to have written both treatises. The author of _Hali

Meidenhad_ persuades his spiritual daughter to vow her virginity to God by

no better means than a savage and entirely materialistic attack upon the

estate of matrimony. He admits that wedlock is lawful for the weak, for

this the wedded sing, that through God's goodness and mercy of his

grace, though they have driven downwards, they halt in wedlock and

softly alight in the bed of its law, for whosoever falleth out of the

grace of maidenhood, so that the curtained bed of wedlock hold them

not, drive down to the earth so terribly that they are dashed limb

from limb, both joint and muscle[1595].

And again:

of the three sorts, maidenhood and widowhood and thirdly wedlockhood,

thou mayst know by the degrees of their bliss, which and by how much

it [maidenhood] surpasses the others. For wedlock has its fruit

thirtyfold in heaven, widowhood sixtyfold; maidenhood with a

hundredfold overpasses both. Consider then, hereby, whosoever from her

maidenhood descended into wedlock, by how many degrees she falleth

downward[1596].

This comparative moderation of tone does not, however, last long and the

author proceeds to draw a picture of the discomforts of wifehood and of

motherhood so gross and so entirely one-sided that it is difficult to

imagine any sensible girl being converted by it:

Ask these queens, these rich countesses, these saucy ladies, about

their mode of life. Truly, truly, if they rightly bethink themselves

and acknowledge the truth, I shall have them for witnesses that they

are licking honey off thorns. They buy all the sweetness with two

proportions of bitter.... And what if it happen, as the wont is, that

thou have neither thy will with him [thy husband] nor weal either and

must groan without goods within waste walls and in want of bread must

breed thy row of bairns?... or suppose now that power and plenty were

rife with thee and thy wide walls were proud and well supplied and

suppose that thou hadst many under thee, herdsmen in hall, and thy

husband were wroth with thee, and should become hateful, so that each

of you two shall be exasperated against the other, what worldly good

can be acceptable to thee? When he is out thou shalt have against his

return sorrow, care and dread. While he is at home, thy wide walls

seem too narrow for thee; his looking on thee makes thee aghast; his

loathsome voice and his rude grumbling fill thee with horror. He

chideth and revileth thee and he insults thee shamefully; he beateth

thee and mawleth thee as his bought thrall and patrimonial slave. Thy

bones ache and thy flesh smarteth, thy heart within thee swelleth of

sore rage, and thy face outwardly burneth with vexation[1597].

Then, after an unquotable passage, the author considers the supposed joys

of maternity and gives a brutal and painfully vivid account of the

troubles of gestation and childbirth and of the anxieties of the mother,

who has a young child to rear. He seems to feel that some apology is

needed for his brutality, for he adds:

Let it not seem amiss to thee that we so speak for we reproach not

women with their sufferings, which the mothers of us all endured at

our own births; but we exhibit them to warn maidens, that they be the

less inclined to such things and guard themselves by a better

consideration of what is to be done[1598].

The point of view is a strange one. No girl of moderate strength of

character, good sense and idealism would shirk marriage solely for the

purely material reasons set down by the author. One cannot but wonder at

the lack of spiritual imagination which can display convent life as the

easy, comfortable, leisured existence, the primrose path which a harassed

wife and mother cannot hope to follow[1599], thus inevitably securing for

the brides of Christ all who are too lazy and too cowardly to undertake an

earthly marriage. Self-sacrifice and high endeavour alike are outside the

range of the narrow materialist who wrote _Hali Meidenhad_. His treatment

represents the ugly, just as _A Luue Ron_ represents the beautiful side of

medieval praise of virginity and of monastic life.

Of all treatises for the use of nuns the most personal and the most

interesting is the thirteenth century _Ancren Riwle_ (Anchoresses' Rule).

The book was originally written for the use of three anchoresses, but the

language of the original version (the English version is by most scholars

considered to be a translation from a French original), the author and the

anchoresses for whom it was written are alike uncertain[1600]. The

conjecture that it was written by Richard Poore, Bishop of Salisbury from

1217 to 1229, is discredited by recent research. It is usually said that

the book was compiled for the anchoresses of Tarrant Keynes in

Dorsetshire; but this view rests upon the evidence of a rubric attached to

a Latin version of the rule, which states that it was written by Simon of

Ghent Bishop of Salisbury (who died in 1313) for his sisters, anchoresses

at Tarrant; but though the Latin translation was doubtless due to Simon of

Ghent, there is no evidence that the original anchoresses lived at

Tarrant; and the most recent research seeks to identify them with Emma,

Gunilda and Cristina, who were anchoresses at Kilburn about 1130 and whose

settlement developed into Kilburn Priory. The book is certainly of English

origin, though the original seems to have been written in French. It must

be noticed that the women for whom the _Ancren Riwle_ was intended were

anchoresses and not professed nuns; the essence of their life was

solitude, whereas nuns were essentially members of a community. But the

moment an anchoress ceased to live alone and took to herself companions

the distinction between anchorage and convent tended to disappear; several

English nunneries originated in voluntary settlements of two or three

women, who desired to lead a solitary life withdrawn from the world.

Nine-tenths of the _Ancren Riwle_ is equally applicable to a community of

recluses and to a community of nuns and may therefore with advantage be

used to illustrate convent life. The treatise has a dual character. It is

partly a theological work, telling the three sisters how to think and feel

and believe. It is partly a practical guide to the ordering of their

external lives. The author cares for the stalling and feeding of Brother

Ass the Body, as well as of his rider the Soul. His book is divided into

eight parts, of which the first seven are concerned with the religious and

spiritual welfare of the anchoress and the eighth part is (in his own

words) "entirely of the external rule; first of meat and drink and of

other things relating thereto; thereafter of the things that ye may

receive and what things ye may keep and possess; then of your clothes and

of such things as relate thereto; next of your tonsure and of your works

and of your bloodlettings; lastly the rule concerning your maids, and how

you ought kindly to instruct them"[1601]. This mixture of soul and body,

of spiritual and practical, is amusingly illustrated in the chapter on

confession, when he gives the following summary of all mentioned and known

sins,

as of pride, of ambition or of presumption, of envy, of wrath, of

sloth, of carelessness, of idle words, of immoral thoughts, of any

idle hearing, of any false joy, or of heavy mourning, of hypocrisy, of

meat and of drink, too much or too little, of grumbling, of morose

countenance, of silence broken, of sitting too long at the parlour

window, of hours ill said, or without attention of heart, or at a

wrong time; of any false word, or oath; of play, of scornful laughter,

of dropping crumbs, or spilling ale, or letting a thing grow mouldy,

or rusty, or rotten; clothes not sewed, wet with rain, or unwashen; a

cup or a dish broken, or anything carelessly looked after which we are

using, or which we ought to take care of; or of cutting or of

damaging, through heedlessness[1602].

The author of the _Ancren Riwle_ shows throughout true religious feeling,

compact of imagination and passion, but (as the above passage shows) he

never loses hold on reality. He is sober and full of common sense, almost

one had said a man of the world. He brings to his assistance (what writers

on holy maidenhood so often lack) a sound knowledge of human nature, a

sense of humour and a most observant eye. His psychological power appears

in his account of some of the sins to which the nun is exposed, in his

picture of the backbiter, for instance, or in the passage in which he

explains that the worst temptations of the nun come not (as she expects)

during the first two years of her profession, when "it is nothing but

ball-play," but after she has followed the life for several years; for

Jesus Christ is like the mortal lover, gentle when he is wooing his bride,

who begins to correct her faults as soon as he is sure of her love, till

in the end she is as he would have her be and there is peace and great

joy.[1603] Not only is the _Ancren Riwle_ full of flashes of wisdom such

as these. It is illustrated throughout by a profusion of metaphors and

homely illustrations drawn from the author's own observation of the busy

world outside the anchorage. Moreover it contains passages of a high and

sustained eloquence almost unmatched in contemporary literature, such as

the famous allegory of the wooing of the soul by Christ, under the guise

of a king relieving a lady who loved and scorned him from the castle where

she was besieged[1604].

Even more interesting than the spiritual counsels of the _Ancren Riwle_

are its practical counsels. The moderation and humanity of this most

unfanatical author are never more striking than when he is dealing with

the domestic life of the anchoresses. When laying down the general rule

that no flesh nor lard should be eaten, except in great sickness, and that

they should accustom themselves to little drink, he adds: "nevertheless,

dear sisters, your meat and drink have seemed to me less than I would have

it. Fast no day upon bread and water, except ye have leave"[1605], and

again:

Wear no iron, nor haircloth nor hedgehog skins and do not beat

yourselves therewith, nor with a scourge of leather thongs nor leaded;

and do not with holly nor with briars cause yourselves to bleed

without leave of your confessor and do not, at one time, use too many

flagellations[1606].

When he describes the sin of idle gossip, he breaks off with "Would to

God, dear sisters, that all the others were as free as ye are of such

folly"[1607]. Nothing could be more sensible than his regulations for

their behaviour after the quarterly blood-letting:

When ye are let blood ye ought to do nothing that may be irksome to

you for three days; but talk with your maidens and divert yourselves

together with instructive tales. Ye may often do so when ye feel

dispirited, or are grieved about some worldly matter, or sick. Thus

wisely take care of yourselves when you are let blood and keep

yourselves in such rest that long thereafter ye may labour the more

vigorously in God's service and also when ye feel any sickness, for it

is great folly, for the sake of one day, to lose ten or twelve.

He clearly has no belief in the theory of the medieval ascetic that

filthiness is next to godliness, for he bids his dear sisters "wash

yourselves wheresoever it is necessary, as often as ye please"[1608]. Some

of the precepts in this section of the _Riwle_ are obviously more closely

applicable to anchoresses than to nuns; for instance the instructions

against hospitality and almsgiving. Others are equally suitable for both:

Of a man whom ye distrust, receive ye neither less nor more--not so

much as a race of ginger.... Carry ye on no traffic. An anchoress that

is a buyer and a seller selleth her soul to the chapman of hell. Do

not take charge of other men's property in your house, nor of their

cattle, nor their clothes, neither receive under your care the church

vestments, nor the chalice, unless force compel you, or great fear,

for oftentimes much harm has come from such caretaking. Let no man

sleep within your walls.... Because no man seeth you, nor do ye see

any man, ye may be well content with your clothes, be they white, be

they black; only see they be plain and warm and well made--skins well

tawed; and have as many do you need, for bed and also for back....

Have neither ring nor brooch, nor ornamented girdle, nor gloves, nor

any such thing that is not proper for you to have. I am always the

more gratified, the coarser the works are that ye do. Make no purses

to gain friends therewith, nor blodbendes of silk; but shape and sew

and mend church vestments and poor people's clothes.... Ye shall not

send, nor receive, nor write letters without leave. Ye shall have your

hair cut four times a year to disburden your head; and be let blood as

oft and oftener if it is necessary; but if anyone can dispense with

this, I may well suffer it.[1609]

There follows a short account of the kind of servants who should attend

upon the anchoresses and the way in which these must behave and be ruled;

and then the author ends characteristically:

In this book read every day, when ye are at leisure--every day, less

or more; for I hope that, if ye read it often, it will be very

beneficial to you, through the grace of God, or else I shall have ill

employed much of my time. God knows, it would be more agreeable to me

to set out on a journey to Rome, than to begin to do it again.... As

often as ye read anything in this book, greet the Lady with an Ave

Mary for him who made this rule, and for him who wrote it and took

pains about it. Moderate enough I am, who ask so little[1610].

