Dalderby’s experience at Markyate shows that John of Ayton’s picture was not too highly coloured, and since it was impossible to enforce “hard and intolerable restrictions” without at least a measure of co-operation from the nuns themselves, the bishops took the only course open to them in trying to minimise the evil. Their expedients deserve some study, and as a typical set of episcopal injunctions dealing with journeys by nuns outside their cloisters it will suffice to quote those sent by Walter Stapeldon, Bishop of Exeter, to the nunneries of Polsloe and Canonsleigh. These rules were drawn up in 1319, only twenty years after the publication of the Bull Periculoso, but they are already far removed from the strict ideal of Boniface VIII. Stapeldon was a practical statesman and he evidently realised that the enforcement of strict enclosure was impossible in a diocese where the nuns had been used to considerable freedom and where all the counties of the West saw them upon their holidays.
The clauses dealing with the subject run as follows:
De visitacione amicorum. No lady of religion is to go and visit her friends outside the priory, but if it be once a year at the most and then for reasonable cause and by permission; and then let her have a companion professed in the same religion, not of her own choice, but whomsoever the Prioress will assign to her and she who is once assigned to her for companion shall not be assigned the next time, so that each time a lady goes to visit her friends her companion is changed; and if she have permission to go to certain places to visit her friends, let her not go to other places without new permission. De absencia Dominarum et regressu earum. Item, when any lady of religion eats at Exeter, or in another place near by, for reasonable cause and by permission, whenever she can she ought to return the same or the following day and each time let her have a companion and a chaplain, clerk or serving-man of good repute assigned by the prioress, who shall go, remain and return with them and otherwise they shall not go; and then let them return speedily to the house, as they be commanded, and let them not go again to Exeter, wandering from house to house, as they have oftentimes done, to the dishonour of their state and of religion. De Dominabus “Wakerauntes” [i.e. vagantibus]. Item, a lady who goes a long distance to visit her friends, in the aforesaid form, should return to the house within a month at the latest, or within a shorter space if it be assigned her by the Prioress, having regard to the distance or proximity of the place, where dwell the friends whom she is going to visit, but a longer term ought the Prioress never to give her, save in the case of death, or of the known illness of herself or of her near friends. Pena Dominarum Vagancium. And if a lady remain without for a long time or in any other manner than in the form aforesaid, let her never set foot outside the outer gate of the Priory for the next two years; and nevertheless let her be punished otherwise for disobedience, in such manner as is laid down by the rule and observances of the order of St Benet for the fault; and leave procured by the prayer of her friends ought not to excuse her from this penance[1102]. No lady of your religion, professed or unprofessed, shall come to the external offices outside the door of the cloister to be bled or for any other feigned excuse, save it be by leave of the Prioress or of the Subprioress, and then for a fit reason and let her have with her another professed lady of your religion, to the end that each of them may see and hear that which the other shall say and do[1103].
The main lines along which the bishops attempted to regulate the movements of the nuns outside their houses appear clearly in these injunctions. It was their invariable practice to forbid unlicensed visits, in accordance with the Benedictine rule; no nun might leave her house without a licence from her superior and such licences were not to be granted too easily[1104] or with any show of favouritism[1105]; sometimes the licence of the Bishop was required as well[1106]. Such licences were not to be granted often (once a year is usually the specified rule)[1107] and the bishops sometimes tried to confine the visits of nuns to parents or to near relatives[1108]. An attempt was also made to regulate the length of the visits. A maximum number of days was fixed and the nun was to be punished if she outstayed her leave[1109], except when she was detained by illness. This maximum differed from time to time and from place to place. Bishop Stapeldon, it will be recalled, allowed the nuns in his diocese to remain away for a month and longer; how he reconciled such laxity with his conscience and the Bull Periculoso is not plain. Archbishop Greenfield, at the same date, permitted his Yorkshire nuns a maximum visit of fifteen days[1110], and in 1358 Bishop Gynewell of Lincoln forbade the nuns of Godstow to remain away for longer than three weeks[1111]. When Alnwick visited the diocese of Lincoln in 1440-5, he made careful inquiry into the length of the visits paid by the nuns and at Goring, Gracedieu, Markyate, Nuncoton and St Michael’s, Stamford, he found that the superior usually gave the nuns licence to remain away a week, though the Prioress of Studley gave exeats for three or four days only[1112]. A week does not seem a very lengthy absence, but Alnwick would have lifted horrified eyebrows at the action of his predecessor Gynewell, for he ordered the superiors “that ye gyfe no sustere of yowres leue to byde wythe thaire frendes whan thai visite thaym, overe thre dayes in helthe, and if thai falle seke, that he do fecche thaym home wythe yn sex dayes”[1113]. He shared the views of an even stricter reformer, Peckham[1114]. It was often stipulated that the nuns, whether they went on long or on short journeys, were to go only to the place which they had received permission to visit[1115]; and sometimes they were specially told that if they were obliged to spend the night away from their friends they were to do so, whenever possible, in another nunnery[1116]. But they were strictly forbidden to harbour in the houses of monks, friars, or canons[1117]. On short journeys, or on errands which could be speedily accomplished, they were forbidden to eat or drink out of their monasteries or to make unnecessary delay, but were to return at once and in no case to be out after nightfall[1118]. Moreover it was invariably ordered that a nun was on no account to leave her house, without another nun of mature age and good reputation who would be a constant witness to her behaviour[1119]; and both were to wear monastic dress[1120].
