Medieval English Nunneries c. 1275 to 1535

by Eileen Power

(4) Various attempts to make money by illicit means,

(5) Leave of absence and intercourse with seculars, both within and without the cloister precincts,

(6) Frivolous clothes and amusements, and

(7) Serious moral faults, such as drunkenness, quarrelsomeness and incontinence.

(1) Complaints of incompetence, laxity, self-indulgence or favouritism against the head of a house are common in visitation records. The charge of failure to render accounts has already been dealt with, but hardly less usual was the charge of failure to live a communal life. The abbess or prioress of a house had separate apartments and it was always a temptation to dine or to sleep alone, instead of keeping the frater and the dorter. Again the charges of favouritism on the one hand and of undue harshness on the other were very common. Rigaud’s register provides examples of all these faults. At two visitations (1254 and 1257) the Archbishop remarked that the Abbess of St Léger de Préaux did not live a communal life in dorter and frater nor attend the chapter[1875]; the same charge was made against the Prioress of Villarceaux in 1253 and it was mentioned that she did not often get up to matins nor daily hear mass[1876]; and the Abbess of St Amand did not keep the frater, but ate in her own room and always had the same companions there, instead of calling the others for recreation[1877]. Not all prioresses were, like Chaucer’s, “ful plesaunt and amiable of port.” The Abbess of Montivilliers seems to have been a forbidding lady; in 1260 the Archbishop ordered her to minister pilches, cloth and other necessary things more carefully than had been her custom to the nuns, not forgetting their ginger “hot i’ the mouth”[1878], and also to bear herself more courteously and affably towards their friends particularly in the matter of their admission (on visits); at the same time she was warned to be present in chapel more often and to live the communal life better[1879]. This warning apparently bore no fruit and in 1262 the Archbishop noted, “because she was slow to administer new pilches, headdresses and cloth and other things to the nuns for their needs, we ordered her to labour to minister better and more fitly to them in this matter and to be careful about it”; it was also remarked that she frequented the convent but little and was seldom present at chapter and frater; and she was ordered to render a general account once a year and to hear and receive the particular accounts of the obedientiaries. The next year her failure to frequent chapter, dorter and choir was again noted and some of the nuns still complained of her harshness, whereupon the Archbishop (apparently despairing of inducing her to look after them properly herself), ordered her to depute two or three nuns, “with whom the others could talk more familiarly and more boldly, to minister to their sisters small things for their needs, ginger and other things of the kind”; the quality of the wine was also to be improved. The difficulties, however, continued. In 1265 the Abbess was ordered to provide the nuns more carefully with pilches and in the following year she was again ordered

“prudently to cause the pilches and robes of the nuns to be repaired, so that she may provide them with such things more fitly than she is used and have more workpeople than she has been accustomed to do. For in this,” adds the Archbishop, “we found a deficiency”[1879].

Rigaud had a great deal of difficulty with the Prioress of Bondeville. In 1251 there were many complaints against her; she exercised favouritism in the distribution of clothes and in the provision of food in the infirmary and she did not look after the sick; when in the infirmary she ate at a table by herself and she did not live a communal life; she wandered about a great deal outside the convent, even without the excuse of convent business, and when she went to Rouen she stayed there for three or four days; moreover she was quarrelsome and stirred up discord in the house “so that she could not have peace with the convent nor with anyone.” The next year she resigned, probably as a result of these complaints and of the financial condition of the house, but in 1255 the register has an entry: “We found the Prioress quarrelsome and sharp of tongue, not knowing how to make corrections and also speaking ill of her sisters; we warned her to desist from these things”; so that her resignation had evidently not been accepted. In 1257 she made another attempt at resignation, and the occasion is interesting because it provides us not only with an inventory of Bondeville, but also with the sole complete list of inmates preserved among the Rouen nunneries[1880]. The Archbishop decided to take an inquisition in the convent as to whether the Prioress should or should not be removed; and the votes of the twenty-six nuns and three brothers of the house were taken upon oath. Of these nineteen were in favour of her removal and nine of her retention, while Brother Roger permitted himself to express the ambiguous opinion that “it would be evil for temporal affairs and good for spiritual affairs to remove the prioress” (quod dampnum esset temporale et utilitas spiritualis removere priorissam!)[1881]. It is not clear from the Register whether she was removed; Rigaud notes: “Item we received the resignation of Marie, late the prioress,” but in 1261 there occurs a further entry: “Item the Prioress offered us her seal, begging us to absolve her from her office, but we, being unwilling to condescend to her in this matter, ordered her to exercise her office with greater zeal.” In particular she was ordered “to frequent the convent at least by day (viz. chapter, frater and choir) better than she was wont and not to stand about talking in the cemetery or outside the house after Compline, as she had been in the habit of doing”[1882]. At Bival an abbess resigned in 1248, doubtless owing to the unsatisfactory moral conditions revealed at the visitation[1883]; there were no complaints against her successor until 1268 (though two cases of immorality occurred in the convent before that date); then, among minor injunctions concerning matters of administration, she was ordered to bear herself more kindly and courteously towards the nuns[1884].