And six centuries later, as we lay down this delightful little book, we

cannot but agree that the claim is "moderate enough."

Other didactic works addressed to nuns may be considered more briefly, for

the majority are purely devotional and throw little light upon the daily

life of the nun. The largest and most important book in English is the

_Myroure of Oure Ladye_, written for the Brigittine sisters of Syon

Monastery at Isleworth by the famous theologian and chancellor of Oxford,

Thomas Gascoigne (1403-58)[1611]. It consists of a devotional treatise on

the divine service, followed by a translation and explanation of the

_Hours and Masses of Our Lady_ as used by the sisters. The first treatise

is profusely illustrated throughout by _exempla_ taken from Caesarius of

Heisterbach and similar sources and makes lively reading. Speaking of

attendance at divine service Gascoigne remarks:

They that have helthe and strengthe and ar nor lettyd by obedience,

they ought to be full hasty and redy to come to this holy seruyce and

lothe to be thense. They ought not to spare for eny slowth or dulnes

of the body, ne yet though they fele some tyme a maner of payne in

the stomacke or in the hed, for lacke of sleape or indygestyon.... For

lyke as they that styrre up themselfe with a quycke and a feruent wyll

thyderwarde ar holpe fourth and comforted by oure lordes good aungels;

right so fendes take power ouer them that of slowthe kepe them thense,

as ye may se by the example of a monke that was suffycyently stronge

in body but he was slepy, and dul to ryse to mattyns. Often he was

spoken to for to amende, and on a nyght he was callyd sharpely to

aryse and come to the quyer. Then he was wrothe and rose up hastly and

wente towarde the pryue dortour. And whan he came to the dore, there

was redy a company of fendes comynge to hym warde, that cryed agenst

hym wyth ferefull noyse and hasty, often saynge and cryyng: Take hym,

take hym, gette hym, holde hym; And with thys the man was sodenly

afrayde and turned agayne and ran to chyrche as fast as he myght, lyke

a man halfe mad and out of hys wytte for dreade. And when he was come

in to hys stalle, he stode a whyle trembelyng and pantyng, and sone

after he fel doune to the grounde, and lay styll as dede a longe tyme

without felyng or sturyng. Then he was borne to the farmery and after

he was come agayne to hym self he tolde his bretherne what him eyled

and from thense fourth he wolde be in the quyer wyth the fyrste. And

so I trowe wolde other that ar now slowthefull, yf they were hastyd on

the same wyse.

The prevalence of such stories shows how common was the misdemeanour

against which they are directed. It may be noted that as preface to the

second part of the _Myroure_ there stands an excellent little dissertation

on the value and method of reading[1612]. It is unnecessary to deal

further with the other didactic works in English intended for the use of

nuns, since their interest is purely religious[1613].

Before leaving the subject of didactic treatises it is however necessary

to mention one little English prose work, for though not addressed to

nuns, it throws some light upon the organisation of a convent and in

particular provides a very complete list of obedientiaries. This is the

_Abbey of the Holy Ghost_, which was printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1500

and has been erroneously attributed to various authors, including Richard

Rolle of Hampole and John Alcock, Bishop of Ely ([dagger] 1480)[1614]. The

allegory of a ghostly abbey seems to have been popular in the middle ages.

It had already been used by the beguine Mechthild in the thirteenth

century and it would be interesting to determine whether there is any

direct connection between her treatise _Von einem geistlichen closter_ and

the _Abbey of the Holy Ghost_. In her convent Charity is abbess, Meekness

her chaplain, Peace prioress, Kindliness subprioress, Hope chantress,

Wisdom schoolmistress, Bounty cellaress, Mercy chambress, Pity

infirmaress, Dread portress and Obedience provost or priest[1615]. The

English book is addressed to men and women who are unable to take regular

vows in some monastic order, and the allegory is carried out in great

detail.

The study of didactic literature addressed to nuns, in order to assist

them in a godly way of life, leads to the consideration of another type of

didactic literature, didactic however with an _arriere-pensee_, being

concerned to point out and to condemn evils which had crept into

monasteries. This is the work of the satirists and moralists, who

castigated by scorn or by condemnation the irregularities of the different

orders. Like didactic writers they describe an ideal, but an ideal which

emerges only from their attack on the dark reality, like sparks of light

which the blacksmith's hammer beats from iron. Occasionally they use the

gay satire of the writer of fabliaux; their condemnation is an

undercurrent beneath a lightly flowing stream, their moral is implicit,

they poke fun at the erring monk or nun, rather than chastise them. It is

so in that delicious poem, _The Land of Cokaygne_[1616], which French wit

begat in the thirteenth century upon English seriousness[1617]. _The Land

of Cokaygne_ is partly an attack on the luxury of monastic houses, and

partly an ebullition of irresponsible gaiety and humour, which might just

as well (one feels) have taken another form. The author has perhaps in his

mind the idea of the imaginary abbey of the Virtues, which was so popular

among serious writers, but he puts it to a very different use. Far in the

sea by West Spain, he says, there is a land which is called Cokaygne

[_coquina_, kitchen]. No land under heaven is like it for goodness.

Paradise may be merry and bright, but Cokaygne is fairer; for what is

there in Paradise but grass and flower and green branches? though there be

joy and great delight there, there is no meat but fruit, no hall or bower

or bench, nothing but water to drink. But in Cokaygne there is plenty of

meat and drink of the best, with no need to labour for it; in Cokaygne

there is muckle joy and bliss and many a sweet sight, for it is always day

there and always life; there is no anger, no animals, no insects

(N'is there fly, flea no louse,

In cloth in town, bed, no house),

no vile worm or snail, no thunder, sleet, hail, rain or wind, no

blindness. All is game and joy and glee there. There are great rivers of

oil and milk and honey and wine--but as for water, it is used only for

washing.

Then the satire becomes slightly more pointed:

There is a well-fair abbey,

Of white monkes and of grey,

There beth bowers, and halls:

All of pasties beth the walls,

Of flesh, of fish, and a rich meat,

The likefullest that man may eat.

Flouren cakes beth the _shingles_ all [tiles

Of church, cloister, bowers and hall.

The pinnes beth fat _puddings_ [sausages

Rich meat to princes and kings.

All may have as much as they will of the food. There is also in the abbey

a fair cloister, with crystal pillars, adorned with green jasper and red

coral. In the meadow near by is a tree, most "likeful for to see."

The root is ginger and galingale,

The scions beth all _sedwale_. [zedoary

_Trie_ maces beth the flower, [choice

The rind, _canel_ of sweet odour; [cinnamon

The fruit _gilofre_ of good smack [cloves

Of _cucubes_ there is no lack. [cubebs (a spice)

There are also red roses and lilies that never fade. There are in the

abbey four springs of _treacle_ (i.e. any rich electuary), _halwei_

(healing water), balsam and spiced wine, ever running in full stream, and

the bed of the stream is all made of precious stones, sapphire, pearl,

carbuncle, emerald, beryl, onyx, topaz, amethyst, chrysolite, chalcedony

and others. There also are many birds, throstle, thrush and nightingale,

goldfinch and woodlark, which sing merrily day and night. Better still

... I do you mo to wit,

The geese y-roasted on the spit,

Flee to that abbey, God it wot,

And _gredith_ "Geese all hot! all hot!" [cry

Hi bringeth garlek, great plentee,

The best y-dight that man may see.

The _leverokes_ that beth _couth_ [larks, well-known

Lieth adown to manis mouth;

Y-dight in stew full _swithe_ well, [quickly

Powder'd with gingelofre and canell.

The writer, having set his monks in the midst of this abundance of good

things, proceeds to describe their daily life. When they go to mass, he

says, the glass windows turn into bright crystal to give them more light,

and when the mass is ended and the books are laid away again, the crystal

turns back again into glass:

The young monkes each day

After meat goeth to play;

N'is there hawk, no fowl so swift,

Better fleeing by the lift,

Than the monkes, high of mood,

With their sleeves and their hood.

When the abbot seeth them flee,

That he holds for much glee,

Ac natheless, all there among,

He biddeth them light to evesong.

And if the monks pursue for too long their airy gambols, he recalls them

by means of an improvised drum, the nature of which is best not indicated

to a more squeamish generation. Then the monks alight in a flock and so

"wend meekly home to drink," in a fair procession.

So far the Paradise has been without an Eve. But the author will provide

these jolly monks with companions worthy of their humour:

Another abbey is thereby,

Forsooth a great fair nunnery:

Up a river of sweet milk,

Where is plenty great of silk.

When the summer's day is hot,

The young nunnes taketh a boat,

And doth them forth in that river,

Both with oares and with steer.

When they beth far from the abbey

They maketh them naked for to play,

And lieth down into the brim,

And doth them slily for to swim.

The young monks that _hi_ seeeth, [them

They doth them up and forth they fleeeth,

And cometh to the nuns anon.

And each monke him taketh one,

And _snellich_ beareth forth their prey [quickly

To the mochil grey abbey,

And teacheth the nuns an orison

With _jambleue_ up and down. [gambols

The monk that acquits him best among the ladies may have twelve wives in a

year, if he will, and if he can outdo all his companions

Of him is hope, God is wot,

To be soon father abbot!

But whoever will come to this delectable country must first serve a hard

penance; seven years must he wade in swines' muck up to the chin ere he

win there. Fair and courteous lordings, good luck to you in the test!

More of a fairy tale than a satire, this jovial and good humoured poem was

immensely popular in the middle ages. Another thirteenth century lampoon

on the monastic orders, written in French in the reign of Edward I, is

less well known, possibly because its satire, while still essentially gay,

is more obvious than that of _The Land of Cokaygne_. The poem is known as

_L'Ordre de Bel-Eyse_[1618]. The author has had the happy idea (not

however a new one)[1619] of combining all the characteristic vices of the

different orders into one glorious Order of Fair Ease, to which belong

many a gentleman and many a fair lady, but no ribald nor peasant. From the

Order of Sempringham it borrows one custom, that of having brothers and

sisters together, but while at Sempringham there must be between them ("a

thing which displeases many") ditches and high walls, in the Order of Fair

Ease there must be no wall and no watchword to prevent the brethren from

visiting the sisters at their pleasure; their intimacy must be separated

by nothing, says this precursor of Rabelais, not by linen nor wool, nor

even by their skins! And all who enter the order must feast well and in

company, thrice a day and oftener. From the canons of Beverley they have

taken the custom of drinking well at their meat and long afterwards (the

pun is on _bever_, to drink), from the Hospitallers that of going clad in

long robes and elegant shoes, riding upon great palfreys that amble well.

