Women of England

by Bartlett Burleigh James

In sadness and wysedom lyke to Abygaell:

Replete as Deibora with grace of prophecy,

Aeqyvalent to Ruth she was in humylyte,

In purchrytude Rebecca, lyke Hester in Colynesse,

Lyke Judyth in vertue and proued holynesse."

But such examples of high worth among the abbesses, while not exceptional in the early Middle Ages, are not frequently met with in the closing centuries of the period.

The position of the abbess was not one of honor only, but of privilege; the cloister rule was relaxed for her—she might go and come as she pleased, and see anyone whom she wished to see. In the early times, she is even found taking part in synods. Thus, in 649, the abbesses were summoned to the council at Becanceld, in Kent, and the names of five of them were subscribed to the constitutions which were there made, while the name of not a single abbot appears on the document. Coming down to much later times, abbesses were summoned to attend or to send proxies to the king's council which was held to grant "an aid on the knighting the Prince of Wales." Also, they were required to furnish military service by proxy. While they were more amenable to the clergy than were the monks, the abbesses were nevertheless tenacious of their privileges. They were never ordained, nor did they ever have the right to ordain others, although they claimed the latter as one of their privileges.

They were subject to deposition if they abused their office. Not infrequently the nuns would carry their complaints to the bishop, and seek from him redress for their grievances. If the circumstances warranted his so doing, the bishop would occasionally take the direction of the nunnery into his own hands instead of appointing an abbess, or else he might place it temporarily in the charge of one or more of the nuns. All the affairs of the convent were directed by the abbess—the tillage of the grounds and4the repairs to the buildings, as well as the internal ordering of the establishment and the discipline of its inmates. Also, she was directed to assist, by her own labor as far as she was able, in clothing herself. When a nun became refractory, she might be consigned to punishment outside of the convent. Thus, by the decree of a council near Paris in the eighth century, it was ordered that the bishop as well as the abbess might send a nun to a penitentiary. The same council prescribed that an abbess should not superintend more than one monastery or quit its precincts more than once a year. One of the rules which was at one time in force prohibited abbesses from walking alone, thus placing them under the surveillance of the sisterhood. But their powers varied according to the period and the order with which they were connected.

Through the necessities of their office, the abbesses were brought into closer relationship with the outside world than were the other nuns. Sometimes they were made respondents in a suit at law with regard to the estates of the convent, or to retain the property brought to them by some one of the sisters, who, renouncing her vows, sought to recover her possessions. In 1292 the prioress of an abbey in Somersetshire had to answer in a suit brought against her by a widow and two men in regard to the right of common pasturage upon lands held by the convent, and the case was decided against the religious house; but both the prioress and the widow escaped paying their respective costs in the case, on the plea of poverty.