[1071] In some reformed orders founded at a later date the formula of profession actually contained a vow of perpetual enclosure, e.g. the Poor Clares, whose vow, under the second rule given to them by Urban IV in 1263, comprised obedience, poverty, chastity and enclosure. Thiers, De la Clôture (1681), pp. 41-2. Compare the formula given in the rule of the Order of the Annunciation, founded at the close of the fifteenth century by Jeanne de France, daughter of Louis XI. Ib. p. 55. The nuns of the older orders did not make any specific vow of enclosure, and it was enforced upon them only as an indispensable condition for the fulfilment of their other vows, which accounts for the obstinacy of their opposition; some jurisconsults, indeed, were of the opinion that the Pope could not oblige a nun to be enclosed against her will. Ib. p. 50.
[1072] The passage is quoted in the preface to Thiers, op. cit. For the Church’s view of virginity, see especially St Jerome’s famous Epistola (22) ad Eustochium.
[1073] Thiers, op. cit. p. 245. Quoting the jurisconsult Philippus Probus. For a good example of the mixture of ideas, see Mr Coulton’s account of the arguments used by the monk Idung of St Emmeram in favour of enclosure: “He begins with the usual medieval emphasis on feminine frailty, of which (as he points out) the Church reminds us in her collect for every Virgin Martyr’s feast ‘Victory ... even in the weaker sex.’ Then comes the usual quotation from St Jerome, with its reference to Dinah, which Idung is bold enough to clinch by a detailed allusion to Danae. This, of course, is little more than the usual clerkly ungallantry; but it is followed by a passage of more cruel courtesy. The monk must needs go abroad sometimes on business, as for instance, to buy and sell in markets; ‘but such occupations as these would be most indecent for even an earthly queen, and far below the dignity of a bride of the King of Heaven.’” Coulton, Med. Studies, No. 10, “Monastic Schools in Middle Ages” (1913), pp. 21-2.
[1074] Words which Menander puts in the mouth of one of his characters. Compare the famous Periclean definition of womanly virtue, which is “not to be talked about for good or for evil among men.”
[1075] Coulton, Chaucer and his England, p. 111.
[1076] The following references will be found conveniently collected in Part I chs. 1-16 of a very interesting little book, the Traité de la Clôture des Religieuses, published in Paris in 1681 by Jean-Baptiste Thiers, “Prestre, Bachelier en Theologie de la Faculté de Paris et Curé de Chambrond.” The treatise is divided into two parts, one of which shows “that it is not permitted to nuns to leave their enclosure without necessity,” the other “that it is not permitted to strangers to enter the enclosure of nuns without necessity.” The author contends that enclosure was the immemorial practice of the Church, though the first general decree on the subject was the Bull Periculoso; but what he proves is really that the demand grew up gradually and naturally out of the effort to reform the growing abuses in conventual life, which sprang from too free an intercourse with the world.
[1077] Sext. Decret. lib. III, tit. XVI. Quoted in Reg. Simonis de Gandavo, pp. 10 ff.; from which I quote. See also Thiers, op. cit. pp. 45-9.
[1078] See Thiers, op. cit. pp. 53-60 for these, except the reforms of Busch, for which see below, [App. III]. Three papal bulls were published in the sixteenth century reinforcing Periculoso, viz. the Bull Circa pastoralis (1566) and Decori et honestati (1570) of Pius V and the Bull Deo sacris of Gregory XIII (1572).
[1079] “Cependant il n’y a gueres aujourd’hui de point de Discipline Ecclesiastique qui soit ou plus negligé, ou plus ignoré que celui de la clôture des Religieuses; et quoique les Conciles, les Saints Docteurs et les Pères des Monasteres, ayent en divers temps et en divers rencontres, employé leur zèle et leur authorité pour en établir la pratique; nous ne laissons pas neanmoins de voir souvent avec douleur qu’on le viole empunément, sans scrupule, sans réflexion et sans necessité. L’Eglise gemit tous les jours en veuë de ce desordre qui la deshonore notablement; et c’est pour compatir en quelque façon à ses gemissemens, que j’entreprens de le combattre dans ce Traité.” Op. cit. Preface.
[1080] Wilkins, Concilia, II., p. 18.