From the Canons they borrow the habit of eating meat, but whereas the

canons eat it thrice a week these brethren are bound to eat it daily. From

the Black Monks (as from the canons of Beverley) they take their heavy

drinking, and if a brother be visited by a friend who shall know how to

carouse in the evening, he shall sleep late in the morning (for the sake

of his eyesight), till the evil fumes have issued from his head. From the

secular Canons ("who willingly serve the ladies") they have taken a rule

which is more needful than any other to solace the brethren--that each

brother must make love to a sister before and after matins; a point which

is elaborated with cheerful indecency, under the guise of borrowing from

the Grey Monks their manner of saying prayers. From the Carthusians they

take the custom of shutting each monk up in his cell to repose himself,

with fair plants on his window-ledge for his solace, and his sister

between his arms. The Friars Minor are founded in poverty, which they seek

by lodging ever with the chief baron, or knight, or churchman of the

countryside, where they can have their full; and so must the brethren of

Fair Ease do likewise. The Preachers go preaching in shoes and if they are

footsore they ride at ease on horseback; but the brethren of Fair Ease are

vowed always to ride, and always they must preach within doors and after

they have dined. This is our Order of Fair Ease; he who breaks it shall be

chastised and he who makes good use of it shall be raised to the dignity

of abbot or prior to hold it in honour, for thus do the Augustine canons,

who know so many devices. Now ends our Order, which agrees with all good

orders, and may it please many all too well![1620]

The inventors of these two imaginary orders were not serious or embittered

moralists. Cokaygne lies upon the bonny road to Elfland; and Bel Eyse is a

coarser, stupider Abbey of Theleme[1621], whose inmates lack that instinct

for honour and noble liberty which makes Gargantua's "Fais ce que

vouldras" an ideal as well as a satire. As a rule the medieval satirists

of monasticism deal in grave admonitions, or in violent reproaches. But

one contemporary poem, hailing this time from France, may be added to the

two English works in which the frailties of nuns are treated in a jesting

spirit. This is a piece by the famous trouvere Jean de Conde entitled _La

messe des oisiaus et li plais des chanonesses et des grises

nonains_[1622]. The poem begins with an account of a mass sung in due form

by all the birds and followed by a feast presided over by the goddess

Venus. After this unwieldy introduction comes the main theme, which

consists of a lawsuit brought by the nobly born canonesses against the

grey Cistercian nuns, for the judgment of Venus. A canoness speaks first

on behalf of her order, attended by several gentlemen and knights, who are

proud to claim her acquaintance:

"Queen," she says, "Deign to hear us and to receive us favourably, for

we have ever been thy faithful subjects and we shall continue ever to

serve thee with ardour. For long noblemen held it glorious to have our

love; the honour cost them nothing and was celebrated by round-tables,

feasts and tourneys. But now the grey nuns are stealing our lovers

from us. They are easy mistresses, exacting neither many attentions

nor long service and sometimes men are base enough to prefer them to

us. We demand justice. Punish their insolence, that henceforward they

may not raise their eyes to those who were created for us and for whom

we alone are made."

Venus then bids a grey nun speak and the grey nun's words are dry and to

the point:

Has not nature made us too for love? are not there among us many who

are as fair, as young, as attractive and as loving as they. Do not

doubt it. True their dress is finer than ours, but in affairs of the

heart we serve as well as they. They say we steal their lovers. In

truth it is they who by their pride and haughtiness drive those lovers

away; we do but reconquer them by courtesy and gentleness. We do not

seek them in love; but we have pleased them and they return to us.

And, if they are to be believed, that studied elegance, which must be

costly, has sometimes offered them a love less pure and disinterested

than that which they find with us.

This last charge pricks the canonesses and their faces grow scarlet with

rage:

What? do these serving girls add insult to injury? Do they dare to

claim to be as good lovers as we, who have ever had the usage and

maintenance of love? Their bodies, clad in wool, are not of such

lordship as to be compared to ours and grave shame were it if a man

knew not how to choose the highest. Bold and foolish grey-robes, great

ill have you done. Without your importunities and officious advances

no great lord or knight or man of honour would think of you. This is

your secret and to the shame of love it is spoken, for you degrade

thus the joys which he would have true lovers long desire in vain. You

have your monks and lay brothers; love them, give them heavy alms and

share your pittances with them: you are welcome to them for our part.

But as to gentlemen, leave them to us, who are gentlewomen.

The grey nun replies quietly that her cause is too good to be weakened by

insults, which can only offend the assembly and the respect due to the

goddess, and that love considers neither birth nor wealth:

Our grey robes of Citeaux are not as fine as your vair-lined mantles

and rich adornments; but in such things we do not wish to compare

ourselves with you. It is in the heart and in love that we claim to be

as good as you.

There follows a hum of discussion in the assembly, some taking one side

and some the other, but most favouring the grey nuns. Then Venus rises to

give judgment and makes a long speech on the theme that all are equal in

her eyes:

"White-robed canonesses," she concludes, "I have always held your

services dear. Your grace, your elegance, your fine manners will

always bring you lovers; keep them, but do not drive from my court

these modest nuns, who serve me with so much constancy and whose

hearts burn for me the more ardently, owing to the constraint under

which they live. You are finer and know better, perhaps, how to

entertain; but sometimes the labourer's humble hackney goes further

than the palfrey of the knight. It lies with yourselves alone to keep

your lovers. Imitate your rivals and be gentle and gracious as they

are and you will not have to fear for the fidelity of a single lord."

Obviously hitherto the poem has had none of the characteristics of a moral

piece. The _debat_ was a common literary device, the law court presided

over by Venus a favourite literary theme. Jean de Conde is merely

concerned to amuse the court of Hainault with a polished poem cast in this

familiar mould, just as at other times he might regale it with the

_fabliau_ of _Les Braies au Prestre_ or the _dit_ of _La Nonnette_. Any

satirical value which the poem has is due simply to the implication in his

choice of parties to the suit; that is to say it is no more a satire than

are the numerous _fabliaux_, which have for their subject the peccadillos

of the Church. But the trouvere, even an aristocrat of the confraternity,

such as Jean, who would have held in utter scorn the mere buffoon at the

street corner, was never able to forget that he plied a dangerous trade, a

"trop perilous mester." He was continually aware of the necessity to put

himself right with Heaven, lest haply Aucassin spoke truth and to hell

went the harpers and singers; for the Church's condemnation of his tribe

was unequivocal. Therefore at the end of Venus' speech Jean de Conde

abruptly tacks on a most untimely moral, which gives a sudden seriousness

to his poem. He will sit in the seat of the moralists. So he interprets

the whole debate according to a theological and moral allegory, even going

so far as to compare the strife between the canonesses and the grey nuns

with the resentment of the first workers against those who came last, in

the parable of the Vineyard! He concludes with a bitter reproach against

moral disorders among the nuns, accusing them of paying service to Venus

to their damnation, and bidding "canonesses, canons, priests, monks, nuns

and all folk of their sort" to give up the evil love of the world, which

passes away like a dream, and to cling to the love of God which endureth

for ever. A strange point of view; but one which would strike no sense of

incongruity in an audience accustomed to the moralisation of the _Gesta

Romanorum_ and of many another profane story, forced to do pious service

as an _exemplum_. It is the spirit which built cathedrals and filled them

with grotesques.

Jean de Conde was not really a moralist, even in the sense in which the

authors of _The Land of Cokaygne_ and _The Order of Fair Ease_ deserve the

name. But there were a number of genuine moralists in the last three

centuries of the middle ages, who shook sober heads over the misdeeds of

nuns[1623]. In two thirteenth century French "Bibles," by Guiot de Provins

and the Seigneur de Berze respectively[1624], their chastity is impugned

and the author of _Les Lamentations de Matheolus_ (c. 1290) goes to the

root of the matter and attributes their immorality to the ease with which

they are able to wander about outside their convents. They are continually

inventing stories, he says, in order to escape for a moment from the

cloister; their father, mother, cousin, sister, brother is ill; so they

receive _conge_ to wander about where they will--"par le pais s'en vont

esbattre." Moreover he has hard words for the rapacity of nuns in love;

distrust them, he warns, for they pluck and shear their lovers worse than

thieves or than Breton pirates; you must be always giving, giving, giving

with those ladies--it is the usage of their convent; you have to reward

the messenger and the mistress, the chambermaid, the matron and the

companion[1625]. The mention of the companion shows that the precaution of

sending the nuns out in twos was not always successful, and Gui de Mori

(writing about the same time) has the same tale to tell; the nun's lover

has to give to two at least, to her and to her companion; and since nuns

have plenty of spare time, they are fond of feeding love by the exchange

of messages, which mean more _douceurs_ from the purse of the luckless

gallant[1626].

The most interesting of all French moralists who deal with nuns is,

however, Gilles li Muisis, Abbot of the Benedictine monastery of St Martin

of Tournai, who began about 1350 to write a "Register" of his thoughts

upon contemporary life and morality, one section of which concerns "Les

maintiens des nonnains"[1627]. Like Matheolus, Gilles li Muisis considers

that the root of all evils is the ease with which nuns are able to leave

their convents:

"Of old," he says, "the nun was approved by God and man, when she kept

her cloister and wandered little in the world; but now I see them go

out often, whereat I am greatly displeased, for if this thing were

stopped many scandals would cease and it were greatly to the profit of

their souls."

He represents the "tres doulces nonnains" as behaving "like ladies"; they

keep open house for visitors; and the young men go in more easily than the

old and guilty love is born. They exchange messages and letters with their

lovers; moreover they very often take _conge_ without any other reason

than the desire to meet these young men, and the sight of nuns upon every

road sets men's tongues chattering. They ought to sit at home, spinning

and sewing and mending their wimples: instead they hurry from stall to

stall, spending their money on fine cloths and collars. The Pope would do

well if he enclosed them. The young nuns are the worst of all; they are

forever pestering their abbesses for leave to go out; they will have all

their elders at their will, cellaress, treasuress, subprioress. Everything

is topsy-turvy now and all are in the same rank, those who are lettered

and those who are not; the young desire to have a finger in every pie.

Even their vow of poverty these nuns will not keep. They will have incomes

of their own and if they have none they grumble until they obtain one

somehow: "It is for this reason," they say, "that we desire the money--our

houses are growing poor and everywhere we grow weak." But it is not so,

for they want it in order to be able to go out more often. "I recognise,"

says Gilles, "and it is true, that nuns have many duties to fulfil, for

there is great resort of guests to their houses, and if it were possible

without harm to diminish these expenses, one might do something to help

them." But it is necessary to remember that the ownership of private

property is a sin; canon law condemns it, and if there is a rule

permitting these private incomes I have never met it. Moreover one sees

every day the evil results of such possessions.

What is the result of this laxity of morals, of this continual wandering

of nuns in the world? Secular folk everywhere talk about them and miscall

them:

"Religious ladies," says Gilles, "if you often heard what people say

about many of you, the hearts of good nuns would be dismayed, for the

world has but a poor opinion of you. And why? because men see the nuns

wandering so often; see them packing up all these goods in their carts

and going up and down the hills and dales. It is not you alone who are

slandered; everywhere it is the same; the folk of holy church are held

in little respect and men complain because they have so many

possessions and such fat endowments. But be assured, all of you, when

you go along the highways, that people look and see how well you are

shod and how daintily you are clad; and they hurl evil words against

you. 'Look at those nuns, who are more like fairies. They are attired

even better than other women. They go about the roads, so that men may

gaze upon them; what they covet is to be well stared at. God! well

they know how to entertain men. They have left their cloisters and are

going to enjoy themselves. Better were it for them if they prayed for

people, instead of going to chatter with their friends.'"

Even those who keep company with these nuns are at the same time disturbed

and a little dismayed by their behaviour. "Such men go about with them and

have their will of them; but pay them behind their backs with fierce

slanders...." So the worthy abbot continues, and every word that he says

is borne out by the unimpeachable evidence of the visitation reports. His

long lament is the most interesting of all moral works which have the

behaviour of nuns as their subject and it would be possible to annotate

almost every verse with a visitation _compertum_ or injunction.