The chief aim of the ecclesiastical authorities was, however, to secure that leave of absence should be granted only for a reasonable cause. All conciliar and other injunctions for enclosure added a saving clause of “manifest necessity” and this gave an opening for an infinite variety of interpretation. The nuns, indeed, could fall back upon a threefold line of defence against the intolerable restrictions. They could appeal to the undoubted fact that strict and perpetual enclosure went beyond the requirements of their rule. They could adduce the custom by which, as long as their memory ran, nuns had been allowed to leave their convents under conditions. Finally they could with a little skill, stretch the “manifest necessity” clause to cover almost all their wanderings. Thus it happened that in enforcing the Bull Periculoso the visitors of the later middle ages found themselves obliged to define, more or less widely according to local conditions, what was and what was not a reasonable cause, and to combat one after another certain specific excuses put forward by the nuns. The sternest reformers were agreed that enclosure might be broken, when the lives of the nuns were endangered. Fire, flood, famine, war and the ruin of their buildings were universally accepted as reasonable excuses[1121]. A nun could leave her house to be superior of another nunnery (a not infrequent practice), or to found new houses or to establish reform elsewhere.[1122] Moreover when a culprit stood in need of condign punishment, she might be and often was sent to another house to do penance among strangers, who would neither sympathise with her nor run the risk of being contaminated by her[1123].
At this point, however, agreement ceased. The question of illness was beset with difficulties. It was agreed that a nun might leave her house, if she suffered from some contagious disease which threatened the health of her sisters[1124], but opinions differed as to whether any relaxation was to be allowed in less severe cases, when only her own health was in question. The visitors sometimes issued licences for nuns to leave their houses in order to recruit their health; thus in 1303 Josiana de Anelaby, Prioress of Swine, had licence to absent herself from her house on account of ill-health[1125], in 1314 Archbishop Greenfield licenced a nun of Yedingham, who was suffering from dropsy, to visit friends and relatives with honest company, for the sake of improving her health[1126] and in 1368 Joan Furmage, Abbess of Shaftesbury, actually received a dispensation to leave the abbey for a year, and reside in her manors, for the sake of air and recreation[1127]. It is significant that the Novellae Definitiones of the Cistercian Order in 1350 strictly forbade nuns to go to the public baths outside their houses, which shows that they had been in the habit of doing so[1128]. But strict reformers were always opposed to such licences, and the specific prohibition of exeats for purposes of cures and convalescences was common in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when the practice had become almost universal in France[1129].
Again there was some difference of opinion as to whether a nun might leave her house, in order to enter one professing a stricter rule. Such a desire was in theory laudable and by Innocent III’s decretal Licet the principle was laid down that a bishop was bound de jure to grant leave for migration “sub praetextu majoris religionis et ut vitam ducant arctiorem,” as long as the motive of the petitioner was love of God and not merely temeritas[1130]. But temeritas was often to be suspected; women, as St Francis de Sales complained, were full of whimsies[1131]; ennui, fancy, a craving for change, a friend in another house, might masquerade as a desire to lead a stricter life elsewhere. Moreover a nun who desired to remove herself was not unlikely to encounter opposition from her own convent. An interesting case of such opposition occurred at Gracedieu in 1447-8. Margaret Crosse, a nun of that house, desired to be transferred to the Benedictine Priory of Ivinghoe “of a straiter order of religion and observance, not for a frivolous or empty reason, but that she may lead a life altogether and entirely harder.” She obtained letters of admission from the Prioress of Ivinghoe, but when she came to ask for leave to migrate, the Prioress and Convent of Gracedieu refused to release her from her obedience and confiscated the letters. Bishop Alnwick then wrote to Gracedieu, requiring the Prioress either to let her go, or to furnish him with a reason for their refusal. The Prioress and Convent replied with some acerbity. Margaret, they said, desired to lead a life of less and not of more restraint and her real object was to join her sister, who was at that time Prioress of Ivinghoe, if indeed her request were not a mere pretext for apostasy; for
the said Margaret Crosse has caused and commanded certain goods, property and jewels belonging to our priory to be stealthily conveyed by certain of the said Margaret’s friends in the flesh from our priory to foreign and privy places, and to such conveyance done in her name has lent her authority, with the purpose, as is strongly suspected, of taking advantage of the darkness one night ... and transferring herself utterly and entirely of her own motion to places wholly strange, without having or asking and against our will[1132].
Moreover had the holy father considered the merits of their house and the loss to it, if Margaret seceded?
Inasmuch as in our priory according to the observances of the rule God is served and quire is ruled both in reading and singing and chanting the psalms and toiling in the vineyard of the Lord of Sabaoth at the canonical hours by day and night, while we also patiently endure grievous cares, fastings and watchings and further are instant together in contemplation, even as the holy Spirit designs to give us His inspiration. And the said Margaret Crosse, who is sufficiently trained in such regular observances and is very needful for the service of God in our priory aforesaid, wherein such regular observances and contemplations are not so fully kept as in our aforesaid priory ... would give herself to secular business in all matters, rather than to such contemplation or observance of the rule; and thereout shall arise to us and our priory not only grievous ill repute, but also no small loss, especially in that such chantings and regular observances would in likelihood suffer damage by reason of the said Margaret’s absence[1133].