Another habit against which bishops constantly legislated was that of having the children to sleep in the dorter with the nuns. This practice was exceedingly common, for many of the nunneries which took children were small and poor; they had possibly no other room to set aside for them, and no person who could suitably be placed in charge of them. Moreover in some cases adult boarders and servants also slept in the dorter. Alnwick was constantly having to bid his nuns “that ye suffre ne seculere persones, wymmen ne children lyg by nyghte in the dormytory,” but Atwater and Longland in the sixteenth century still have to make the same injunction. Bokyngham in 1387 ordered that a seemly place outside the cloister should be set apart for the children at Heynings; the reason was that (as Gynewell had expressly stated on visiting this house forty years before) “the convent might not be disturbed.” Indeed little attempt was made by the nuns to keep the children out of their way. They seem to have dined in the refectory, when not in the separate rooms of their mistresses, for Greenfield forbids the Prioress and Subprioress of Sinningthwaite (1315) to permit boys or girls to eat flesh meat in Advent or Sexagesima, or during Lent eggs or cheese, in the refectory, “contrary to the honesty of religion,” but at those seasons when they ought to eat such things, they were to be assigned other places in which to eat them. There are references, too, to disturbances and diversions created by the children in the quire. At Elstow in 1442 Dame Rose Waldegrave said that “certain nuns do sometimes have with them in time of mass the boys whom they teach and these do make a noise in quire during divine service”[890]. To us the picture of these merry children breaking the monotony of convent routine is an attractive one; more attractive even than the pet dogs and the Vert-Verts. But to stern ecclesiastical disciplinarians it was not so attractive, and their constant restriction, though it never succeeded in turning out the children, must have kept down the number who were admitted.
The evidence which has so far been considered shows that, though the reception of children to be boarded and taught in nunneries was fairly common, it was subjected to well marked limitations. There remains to be considered one more question the answer to which is in some sort a limitation likewise. What exactly did the nuns teach these children? We are hampered in answering this question by the difficulty of obtaining exact contemporary evidence. Most modern English writers content themselves with a glib list of accomplishments, copied without verification from book to book, and all apparently traceable in the last resort to Fuller and John Aubrey, the one writing a century, the other almost a century and a half after the nunneries had been dissolved. Fuller (whom Tanner copies) says:
Nunneries also were good Shee-schools, wherein the girles and maids of the neighbourhood were taught to read and work; and sometimes a little Latine was taught them therein. Yea, give me leave to say, if such Feminine Foundations had still continued ... haply the weaker sex (besides the avoiding modern inconveniences) might be heightened to a higher perfection than hitherto hath been obtained[891].
Aubrey, speaking of Wiltshire convents says:
There the young maids were brought up ... at the nunneries, where they had examples of piety, and humility, and modesty, and obedience to imitate, and to practise. Here they learned needle-work, the art of confectionary, surgery (for anciently there were no apothecaries or surgeons—the gentlewomen did cure their poor neighbours: their hands are now too fine), physic, writing, drawing etc.[892]
One would have thought the familiar note of the laudator temporis acti to be plainly audible in both these extracts. But a host of modern writers have gravely transcribed their words and even, taking advantage no doubt of Aubrey’s “etc.” (much virtue in etc.), improved upon them. In the work of one more recent writer the list has become “reading, writing, some knowledge of arithmetic, the art of embroidery, music and French ‘after the scole of Stratford atte Bowe,’ were the recognised course of study, while the preparation of perfumes, balsams, simples and confectionary was among the more ordinary departments of the education afforded”[893]. Another adds a few more deft touches: “the treatment of various disorders, the compounding of simples, the binding up of wounds, ... fancy cookery, such as the making of sweetmeats, writing, drawing, needlework of all kinds and music, both vocal and instrumental”[894]. The most recent writer of all gives the list as “English and French ... writing, drawing, confectionary, singing by notes, dancing, and playing upon instruments of music, the study also of medicine and surgery”[895]. Though the historian must groan, the student of human nature cannot but smile to see music insinuate itself into the list and then become “both instrumental and vocal”; confectionery extend itself to include perfumes, balsams, simples, and the making of sweetmeats; arithmetic appear out of nowhere; and (most magnificent feat of the imagination) dancing trip in on light fantastic toe. From this compound of Aubrey, memories of continental convents in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and familiarity with the convent schools of our own day, let us turn to the considered opinion of a more sober scholar, who bases it only upon contemporary evidence:
“No evidence whatever,” says Mr Leach, “has been produced of what was taught in nunneries. That ... something must have been taught, if only to keep the children employed, is highly probable. That the teaching included learning the Lord’s Prayer, etc. by heart may be conceded. Probably Fuller is right in guessing that it included reading; but it is only a guess. One would guess that it included sewing and spinning. As for its including Latin, no evidence is forthcoming and it is difficult to see how those who did not know Latin could teach it[896].”
Direct evidence is therefore absolutely lacking; all we can do is to deduce probabilities from what we know of the education of the nuns themselves, and it must be conceded that this was not always of a very high order. It is quite certain, from the wording of some of the visitation injunctions, that the quality and extent of the teaching must have varied considerably from house to house. It was probably good (as the education of women then went) at the larger and more fashionable houses, mediocre at those which were small and struggling. Latin could not have been taught, because, as has already been pointed out, the nuns at this period did not know it themselves; but the children were probably taught the Credo, the Ave and the Pater Noster in Latin by rote. They may have been taught French of the school of Stratford atte Bowe, as long as that language was fashionable in the outside world and known to the nuns, but it died out of the convents after the end of the fourteenth century. It seems pretty certain that the children must have been taught to read. “Abstinence the abbesse myn a.b.c. me tauȝte,” says Piers Plowman; the Abbess of St Mary’s Winchester buys the matins books for little Bridget Plantagenet; and it will be remembered that the nuns of Godstow were said about 1460 (fifteen years after Alnwick visited the house and gave permission for children to be boarded there) to be “for the more party in Englyssh bokys well y-lernyd.” Caesarius of Heisterbach has a delightful story, repeated thus in a fifteenth century Alphabet of Tales:
Caesarius tellis how that in Freseland in a nonrie ther was ii little maydens that lernyd on the buke, and euer thai strafe whethur of thaim shulde lern mor than the toder. So the tane of thaim happened to fall seke and sho garte call the Priores vnto hur & sayd: “Gude ladie! suffre nott my felow to lern vnto I cover of my sekenes, and I sall pray my moder to gif me vj d & that I sall giff you & ye do so, ffor I drede that whils I am seke, that sho sall pas me in lernyng, & that I wolde not at sho did.” And at this wurde the priores smylid & hadd grete mervayle of the damysell conseyte[897].
Whether girls were taught to write, as well as to read, is far more doubtful. It is probable that the nuns did not always possess this accomplishment themselves, nor did sober medieval opinion consider it wholly desirable that girls should know how to write, on account both of the general inferiority of their sex, and of a regrettable proclivity towards clandestine love letters[898]. Still, writing may sometimes have formed part of the curriculum; there is no evidence either way. For drawing (by which presumably the art of illumination must be meant) there is no warrant; a medieval nunnery was not a modern “finishing” school.