Serious writers in condemnation of nuns were not lacking in England as

well as in France in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, when, as

Gilles li Muisis complained, "les gens de Saint-Eglise petits sont

deportees." Langland's pungent satire on the convent where Wrath was

Potager has already been quoted[1628]. Gower, for whom the world was still

more out of joint, has a long passage concerning nuns in that portentous

monument of dulness, the _Vox Clamantis_, and draws a pessimistic picture

of their weakness and the readiness with which they yield to

temptation[1629]. Like monks, he says, the nuns are bound to chastity,

but since they are by nature more frail than man, they must not be

punished as severely as men if they break their vows; for the foot of

woman cannot stand or step firmly like the foot of man and she has none of

those virtues of learning, understanding, constancy and moral excellence,

with which the more admirable sex is endowed:

Nec scola, nec sensus, constancia nullaque virtus

Sicut habent homines, in muliere vigent!

He proceeds to illustrate the moral superiority of the male by the

statement that nuns are often led astray by priests, who enter their

convents as confessors or visitors, and under guise of a reforming

visitation make the frail women worse than they were before. "I should

hold this a most damnable crime," says Gower, "were it not that--really,

woman falls so easily!"

Hoc genus incesti dampnabile grande putarem

Sit nisi quod mulier de leuitate cadit[1630].

After further reflections in this strain, he bursts into a long panegyric

of virginity and then passes on to attack the manners of the friars.

Far more interesting than Gower's conventional moralising is a poem

entitled _Why I can't be a Nun_, and written early in the fifteenth

century[1631]. The favourite device of a ghostly abbey, peopled by

personified qualities, is here employed, but the inmates of the convent

are chiefly vices and such virtues as have a place among the nuns are

treated with scant respect by their companions. The poem is unfortunately

incomplete and begins abruptly in the middle of a sentence, but the gist

of the missing introduction is clear enough. The author represents herself

as a young girl named Katherine, whose desire to become a professed nun

has been opposed by her father. The father charges a number of messengers

to visit all the nunneries of England and the poem opens with the

departure of these messengers, full of zeal to accomplish their task, and

their return with the news that the nuns were ready to do his will.

Whereupon her father told Katherine that she could not be a nun, and

merely laughing at her protests, went his way. Then she mourned and was

sad and thought that fortune was against her; and one May morning, when

her sorrow was more than she could bear, she walked in a fair garden,

where she was wont to go daily to watch the flowers and the birds with

their bright feathers, singing and making merry on the green bough; and

going into an arbour, she set herself upon her knees and prayed to God to

help her in her distress.

At last she fell asleep in the garden and in her sleep a fair lady came to

her and called her by her name and bade her awake and be comforted. This

lady was called Experience and told Katherine that she had come to take

pity on her and teach her, saying:

Kateryne, thys day schalt thow see

An howse of wommen reguler,

And diligent loke that thow be,

And note ryght welle what şou seest there.

Then they went through a green meadow till they came to a beautiful

building and entered boldly by the gates; and it was a house of nuns, "of

dyuers orderys bothe old and yong," but not well governed, after the rule

of sober living, for self-will reigned there and caused discord and

debate:

And what in that place I saw

That to religion schulde not long,

Peradventure ghe wolde desyre to know,

And who was dwellyng hem among.

Sum what counseyle kepe I schalle,

And so I was tawght whan I was yong,

To here and se, and sey not all.

Then follows an enumeration of the inmates of the convent:

But there was a lady, that hyght dame pride;

In grete reputacion they her toke

And pore dame mekenes sate be syde

To her vnnethys ony wolde loke,

But alle as who sethe I her forsoke,

And set not by her nether most ne lest;

Dame ypocryte loke vpon a boke

And bete her selfe vpon the brest.

On every syde than lokede vp I

And fast I cast myne ye abowte;

Yf I cowde se, beholde or aspy,

I wolde have sene dame deuowte.

And sche was but wyth few of that rowght;

For dame slowthe and dame veyne glory

By vyolens had put her owte;

And than in my hert I was fulle sory.

But dame envy was there dwellyng

The whyche can sethe stryfe in every state.

And a nother lady was there wonnyng

That hyght dame love vnordynate,

In that place bothe erly and late

Dame lust, dame wantowne, and dame nyce,

They ware so there enhabyted, I wate,

That few token hede to goddys servyse.

Dame chastyte, I dare welle say,

In that couent had lytylle chere,

But oft in poynt to go her way,

Sche was so lytelle beloved there;

But sum her loved in hert fulle dere,

And there weren that dyd not so,

And sum set no thyng by her,

But ghafe her gode leue for to go....

And in that place fulle besyly

I walked whyle I myght enduer,

And saw how dame enevy

In every corner had grete cure;

Sche bare the keyes of many a dore.

And than experience to me came,

And seyde, kateryne, I the ensuer,

Thys lady ys but seldom fro home.

Than dame pacience and dame charyte

In that nunry fulle sore I sowght;

I wolde fayne have wyst where they had be,

For in that couent were they nowght;

But an owte chamber for hem was wrowght,

And there they dweldyn wyth-owtyn stryfe,

And many gode women to them sowght

And were fulle wylfulle of her lyfe.

There was also another lady, Dame Disobedience, and says Katherine:

Of all the faults that Experience showed me, this lack of obedience

grieved me most, so that I might no longer abide for shame, for I saw

that they had obedience in no reverence and that few or none took

heed of her; and I sped at great speed out of the gates, to escape

from that convent so full of sin.

Then Katherine and the Lady Experience sat down upon the grass, where they

could behold the place, and they began to talk:

And than I prayed experience for to have wyst

Why sche schewed me thys nunery,

Sche seyde "now we bene here in rest,

I thenk for to tellen the why,

Thy furst desyre and thyne entent

Was to bene a nune professede,

And for thy fader wolde not consent,

Thyne hert wyth mornyng was sore oppressede,

And thow wyst not what to do was best;

And I seyde, I wolde cese thy grevaunce,

And now for the most part in every cost

I have schewed the nunnes gouernawnce.

For as thou seest wythin yonder walle

Suche bene the nunnes in euery warde,

As for the most part, I say not alle,

God forbede, for than hyt were harde,

For sum bene devowte, holy and towarde,

And holden the ryght way to blysse;

And sum bene feble, lewde and frowarde,

Now god amend what ys amys!

And now keteryne, I have alle do

For thy comfort that longeth to me,

And now let vs aryse and go

Vn-to the herber there I come to the.

There Experience departed and Katherine awakened from her dream,

determined never to be a nun, unless the faults that she had seen were

amended.

Then follows a long exhortation to the nuns. They are adjured (by the

well-worn example of Dinah) not to wander from their convents, and are

reminded that the habit does not make the nun:

Yowre barbe, your wympplle and your vayle,

Yowre mantelle and yowre devowte clothyng,

Maketh men wythowten fayle

To wene ghe be holy in levyng.

And so hyt ys an holy thyng

To bene in habyte reguler;

Than, as by owtewarde array in semyng,

Beth so wythin, my ladyes dere.

A fayre garland of yve grene

Whyche hangeth at a tavern dore,

Hyt ys a false token as I wene,

But yf there by wyne gode and sewer;

Ryght so but ghe your vyes forbere,

And alle lewde custom be broken,

So god me spede, I yow ensewer

Ellys yowre habyte ys no trew token.

The poem ends as abruptly as it began with a catalogue of holy women,

whose lives are worthy of imitation, St Clare, St Edith, St Scolastica and

St Bridget, "that weren professed in nunnes habyte," and a bevy of English

saints, St Audrey, St Frideswide, St Withburg, St Mildred, St Sexburg and

St Ermenild. Whether or not the author really was a woman, the poem seems

to show some knowledge of monastic life; and a certain sincerity and

rugged directness render it more impressive than Gower's long-winded

accusations.

There remain to be considered two satires which were written on the very

eve of the Reformation and perhaps have a particular significance by

reason of the cataclysm, which was so soon to effect what all the

denunciations of the moralists had failed to do. These are the dialogues

on "The Virgin averse to Matrimony" and "The Penitent Virgin" in Erasmus'

_Colloquies_ (c. 1526) and a morality (which has already been mentioned)

by the Scottish poet Sir David Lyndesay, entitled _Ane Pleasant Satyre of

the Thrie Estaits, in commendatioun of vertew and vituperatioun of vyce_

(c. 1535). Erasmus' dialogues are (as might be expected) strongly

anti-monastic and the two which concern nuns are intended to attack those

"kidnappers" as he calls them:

that by their allurements draw young men and maids into monasteries,

contrary to the minds of their parents, making a handle either of

their simplicity or superstition, persuading them there is no hope of

salvation out of a monastery.

The dialogue entitled "The Virgin averse to Matrimony"[1632] takes place

between Eubulus and a seventeen-year old girl, Katherine, who like that

other Katherine, the heroine of _Why I can't be a Nun_, has set her heart

upon entering a convent, but has encountered the opposition of her

parents:

"What was it," asks Eubulus, "that gave the first rise to this fatal

resolution?" "Formerly," replies Katherine, "when I was a little

girl, they carried me into one of these cloisters of virgins, carried

me all about it and shewed me the whole college. I was mightily taken

with the virgins, they looked so charmingly pretty, just like angels;

the chapels were so neat and smelt so sweet, the gardens looked so

delicately well-ordered, that, in short, which way soever I turned my

eye everything seemed delightful. And then I had the prettiest

discourse with the nuns; and I found two or three that had been my

play-fellows when I was a child and I have a strange passion for that

sort of life ever since."

Eubulus argues with the girl. She can live as purely in her father's house

as in a nunnery; more purely indeed--and he makes a grave indictment

against the morality of nuns[1633]. Moreover she has no right to run

contrary to the wishes of her parents and to exchange their authority for

that of a fictitious father and a strange mother:

"The matter in question here," he says, "is only the changing of a

habit or of such a course of life, which in itself is neither good nor

evil. And now consider but this one thing, how many valuable

privileges you lose together with your liberty. Now, if you have a

mind to read, pray or sing, you may go into your own chamber as much

and as often as you please. When you have enough of retirement you may

go to church, hear anthems, prayers and sermons and if you see any

matron or virgin remarkable for piety, in whose company you may get

good, if you see any man that is endowed with singular probity from

whom you may learn what will make for your bettering, you may have

their conversation; and you may choose that preacher that preaches

Christ most purely. When once you come into a cloister all these

things, which are the greatest assistance in the promotion of true

piety, you lose at once." "But," says Katherine, "in the meantime I

shall not be a nun." "What signifies the name?" replies Eubulus.

"Consider the thing itself. They make their boast of obedience and

will you not be praiseworthy in being obedient to your parents, your

bishop and your pastor, whom God has commanded you to obey? Do you

profess poverty? And may not you too, when all is in your parents'

hands? Although the virgins of former times were in an especial manner

commended by holy men for their liberality towards the poor; but they

could never have given anything if they had possessed nothing. Nor

will your charity be ever the less for living with your parents. And

what is there more in a convent than these? A veil, a linen shift

turned into a stole, and certain ceremonies, which of themselves

signify nothing to the advancement of piety and make nobody more

acceptable in the eyes of Christ, who only regards the purity of the

mind." "Are you then against the main institution of a monastic life?"

asks Katherine. "By no means," answers Eubulus. "But as I will not

persuade anybody against it that is already engaged in this sort of

life to endeavour to get out of it, so I would most undoubtedly

caution all young women, especially those of generous tempers, not to

precipitate themselves unadvisedly into that state from whence there

is no getting out afterwards. And the rather because their charity is

more in danger in a cloister than out of it; and beside that, you may

do whatever is done there as well at home."

