[1990] The custom of depositing valuables in a monastery for safety was very general. Caesarius of Heisterbach has an entertaining anecdote on the point: “A certain usurer committed a large sum of his money to a certain cellarer of our order to be kept for him. The monk sealed it up and put it in a safe place together with the money belonging to the monastery. Afterwards the usurer came to ask for his deposit, but when the cellarer opened the chest, he found neither that nor his own money. And when he beheld that the locks of the chest were intact and the seals of the bags unbroken and that there was no suspicion of theft, he understood that the money of the usurer had eaten up the money of the monastery.” Caes. of Heist., Dial. Mirac. ed. Strange (1851), I, p. 108. For another example of goods being deposited for safety in a nunnery see V.C.H. Herts. IV, p. 431 (note 40). A certain Joan Sturmyn entrusted goods to the value of £50 to the keeping of Alice Wafer, Prioress of St Mary de Pré (near St Albans), which afterwards gave rise to a case in chancery, 1480-5.
[1991] Coulton, Monastic Schools in the Middle Ages (Medieval Studies, No. 10) quoting from Martène, Thesaurus, IV, col. 175, § IV.
[1992] See references to convent schools by Gerson and by Erasmus quoted in Coulton, op. cit. pp. 22-3, note 17.
[1993] Or grandnieces (nepotulas).
[1994] p. 217.
[1995] p. 298.
[1996] p. 410.
[1997] p. 571.
[1998] p. 615.
[1999] Coulton, op. cit. p. 5.