(2) Besides injunctions dealing specially with the behaviour of the head of a house, the Archbishop was obliged to deal with breaches of the rule by the convent generally. Many of his regulations were concerned with the strictly religious duties of the nuns. Sometimes the church services were not being properly performed, as at St Amand, St Aubin, Villarceaux, St Saëns and Montivilliers. The most common defect was failure to sing these services with music (cum nota or ad notam)[1885]; at St Saëns (a constant offender—Rigaud notes the fault at eight visitations) the nuns did not do so even on Sundays[1886]. Occasionally a specific excuse was given; the nuns of Villarceaux omitted the music on the days upon which they received the periodical bleeding considered necessary to the health of those who embraced the monastic life[1887]; at St Aubin in 1264 they complained that many of them were often ill[1888] and at St Saëns also (in 1257) they dwelt upon their infirmities[1889]. At St Paul’s by Rouen they were too few in number to perform the service properly[1890]. The Archbishop contented himself at St Aubin (1251) with the injunction that they should sing at least in monotone—saltem cum bassa nota[1891]. Moreover even when the nuns did sing the services they occasionally did so carelessly. At St Amand the Archbishop made a significant injunction:

They sometimes sing the hours of the Blessed Virgin and the psalms of suffrage with too great haste and precipitation of words. We ordered them to sing in such a way that the side [of the choir] singing the first half of the verse should hear the end of the preceding verse and the side singing the second half should hear the beginning of the next verse[1892].

Evidently both sides of the choir came in too soon in their anxiety to hurry through the service—a clear case for Tuttivillus. At Montivilliers the fault lay in beginning too late and Rigaud ordered that better provision should be made for ringing a bell at the due hours, so that the service might be said without haste and finished while it was light (de luce)[1893]. At Villarceaux he ordered that all the nuns should at once assemble in the church when the bell rang, unless they were ill or had special leave of absence[1894]. Even at the great abbey of Caen the service was being said “confuse et male, one part in the choir and one outside”[1895]. At St Amand (1263), which evidently contained young and obstreperous—or perhaps only ignorant—members, it was ordered that the nuns should be equally divided in the choir, so that all the young ones might not be together[1896]. At St Saëns (1254) a nun served the mass with the priest; and at Bondeville (1263) the nuns had not the necessary priests and did not hear enough sermons[1897]. St Aubin apparently shared the parish priest; there were only fifteen parishioners (most of them doubtless dependents of the nunnery) and the priest dwelt with the nuns and was maintained at their expense; in 1257 the Archbishop ordered them to find a clerk to assist him[1898]. The nuns of St Paul’s heard only one mass—that of the parish—daily[1899]. Sometimes deficiencies in the services may have been due to lack of books. At St Sauveur d’Evreux, in 1258, it was found that the nuns did not possess adequate books and they were ordered to procure some[1900]; at Villarceaux in 1257 they lacked two antiphonaries and in 1261 it was again noted that their books were insufficient and worn out[1901]. At Montivilliers the Archbishop in 1260 ordered the chantress to have an ordinal of the hours made at the Abbess’ cost; this had not yet been done in 1262 and from Rigaud’s injunction on this occasion it appears that the nuns were expected to write the book themselves, for the ordinal was “to be made by the chantress and by the more discreet nuns, i.e. by the older ones who knew and understood better the service of the order.” At the same house reference was made three years later to a certain glossed psalter which had been bequeathed to it by a benefactor, and had been alienated without the knowledge of the convent; the Abbess was told to have it restored without delay and replied “that she could do so easily enough, because Master William de Beaumont had it”[1902].