But Katherine remains unpersuaded.

In the next dialogue, called "The Penitent Virgin"[1634] Eubulus and

Katherine meet again, and Katherine informs her friend how she has entered

the nunnery, but has repented and gone home to her parents before being

fully professed:

"How did you get your parents' consent at last?" asks Eubulus. "First

by the restless solicitations of the monks and nuns and then by my own

importunities and tears, my mother was at length brought over; but my

father stood out stiffly still. But at last being plyed by several

engines, he was prevailed upon to yield; but yet, rather like one that

was forced than that consented. The matter was concluded in their

cups, and they preached damnation to him, if he refused to let Christ

have his spouse.... I was kept close at home for three days; but in

the mean time there were always with me some women of the college that

they call _convertites_, mightily encouraging me to persist in my holy

resolution and watching me narrowly, lest any of my friends or kindred

should come at me and make me alter my mind. In the meanwhile my habit

was making ready, and the provision for the feast." "Did not your mind

misgive you yet?" asks Eubolus. "No, not at all; and yet I was so

horridly frightened that I had rather die ten times over than suffer

the same again.... I had a most dreadful apparition." "Perhaps,"

remarks Eubulus slyly, "it was your evil genius that pushed you on to

this." "I am fully persuaded it was an evil spirit," replies

Katherine. "Tell me what shape it was in? Was it such as we use to

paint with a crooked beak, long horns, harpies claws and swinging

tail?" "You can make game of it," says poor Katherine, "but I had

rather sink into the earth than see such another." "And were your

women solicitresses with you then?" "No, nor I would not so much as

open my lips of it to them, though they sifted me most particularly

about it, when they found me almost dead with the surprise." "Shall I

tell you what it was?" says Eubulus. "These women had certainly

bewitched you, or conjured your brain out of your head rather[1635].

But did you persist in your resolution for all this?" "Yes, for they

told me that many were thus troubled upon their first consecrating

themselves to Christ; but if they got the better of the Devil that

bout, he'd let them alone for ever after." "Well, what pomp were you

carried out with?" "They put on all my finery, let down my hair and

dressed me just as if it had been for my wedding.... I was carried

from my father's house to the college by broad daylight and a world of

people staring at me." "O these Scaramouches," interrupts Eubulus,

"how they know how to wheedle the poor people!"

Katherine then tells him that she remained only twelve days in the

nunnery, and after six changed her mind and besought her father and mother

to take her away, which they eventually did. But what she saw that made

her recant she refuses to tell Eubulus, though he announces himself well

able to guess what it was. The dialogue ends on a significant note, "In

the meanwhile you have been at a great charge." "Above four hundred

crowns." "O these guttling nuptials!"[1636]

The racy dialogues of Erasmus illustrate the characteristic hostility of

the new learning towards contemporary monastic orders, and embody the main

charges which were customarily made against them, viz. the undue pressure

brought to bear upon young people to take vows for which they were not

necessarily suited, the avarice of the convents and the immorality of

their inmates. Sir David Lyndesay's _Satyre of the Thrie Estaits_ dwells

more specifically upon the latter accusation. In this lively castigation

of the vices of the day, which was acted for nine hours before the court

of King James V of Scotland at Cupar in 1535, Chastity comes upon the

stage, lamenting that she has long been banished, unheeded and unfriended

and that neither the temporal estate, nor the spiritual estate nor the

Princes will befriend her. Diligence bids her seek refuge among the nuns,

who are sworn to observe chastity, pointing to a Prioress of renown,

sitting among the other spiritual lords. "I grant," says Chastity,

ghon Ladie hes vowit Chastitie

For hir professioun; thairto sould accord.

Scho maid that vow for ane Abesie,

Bot nocht for Christ Jesus our Lord.

Fra tyme that thay get thair vows, I stand for'd,

Thay banische hir out of thair cumpanie:

With Chastitie thay can mak na concord,

Bot leids thair lyfis in Sensualitie.

I sall obserue our counsall, gif I may.

Cum on, and heir quhat ghon Ladie will say,

My prudent, lustie, Ladie Priores,

Remember how ghe did vow Chastitie.

Madame, I pray ghow, of your gentilnes,

That ghe wald pleis to haif of me pitie,

And this ane nicht to gif me harberie:

For this I mak ghow supplicacioun.

Do ghe nocht sa, Madame, I dreid, perdie!

It will be caus of depravatioun.

But the Prioress has given her allegiance to the notorious Lady

Sensuality, who, serving Queen Venus, has corrupted the court of King

Humanity and especially his clergy. "Pass hynd, Madame," she says,

Be Christ I ghe cum nocht heir:

ghe are contrair to my cumplexioun ...

Dame Sensuall hes geuin directioun

ghow till exclude out of my cumpany.

Chastity then applies in vain to the Lords of Spirituality for shelter; an

abbot jeers at her and a parson bids her

Pas hame amang the Nunnis and dwell,

Quhilks ar of Chastitie the well.

I traist thay will, with Buik and bell

Ressaue ghow in thair Closter;

to which Chastity replies:

Sir, quhen I was the Nunnis amang,

Out of thair dortour thay mee dang,

And wold nocht let me bide se lang

To say my Pater noster[1637].

At the end of the play the evil counsellors of King Humanity and

corruptors of his Estates are punished by Sir Commonweal, with the

assistance of Good Counsel and Correction. Correction, with his Scribe,

examines the spiritual lords as to how they keep their vows, and thus

interrogates the Prioress:

Quhat say ghe now, my Ladie Priores?

How have ghe vsit ghour office, can ghe ges?

Quhat was the caus ghe refusit harbrie

To this young lustie Ladie Chastitie?

and the Prioress replies:

I wald have harborit hir, with gude intent;

Bot my complexioun therto wald not assent.

I do my office efter auld vse and wount:

To ghour Parliament I will mak na mair count[1638].

The punishment of Flattery the Friar, the Prioress and the other prelates

follows; and the Sergeants proceed to divest her of her habit, gaily

adjuring her:

Cum on, my Ladie Priores.

We sall leir ghow to dance--

And that within ane lytill space--

Ane new pavin of France

(_Heir sall thay spuilghe the Priores; and scho sall haue

ane kirtill of silk under hir habite._)

Now, brother, be the Masse!

Be my iudgement, I think

This halie Priores

Is turnit in ane _cowclink_[1639]. [courtesan

The Prioress then makes a lament, which has already been quoted, blaming

her friends for making her a nun, and declaring that nuns are not

necessary to Christ's congregation and would be better advised to marry.

Finally the Acts of Parliament of King Correction and King Humanity, for

the better regulation of the realm, are proclaimed; and these include a

condemnation of nunneries:

Because men seis, plainlie,

This wantoun Nunnis ar na way necessair

Till Common-weill, not ghit to the glorie

Of Christ's kirk, thocht thay be fat and fair.

And als, that fragill ordour feminine

Will nocht be missit in Christ's Religioun;

Thair rents vsit till ane better fyne

For Common-weill of all this Regioun[1640].

The date when these words were first proclaimed from a stage is

significant; it was 1535, the year of the visitation of the monasteries in

England. The confiscation of those rents was soon to be an accomplished

fact; but it was a king rather than a commonweal that reaped the benefit.

There remains for consideration only one other class of literature which

speaks of the nun. It is interesting to see the part which she plays in

literature proper, outside popular songs and stories, or popular and

didactic works written for purposes of edification. Considering the

important part played by monastic institutions in the life of the upper

classes it is perhaps surprising that the part played by the nun in

secular literature is so small. But the explanation lies in the definitely

romantic basis of the greater part of such literature, combined with the

fact that it was aristocratic in origin and therefore inherited a respect

for the nunneries, which prevented a romantic treatment of the nun, such

as is found in the _chansons de nonnes_. Even so it is to be remarked that

the treatment is romantic with a difference; the nun is willingly

professed, pious, aloof, but it is because death or misfortune has put an

end to lovers' joys; the type of nun who appears in this literature has

retreated to a convent at the close of a life spent in the world. If the

nun unwillingly professed has always been a favourite theme, so also has

the broken-hearted wife or lover, hiding her sorrows in the silent

cloister; from the twelfth to the nineteenth century she remains

unchanging, from Belle Doette and Guinevere to the Lady Kirkpatrick:

To sweet Lincluden's holy cells

Fu' dowie I'll repair:

There peace wi' gentle patience dwells--

Nae deadly feuds are there.

In tears I'll wither ilka charm,

Like draps o' balefu' dew,

And wail a beauty that could harm

A knight sae brave and true[1641].

The anonymous twelfth century romance of Belle Doette contains some

charming verses, describing her grief at her husband's death and her

determination to enter a cloister:

Bele Doette a pris son duel a faire:

"Tant mari fustes, cuens Do, frans de bon aire!

Por vostre amor vestirai je la haire,

Ne sor mon cors n'avra pelice vaire.

E or en ai dol.

Por vos devenrai nonne en l'eglyse Saint Pol.

Por vos ferai une abbaie tele

Quant iert li jors que la feste iert nomee

Se nus i vient qui ait s'amor fausee

Ja del mostier ne savera l'entree.

E or en ai dol.

Por vos devenrai nonne en l'eglyse Saint Pol.

Bele Doette prist s'abaise a faire,

Qui mout est grande et ades sera maire:

Toz cels et celes vodra dedans atraire

Qui por amor sevent peine et mal traire.

E or en ai dol.

Por vos devenrai nonne en l'eglyse Saint Pol"[1642].

Lovely Doette, she weeps a husband fair.

"O count, my lord, frank wast thou, debonair!

For thy dear love I'll wear a shirt of hair,

Never again be clad in robe of vair.

Great grief have I.

Now in St Paul's a nun I'll live and die.

For thy dear love an abbey I will raise.

And when therein first sounds the song of praise

If one shall come who falsely love betrays

Ne'er shall she find an entrance all her days.

Great grief have I.

Now in St Paul's a nun I'll live and die.

Lovely Doette, she makes her abbey so.

Great now it is and greater still shall grow.

And lovers all into that church shall go

Who for love's sake know pain and bitter woe.

Great grief have I.

Now in St Paul's a nun I'll live and die."

To English readers the supreme representative of this type must always be

Malory's Guinevere:

And when queen Guenever understood that king Arthur was slain, and all

the noble knights, Sir Mordred and all the remnant, then the queen

stole away and five ladies with her, and so she went to Almesbury, and

there she let make herself a nun, and wore white clothes and black,

and great penance she took, as ever did sinful lady in this land, and

never creature could make her merry, but lived in fasting, prayers and

alms-deeds, that all manner of people marvelled how virtuously she

was changed. Now leave we queen Guenever in Almesbury a nun in white

clothes and black, and there she was abbess and ruler as reason would.

There follows that incomparable chapter of parting, when Launcelot seeks

his queen in her nunnery:

and then was queen Guenever ware of Sir Launcelot as he walked in the

cloister, and when she saw him there she swooned thrice, that all the

ladies and gentlewomen had work enough to hold the queen up. So when

she might speak, she called ladies and gentlewomen to her, and said,

Ye marvel, fair ladies, why I make this fare. Truly, she said, it is

for the sight of yonder knight that yonder standeth: wherefore, I pray

you all, call him to me. When Sir Launcelot was brought to her, then

she said to all the ladies, Through this man and me hath all this war

been wrought, and the death of the most noblest knights of the world;

for through our love that we have loved together is my noble lord

slain. Therefore, Sir Launcelot, wit thou well I am set in such a

plight to get my soul's health; and yet I trust, through God's grace,

that after my death to have a sight of the blessed face of Christ and

at doomsday to sit at his right side, for as sinful as ever I was are

saints in heaven. Therefore, Sir Launcelot, I require thee and beseech

thee heartily, for all the love that ever was betwixt us, that thou

never see me more in the visage; and I command thee on God's behalf

that thou forsake my company and to thy kingdom thou turn again and

keep well thy realm from war and wrack. For as well as I have loved

thee, mine heart will not serve me to see thee; for through thee and

me is the flower of kings and knights destroyed.

And so on, through the last parting, and the last kiss refused, and the

lamentation "as they had been stung with spears," through the six long

years of fasting and penance, till the day when Guinevere died and a

vision bade Launcelot seek her corpse.

And when Sir Launcelot was come to Almesbury, within the nunnery,

queen Guenever died but half an hour before. And the ladies told Sir

Launcelot that queen Guenever told them all, or she passed, that Sir

Launcelot had been priest near a twelvemonth--And hither he cometh as

fast as he may to fetch my corpse; and beside my lord king Arthur he

shall bury me. Wherefore the queen said in hearing of them all, I

beseech Almighty God that I may never have power to see Sir Launcelot

with my worldly eyes. And thus, said all the ladies, was ever her

prayer these two days, till she was dead[1643].

This is a different romance from that of the gay _chansons de nonnes_, but

it is romance all the same. There is little in common between Queen

Guinevere and the lady who was loved and rescued by a king in the _Ancren

Riwle_[1644].

One of the last--as it is one of the most graceful--pieces of courtly

literature concerned with a convent is the delightful _Livre du dit de

Poissy_, in which the French poetess Christine de Pisan tells of a

journey, which she took in 1400, to visit her daughter, a nun at the

famous convent of Poissy. This Dominican abbey, founded in 1304, was

exceedingly rich and the special favourite of the kings of France, for it

had been put under the protection of St Louis. The number of nuns,

originally fixed at a hundred and twenty, soon rose to two hundred, and

the aristocratic character of the house was very marked, for its inmates

had to be of noble birth and to receive a special authorisation from the

king before they could be admitted. At the time of Christine de Pisan's

visit Marie de Bourbon, aunt of Charles VI, was prioress, and the convent

also contained the nine year old Marie de France, his daughter (who took

the veil at the age of five) and her cousin Catherine d'Harcourt. There

were no nunneries so large and so rich in England at this late date; but

Christine's description may serve to suggest what great houses like

Shaftesbury and Romsey must have been like in the earlier days of their

prime. Her account of the convent, with its fine buildings and gardens,

its church, its rich lands and its gracious and dignified way of life

forms a useful counterpoise to the bald and unidealised picture presented

by the _comperta_ of visitations; for assuredly truth lies somewhere

between the _comperta_, which deal solely with faults, and the poem, which

deals solely with virtues.

Christine describes the brilliant cavalcade of lords and ladies riding in

the spring morning through beautiful scenery, enlivening their journey

with laughter and song and talk of love, until they came to the great

abbey of Poissy. She describes their reception by the Prioress Marie de

Bourbon and by the king's little daughter "joenne et tendre":

Par les degrez de pierre, que moult pris,

En hault montames

Ou bel hostel royal, que nous trouvames

Moult bien pare, et en sa chambre entrames

De grant beaulty.

The Prioress' lodging was evidently such as befitted a royal princess,

even though she were a humble nun. Christine describes the manner of life

of the nuns, how no man might enter the precincts to serve or see them,

save a relative, and how they never left the convent and seldom saw

strangers from the world:

Et de belles plusiers y a comme angelz.

Si ne vestent chemises, et sus langes

Gisent de nuis; n'ont pas coultes a franges

Mais materas

Qui sont couvers de biaulx tapis d'Arras

Bien ordenees, mais ce n'est que baras,

Car ils sont durs et emplis de bourras,

Et la vestues

Gisent de nuis celles dames rendues,

Qui se lievent ou elles sont batues

A matines; la leurs chambres tendues

En dortouer

Ont pres a pres, et en refectouer

Disnent tout temps, ou a beau lavourer.

Et en la court y a le parlouer

Ou a trellices

De fer doubles a fenestres coulices,

Et la en droit les dames des offices

A ceulz de hors parlent pour les complices

Et necessaires

Qu'il leur convient et fault en leurs affaires.

Si ont prevosts, seigneuries et maires,

Villes, Chastiaulx, rentes de plusieurs paires

Moult bien assises;

Et riches sont, ne nulles n'y sont mises

Fors par congie de roy qui leurs franchises

Leur doit garder et maintes autres guises

A la en droit.

Christine then tells how the Prioress invited the party to "desjuner" and

how in a fair room they were served with rich wines and meats, in vessels

of gold, and were waited upon by the nuns. Then the nuns led them through

the buildings and grounds of the convent, showing them all the beauties of

this "paradise terestre." She gives an extremely minute and interesting

picture of Poissy as it was in 1400, the vaulted cloister with its carven

pillars, surrounding a square lawn with a tall pine in the middle; the

spacious frater, with glass windows; the fine chapter house; the stream of

fresh water carried in pipes through all the different buildings; the

great storehouses, cellars, ovens and other offices; the large, airy

dorter; and finally the magnificent church, with its tall pillars and

vaulted roof, its hangings, images, paintings and ornaments of glittering

gold. She tells of the services held there, when the nuns knelt within a

screen in the nave and the townsfolk and visitors and priests outside it.

She gives a detailed account of the clothes worn by the nuns; a woman she,

and not to be content with Malory's simple "white clothes and black."

Finally she describes the wide gardens and woods of the convent,

surrounded by a high wall and full of fruit-trees and birds and deer and

coneys, with two fishponds, well-stocked with fish. In the exploration of

these delights the day passed quickly. The gay party retired at nightfall

to a neighbouring inn and early the next day paid a farewell visit to the

hospitable nuns, who gave them gifts of belts and purses embroidered by

themselves:

Et reprendre

De leurs joyaulx

Il nous covint, non fermillez n'aniaulx

Mais boursetes ouvrees a oysiaulx

D'or et soies, ceintures et laz biaulx,

Moult bien ouvrez,

Qui autre part ne sont telz recouvrez.

Then lords and ladies took horse again and, debating of love, rode back to

Paris[1645].

Against this courtly idyll of monastic life one more picture of a nun must

be set as complement and as contrast. It is deservedly well known; but no

study of the nun in medieval literature would be complete without quoting

in full Chaucer's description of Madame Eglentyne, a masterpiece of

humorous observation, sympathetic without being idealised, gently

sarcastic without being bitter. It is a fitting note on which to close

this book:

Ther was also a Nonne, a Prioresse,

That of her smyling was ful simple and coy;

Hir grettest ooth was but by seynt loy;

And she was cleped madame Eglentyne.

Ful wel she song the service divyne,

Entuned in hir nose ful semely;

And Frensh she spak ful faire and fetisly,

After the scole of Stratford atte Bowe,

For Frensh of Paris was to hir unknowe.

At mete wel y-taught was she with-alle;

She leet no morsel from hir lippes falle,

Ne wette hir fingres in hir sauce depe.

Wel coude she carie a morsel and wel kepe,

That no drope ne fille up-on hir brest.

In curteisye was set ful muche hir lest.

Hir over lippe wyped she so clene,

That in hir coppe was no ferthing sene

Of grece, whan she dronken hadde hir draughte.

Ful semely after hir mete she raughte,

And sikerly she was of greet disport,

And ful plesaunt and amiable of port,

And peyned hir to countrefete chere

Of court, and been estatlich of manere,

And to be holden digne of reverence.

But, for to speken of hir conscience,

She was so charitable and so pitous,

She wolde wepe, if that she sawe a mous

Caught in a trap, if it were deed or bledde.

Of smale houndes had she, that she fedde

With rosted flesh, or milk and wastel-breed.

But sore weep she if oon of hem were deed,

Or if men smoot it with a yerde smerte:

And al was conscience and tendre herte.

Ful semely hir wimpel pinched was;

Hir nose tretys; hir eyen greye as glas;

Hir mouth ful smal, and ther-to softe and reed;

But sikerly she hadde a fair forheed;

It was almost a spanne brood, I trowe;

For, hardily, she was nat undergrowe.

Ful fetis was hir cloke, as I was war.

Of smal coral aboute hir arm she bar

A peire of bedes, gauded al with grene;

And ther-on heng a broche of gold ful shene,

On which ther was first write a crouned A,

And after, _Amor vincit omnia_[1646].

APPENDIX I

ADDITIONAL NOTES TO THE TEXT

NOTE A.

THE DAILY FARE OF BARKING ABBEY.

The _Charthe_ [charter] _longynge to the office of the Celeresse of the

Monasterye of Barkinge_[1647] is one of the most interesting domestic

documents which has survived from the middle ages. The _Menagier de Paris_

gives a first rate account of the work of a housewife who has to provide

for a private household. The _Charthe_ sets forth the duties of a

housewife who has to feed a large institution. No bursar of a college or

housekeeper of a school can fail to read it with a sympathetic smile. Like

a good business woman the nameless cellaress, who drew it up for the

guidance of her successors, sets out first of all the sources of revenue

by which the charges of her office were supported. These are of three

sorts: (1) the rents from thirteen rural manors, together with certain

annual rents from the canons of St Paul's, the priory of St Bartholomew's

and the lessees of various tenements in London, which were supposed to

yield her a little over L95 per annum; (2) "the issues of the Larder," to

wit all the ox skins, "inwards" of oxen, tallow coming from oxen and

messes of beef, which she sells; and (3) "the foreyn receyte," to wit the

money received for the sale of hay at any farm belonging to her office.

These represent only her money revenues; but she also received the greater

part of meat and dairy produce consumed by the convent from the home farm

and from the demesnes of the manors appropriated to her. The _Charthe_

warns her to be certain of hiring pasture for her oxen at such times as it

is needful, to see that her hay is duly mown and made and to keep all the

buildings belonging to her office in repair, both those within the

monastery and those at the outlying manors and farms.

The _Charthe_ throws some light upon the domestic staff employed in

working the department. An important gentleman called the steward of the

household had the general supervision of its business affairs; he kept an

eye on the bailiffs and rent collectors of the cellaress's manors and

presided at their courts. The cellaress solemnly presented him with a

"reward" of 20_d._ every time that he returned with the pecuniary proceeds

of justice, and on Christmas day. The management of the department was

done by the head cellaress herself, with an under-cellaress to assist her

and a clerk to keep her accounts and write her business letters, at a

wage of 13_s._ 4_d._ The kitchen was in the special charge of a nun

kitchener and the actual cooking was done by a "yeoman cook," a "groom

cook" and a "pudding wife"[1648]; she paid her yeoman cook a wage of

26_s._ 8_d._, her pudding wife, 2_s._ a year and bought her groom cook a

gown at Christmas. She wisely gave a Christmas box to each of the

underlings, great and small, with whom she had to do, 20_d._ to the

Abbess' gentlewoman, 16_d._ to every gentleman, "and to every yoman as it

pleaseth her for to doo, and gromes in like case"; moreover it was her

pleasant duty to hand to herself as cellaress and to her under-cellaress

20_d._ apiece.

The _Charthe_ gives exceedingly minute directions as to the conventual

housekeeping. Barking Abbey was a large house, consisting at the time this

document was drawn up of thirty-seven ladies. The Abbess dwelt in state in

her own apartments, with a gentlewoman to wait upon her and a private

kitchen, with its own staff, which was not under the control of the

cellaress. The cellaress, however, sent in to the Abbess 4 lbs. of almonds

and eight cakes called "russheaulx" in Lent, eight chickens at Shrovetide,

one pottle of wine called Tyre[1649] on Maundy Thursday and a sugar loaf

on Christmas Day; while the Abbess' kitchen had to provide the convent

with "pittances" and "liveries" of pork, bacon, mutton or eggs on certain

days of the year, as will appear hereafter. From the convent kitchen the

cellaress had to purvey for: (1) the ladies of the convent, (2) the

prioress, two cellaresses and kitchener, who receive a double allowance of

almost all food given out, and (3) the priory.

The _Charthe_ sets forth exactly how much is to be delivered to each

person, the separate allowances of meat being called "messes." It will be

convenient to consider the stores to be provided under the five headings

of: (1) meat, (2) grain, (3) butter and eggs, (4) fish and condiments for

Advent and Lenten fare, and (5) pittances, or extra delicacies provided on

certain days of the year. It is to be noted that the _Charthe_ deals for

the most part with the special fare appropriate to special occasions.

There is no mention of the daily allowance of bread and beer made on the

premises; the only fish mentioned is salt fish for Lent; the only

vegetables are dried peas and beans; the only fowls are for a special

pittance on St Alburgh's day.

(1) _Meat._ The chief meat food of the convent, eaten three times a week

(on Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday), except in Advent and Lent and on

vigils, was beef. The cellaress had to purvey 22 "gud oxen" by the year

for the convent. These oxen were fed on her own pastures, and, says the

cellaress, "she shall slay but every fortnyght and yf sche be a good

huswyff"; accordingly at the end of the first week, she must look and see

if she has enough beef to last out the fortnight and if not she must buy

what she needs in the market. It would seem that besides the beef provided

by the cellaress from the convent kitchen the convent had an extra

allowance of beef provided from some source not mentioned in the

_Charthe_, or else that they did not always eat each week what was

delivered to them. For the cellaress sets down as follows the entry which

her clerk is to make in her book each week: on Saturday 20 Sept.

(doubtless the day on which she was writing) she answers for four or five

messes remaining in store of the week before, and of 63 messes of beef

from an ox slain the same week, also of 80 messes of beef bought by her of

the convent "of that they lefte behynd of ther lyvere, paying for every

mess 1-1/2_d._," total 147 messes, whereof she delivers to each lady for

the three meat days three messes and to the priory six messes. After beef

the meat food most commonly eaten consisted in various forms of pig's

flesh. At Martinmas the cellaress had to ask at the abbess' kitchen for a

pittance of pork for each lady and also a livery of "sowsse"[1650], thus

defined: "every lady to have three thynges, that is to sey, the cheke, the

ere and the fote is a livery; the groyne and two fete ys anodyer leveray;

soe a hoole hoggs sowsse shall serve three ladyes." At the same time she

had to give them "of sowce of hyre owne provisione two thynges to every

lady, so that a hoole hog sowce do serve four ladyes." She also had to

provide pork from her own kitchin for two anniversary pittances (of which

more anon) and she notes that every hog yields 20 messes. Moreover on

Christmas Day she had to ask at the abbess' kitchen for "livery bacon" for

the convent, four messes for each lady; a flitch was reckoned to provide

ten messes. Of mutton the convent ate very little. Three times a year,

between the feasts of the Assumption (Aug. 15) and of St Michael (Sept.

29), the abbess' kitchen had to provide "pittance mutton" for the ladies,

a mess to each, "and every mutton yields twelve messes"; and twice a year

on certain anniversaries the cellaress had to provide a similar allowance

out of her own kitchen.

(2) _Grain._ Under this heading comes three quarters of malt, to be brewed

into ale for the festal seasons of St Alburgh's[1651] (or Foundress') Day

(Oct. 11) and Christmas; one quarter and seven bushels of wheat to be

baked into bread or cakes for various pittances; two bushels of dried

peas to be eaten in Lent and one bushel of dried beans "against

Midsummer." The brewer and baker were paid a tip of 20_d._ and 6_d._

respectively, when they had to make the extra pittance beer and bread. The

convent also had a livery of oatmeal from the cellaress, four dishes

delivered once a month.

(3) _Butter and Eggs._ The cellaress had to provide the convent with

butter at certain times, to every lady and double one "cobet," every dish

containing three cobets. What was called "feast butter" was payable on St

Alburgh's Day, Easter, Whitsunday and Trinity Sunday. What was called

"storing butter" was payable five times a year, "to wit Advent and four

times after Christmas." What was called "fortnight butter" was payable

once for every fortnight lying between Trinity Sunday and Holy Rood Day

(Sept. 14). The cellaress was also responsible for providing the convent

with money to buy eggs ("ey silver"); each lady had weekly from Michaelmas

(Sept. 29) to All Hallows' Day (Nov. 1), 1-1/2_d._, from All Hallows' Day

to Advent, 1-3/4_d._, from Advent to Childermas Day (Dec. 28), 1-1/4_d._,

from Childermas Day to Ash Wednesday, 1-3/4_d._, and from Easter to

Michaelmas, 1-1/2_d._; also an extra allowance of 1/2_d._ on each vigil of

the year, when no meat was eaten. Out of this "ey silver" the nuns had to

purvey eggs for themselves as best they might; but the cellaress had to

give the priory each week in the year 32 eggs or else 2-3/4_d._ in money,

except in the four Advent weeks when she provided only 16 and in Lent,

when none were due; for every vigil she gave them eight eggs, "or else

1-3/4_d._ and the fourth part of 1/4_d._" in money. At the five principal

feasts of the year the abbess left her hall and dined in state in the

frater, to wit on Easter Day, Whit Sunday, Assumption Day, St Alburgh's

Day and Christmas Day; and on these occasions the cellaress had to ask the

clerk of the abbess' kitchen for "supper eggs" for the convent, two for

each lady.

(4) _Lenten Fare._ For Lent and Advent the cellaress had to provide the

convent with their diet of fish, enlivened for their comfort with dried

fruits and rice. She laid in two cades of red herring for Advent, a cade

being 600 (counting six score to the 100).

For Lent she purveyed seven cades of red herring and three barrels

(containing 1000 at six score to the hundred) of white herring. To every

lady she gave four a day (i.e. in all 28 a week), and to the priory she

gave four on every day except Sunday, when she gave them fish, and Friday,

when they had figs and raisins. She also had to lay in 18 salt fish

(nature unspecified), out of which she provided each lady with a mess and

the priory with two messes every other week in Lent, each fish producing

seven messes; in the alternate weeks they received salt salmon, of which

she laid in fourteen or fifteen, each salmon yielding nine messes. To

spice this Lenten fare she bought 1200 lbs. of almonds, three "peces" and

24 lbs. of figs, one "pece" of raisins, 28 lbs. of rice and 12 gallons of

mustard. Each lady received 2 lbs. of almonds and 1/2 lb. of rice to last

for the whole of Lent, and every week 1 lb. of figs and raisins.

(5) _Pittances_, or extra allowances of more delicate food, were due to

the nuns on certain feasts of the Church and on the anniversaries of five

benefactors, viz. Sir William Vicar, Dame Alys Merton, "dame Mawte the

kynges daughter," dame Maud Loveland and William Dun. The pittances on the

anniversaries of William Vicar and William Dun were of mutton; on each

occasion the cellaress had to lay in three "carse" of mutton, and for

William Dun's pittance she had to make sure also of 12 gallons of good

ale. For the pittances of Dame Alice Merton and Maud the king's daughter

(which fell in the winter) she had to purvey four bacon hogs, each hog

producing 20 messes, also six _grecys_[1652], six _sowcys_ and six

_inwardys_; also 100 eggs for "white puddings," together with bread,

pepper and saffron for the same, and "marrow bones for white

wortys"[1653]; also three gallons of good ale. Evidently the convent had a

royal feast on those days and had good cause to remember their former

abbesses. There are no details as to Dame Maud Loveland's pittance.

Another red letter day was Foundress' Day (Oct. 11). On this occasion the

abbess' kitchen had to provide each lady of the convent with half a goose,

the two chantresses, as well as the four usual recipients, receiving

doubles, and with a hen or a cock, the fratresses and the subprioress also

receiving doubles. Moreover the cellaress had to give the ladies

"frumenty"[1654], for which she laid in wheat and three gallons of milk.

On the feast of the Assumption of the Virgin (Aug. 15) each received half

a goose. At Shrovetide the cellaress gave each lady "for their

cripcis[1655] and for their crumkakers 2_d._"; she had also to purvey

eight chickens for the abbess and "bonnes"[1656] for the convent and also

four gallons of milk. On Shere or Maundy Thursday she had 12 "stub" eels

and 60 "shaft" eels baked with wheat and 8 lbs. of rice; and she sent the

abbess a bottle of Tyre and the convent two gallons of red wine;

unglorified by a name. On Palm Sunday they had "russheaulx"[1657], for

which she provided 21 lbs. of figs. These were little highly spiced pies

(rather like mince pies), of which the chief ingredients were figs and

flour, and besides providing them in kind on Palm Sunday the cellaress had

to pay the ladies "Ruscheaw silver, by xvj times payable in the yere to

every lady and doubill at eche time 1/2_d._, but it is paid nowe but at

two times, that is to say at Ester and Michelmes." On Easter Eve they had

three gallons of ale and one gallon of red wine. On St Andrew's Day and on

every Sunday in Lent they had fish (doubtless fresh fish, as a welcome

change from salted herrings).

NOTE B.

SCHOOL CHILDREN IN NUNNERIES.

The subject is of such interest from the point of view of educational as

well as of monastic history, that I have thought it worth while to print

in full all the references to convent education in England (c. 1250-1537),

which I have been able to find. For the convenience of the reader I have

translated references in Latin and Old French and have arranged the houses

under counties. Doubtful references are marked with an asterisk.

BEDFORDSHIRE.

1. _Elstow._

Late 12th century. Bishop Hugh of Lincoln sent a little boy, Robert of

Noyon, here. "He seemed to be about five years old, or a little older; and

after a short space of time (the Bishop) sent him to Elstow to be taught

his letters (_literis informandum_)." _Magna Vita S. Hugonis Episcopi

Lincolniensis_ (Rolls Ser.), p. 146.

1359. Gynewell enjoins boarders to be sent away on pain of

excommunication. "But boys up to the completion of their sixth year and

girls up to the completion of their tenth year, ... we do not wish to be

understood or included in the above (prohibition)." _Linc. Epis. Reg.

Memo. Gynewell_, f. 139_d_.

1421-2. Flemyng enjoins "that henceforward you admit or allow to be

admitted or received to lodge or stay within the limits of the cloister,

no persons male or female, ... who are beyond the twelfth year of their

age." _Linc. Visit._ I, p. 49.

c. 1432. Gray enjoins that all secular persons shall be removed from the

cloister precincts, "... males to wit, who have passed their tenth year,

or females who have passed their fourteenth." _Linc. Visit._ I, p. 53.

1442-3. "Dame Rose Waldegrave says that ... certain nuns do sometimes have

with them in the quire in time of mass the boys whom they teach, and these

do make a noise in quire during divine service." _Linc. Visit._ II, p. 90.

2. _Harrold._

1442-3. At Bishop Alnwick's visitation "Dame Alice Decun says that only

two little girls of six or seven years do lie in the dorter." Another nun

says the same. The Bishop forbids adult boarders, "ne childere ouere xj

yere olde men and xij yere olde wymmen wythe owten specyalle leue of us or

our successours bysshops of Lincolne fyest asked and had; ne that ye

suffre ne seculere persones, wymmen ne childern, lyg by nyght in the

dormytory." _Linc. Visit._ II, pp. 130-1.

BUCKINGHAMSHIRE.

3. _Burnham._

c. 1431-6. Gray enjoins "that henceforward no secular women who are past

the fourteenth year of their age, and no males at all, be admitted in any

wise to lie by night in the dorter or be suffered so to lie.... That you

henceforth admit or suffer to be admitted and received to lodge in the

said monastery no women after they have completed the fourteenth year of

their age and no males after the eighth year of their age.... That you

remove wholly from the said monastery all ... secular folk, male and

female, who, being lodgers in the said monastery, have passed the ages

aforesaid." _Linc. Visit._ I, p. 24.

1519. Atwater enjoins "that infants and small children be not admitted

into the dorter of the nuns." _Linc. Epis. Reg. Visit. Atwater_, f. 42_d_.

*4. _Little Marlow._

c. 1530? Margaret Vernon, Prioress of Little Marlow and friend of

Cromwell, was entrusted by him with the care of his little son Gregory.

Several of her letters are preserved, but they are undated and it is

difficult to gather from those which refer to Gregory Cromwell whether

they were written before or after the dissolution of Little Marlow. There

was in any case no question of her teaching the boy herself. He had with

him a tutor, Mr Copland, and the Prioress writes to tell Cromwell that Mr

Copland every morning gives Gregory and Nicholas Sadler, his schoolfellow,

their Latin lesson, "which Nicholas doth bear away as well Gregory's

lesson as his own, and maketh him perfect against his time of rendering,

at which their Master is greatly comforted." Master Sadler also had with

him a "little gentlewoman," whom Margaret wished permission to educate

herself. In another letter she speaks of a proposed new tutor for Gregory

and expresses anxiety that he should be one who would not object to her

supervision. "Good master Cromwell, if it like you to call unto your

remembrance, you have promised me that I should have the governance of

your child till he be twelve years of age, and at that time I doubt not

with God's grace but he shall speak for himself if any wrong be offered

unto him, whereas yet he cannot but by my maintenance; and if he should

have such a master which would disdain if I meddled, then it would be to

me great unquietness, for I assure you if you sent hither a doctor of

divinity yet will I play the smatterer, but always in his well doing to

him he shall have his pleasure, and otherwise not." Wood, _Letters of

Royal and Illustrious Ladies_, II, 57-9.

CAMBRIDGESHIRE.

5. _Swaffham Bulbeck._

1483. The following references to boarders in the account roll of the

Prioress Margaret Ratclyff for 22 Edw. IV almost certainly indicate

children. "By Richard Potecary of Cambridge 11_s._ for board for 22 weeks,

at 6_d._ per week. By 11_s._ received from John Kele of Cambridge for 22

weeks, viz. 6_d._ per week. By L1 received from William Water of ... his

son for 40 weeks, viz. 6_d._ per week. By 13_s._ received from Thomas Roch

... his son for 26 weeks, viz. 6_d._ per week. By 15_s._ received from

Manfeld for the board of his son for 30 weeks, viz. 6_d._ per week. By L1

received from ... of Cambridge for the board of his daughter for 40 weeks,

viz. 6_d._ per week. By 8_s._ from ... of Chesterton for the board of his

son for 16 weeks. viz. 6_d._ per week. From ... Parker of Walden for the

board of his son for 12 weeks. By 3_s._ received from ... the merchant

for the board of his daughter for 6 weeks, viz. 6_d._ per week." Dugdale,

_Mon._ IV, pp. 439-60.

*6. _St Radegund's, Cambridge._

1481-2. The account roll for 1481-2 contains the item "And she answers for

20_s._ received from Richard Woodcock for the commons of 2 daughters of

the said Richard, as for [_blank_] weeks, at [_blank_] per week." Gray,

_Priory of St Radegund's, Cambridge_, p. 176. This is probably a child,

because I am inclined to think that payments so worded, as from a father

for a son or daughter, usually refer to children. Unfortunately the nuns

of this priory kept the details of their receipts from boarders on a

separate sheet, and entered only the total, thus: "And by L1. 12. 1

received for the board or repast of divers gentlefolk, particulars of

whose names are noted in the paper book of accounts displayed above this

account." _Ib._ p. 163 (see also, p. 147). These separate papers are

unluckily lost, so no details are available.

DERBYSHIRE.

*7. _King's Mead, Derby._

Dr J. C. Cox says "Evidence of this priory being used as a boarding school

occurs in the private muniments of the Curzon, Fitzherbert and Gresley

families." _V.C.H. Derby_, II, p. 44 (note 14). Without more exact

reference it is impossible to say whether this is correct, because adult

boarders are so often confused with schoolchildren.

DEVON.

8. _Cornworthy._

c. 1470. Petition from Thomasyn Dynham, Prioress of Cornworthy concerning

two children at school in her house, whose fees have not been paid for

five years. See description in text (above, p. 269).

ESSEX.

9. _Barking._

1433. Katherine de la Pole, Abbess of Barking, petitions Henry V, "for as

much as she, afore this tyme hath bene demened and reuled, by th'advis of

youre full discrete counsail, to take upon hir the charge, costes and

expenses of Edmond ap Meredith ap Tydier and Jasper ap Meredith ap Tydier,

being yit in her kepyng, for the which cause she was payed, fro the xxvii

day of Juyll, the yere of youre full noble regne xv, unto the Satterday

the last day of Feverer, the yere of your saide regne xvii, l livres: and

after the saide last day of Feverer, youre saide bedewoman hath borne the

charges as aboven unto this day and is behynde of the payement for the

same charge ... the somme of lii livres xii sols," she asks for payment.

Dugdale, _Mon._ I, 437 (note _m_), (quoted from Rymer, _Foedera_, X, p.

828).

1527. Sir John Stanley made his Will on June 20, 1527, and in 1528, after

a solemn act of separation with his wife, entered a monastery. The will is

largely concerned with provisions for the education of his son and heir,

who was at that time three years old. He set aside the proceeds of a

certain manor "whych is estemed to be of the yerly valewe of xl li., to

the onely use and fyndynge of my said sonne and heyre apparaunte, tyll he

comme and be of the full ayge of xxi{ti}, yeres; and I woll that my sayd

sonne and heyr shalbe in the custodye and kepynge of the saide Abbes of

Barckynge, tyll he accomplyshe and be of thayge of xij yeres and after the

sayd ayge of xij yeres I woll that he shalbe in the custodye and guydynge

of the sayd Abbot of Westmynster, tyll he come and be of hys full ayge of

xxi{ti} yeres." The Abbess and Abbot were to have L15 yearly for the use

of their houses in return for their pains and L20 yearly was to be paid

them "to fynde my sayd sonne and heyre and hys servauntes, mete, drynke

and wayges convenyent and all other thynges necessare un to theym, durynge

and by all the tyme that he shalbe in the rule and guydynge of the sayd

Abbesse and of the sayd Abbot." _Archaeol. Journ._ XXV (1868), pp. 81-2.

It should be noted that there is nothing to suggest that these boys were

being taught by the nuns; they were young noblemen attached to a

noblewoman's household to learn breeding.

HAMPSHIRE.

10. _St Mary's, Winchester._

1536. Henry VIII's commissioners, who visited the house 15th May, found

here twenty-six "chyldren of lordys, knyghttes and gentylmen brought up yn

the saym monastery." For the list of names (given in Dugdale, _Mon._ II,

p. 457), see above p. 266.

11. _Romsey._

1311. Bishop Woodlock decreed "There shall not be in the dormitory with

the nuns any children, either boys or girls, nor shall they be led by the

nuns into the choir, while the divine office is celebrated." Liveing,

_Records of Romsey Abbey_, p. 104.

*1387. William of Wykeham enjoins (in an injunction dealing with various

manifestations of the _vitium proprietatis_) "Moreover let not the nuns

henceforth presume to call their own rooms or pupils (_discipulas_),

hitherto assigned to them or so assigned in future, on pretext of such

assignation, which is rather to be deemed a matter of will than of

necessity; nathless it is lawful for the abbess to assign such rooms and

pupils according to merit as she thinks fit, etc., etc." But this more

probably refers to young nuns or novices. The word _discipula_ is used in

this sense in Alnwick's visitation of Gracedieu. (See above, p. 80.)

12. _Wherwell._

1284. Archbishop Peckham forbids boarders, adding "Let not virgins be

admitted to the habit and veil (_induendae virgines et velandae_) before

the completion of their fifteenth year and let not any boy be permitted to

be educated with the nuns." _Reg. Epis. J. Peckham_, II, p. 653.

HEREFORDSHIRE.

13. _Lymbrook._

1422. Bishop Spofford writes: "Wee ordayne and charge you under payne of

unobedyence that no suster hald nor receyfe ony surgyner, man or woman

weddyd, other maydens of lawful age to be wedded, knave chyldren aboven

eght yeer of age." _Reg. Thome Spofford_ (Cant. and York. Soc.), p. 82.

HERTFORDSHIRE.

14. _Flamstead._

1530. At the visitation of Longland one nun "reported that young girls

were allowed to sleep in the dormitory.... The Prioress was enjoined ...

to exclude children of both sexes from the dormitory." _V.C.H. Herts._ IV,

p. 433.

15. _Sopwell._

*1446. In the Warden's Accounts of 1446 there is entered payment of 22/6

for Lady Anne Norbery, for the commons of her daughter, apparently a

boarder here. (_Rentals and Surveys_, R. 294.) _V.C.H. Herts._ IV, p. 425

(note 41).

1537. At the time of the Dissolution two children were living in the

priory. _Ib._ p. 425.

KENT.

16. _Dartford._

In 1527 was confirmed the concession made to sister Elizabeth Cresner by

F. Antoninus de Ferraria, formerly vicar of Garsias de Lora, Master

General of the Dominican order (1518-24), that she might receive any well

born matrons, widows of good repute, to dwell perpetually in the

monastery, with or without the habit, according to the custom of the

monastery; and also that she might receive young ladies and give them a

suitable training, according to the mode heretofore pursued. _Archaeol.

Journ._ (1882) XXXIX, p. 178.

LEICESTERSHIRE.

17. _Gracedieu._

The following references to boarders occur in the Gracedieu accounts

(_P.R.O. Minister's Accounts_, 1257/10).