Women in English Life from Mediæval to Modern Times, Vol. I

by Georgiana Hill

The position of women with regard to the Church was affected by this attitude of the Church to the world. As servants of this mighty organization, women who embraced a religious life were lifted by the Church’s power and influence above the heads of the rest of the community, of whom they were frequently the teachers, helpers, advisers, and general benefactors in time of need. It was in the nunneries that the education of girls of all classes was carried on. Convent schools were the only schools either for rich or poor, and the “sisters” the only women able to qualify themselves to become instructors.

The nuns, again, were the chief dispensers of charity. The lady of the manor might be a bountiful almsgiver, but she could not be so well acquainted with the needs of the poor as the convent sisters who tended them in sickness and knew all the troubles of their daily life. The convent was a centre of help and enlightenment. Even where the nuns never left their walls, they were constantly employed on benevolent works. Philanthropy, in the Middle Ages, was a religious duty, but it was only in connection with the Church that it was practised in an organized way. The dole-giving at great houses was scarcely philanthropy; it was part of the household system, and the recipients of the bounty regarded it almost as a right.

Women’s position in relation to the Church assumes a different aspect when the limitations of ordinary life are considered. There was no social work in which women could engage carried on independently of the Church. The “religious” had the field to themselves. The lay worker was of no importance whatever unless she had wealth which enabled her to confer benefits, or dignities which gave her prominence. Through the convent the Church’s influence was diffused among the people, its doctrines leavened the minds of the masses, its authority and power were felt everywhere among high and low.

Their relation to the Church elevated women to a plane above the common level. For although they were in subjection to their spiritual rulers, those rulers had authority far greater in civil matters than their successors can boast of in the present day. The humble nun who went about with downcast eyes, who was taught to obey without questioning, was the instrument of a power greater than that of kings. In the progress of civilization, it was women who, through the Church, gained the firstfruits of culture.

In the Middle Ages, and, indeed, as long as the conventual system lasted as part of the English Church, the nun was teacher, philanthropist, doctor, and nurse. Her duties were by no means confined to the cloister. At Gloucester, where there was a Benedictine convent, the nuns went about among the people, teaching, advising, consoling, and discoursing on subjects with which convent sisters are supposed to have little acquaintance. Nuns were sometimes accused of giving too much attention to housewifery. Among other things, they are said to have composed moral tales like those of Hannah More and her sisters, and to have read them to the village maidens.

“The English nuns,” writes Paul Casenigo, a Venetian traveller of the sixteenth century, “gave instruction to the poorer virgins (peasants) as to their duties when they became wives; to be obedient to their husbands, and to give good example.”

The poorer folk felt it a great loss when the kindly sisters—many of them gentlewomen of good birth—to whom they were accustomed to carry all their troubles, were ruthlessly dispersed at the time of the dissolution of the religious houses. The nunnery of Godstow, near Oxford, famous for its unblemished reputation, was quite a centre of benevolence. There were no clothing clubs in that or any other neighbourhood, no “mothers’ meetings,” no sewing-parties for making garments for the poor, no penny dinners, no dispensaries, no hospitals. If it had not been for the good nuns of Godstow, the poor must have suffered greatly. Henri Ambère, a French architect, says of Godstow, that he saw no such excellent nuns in his own country as were to be seen in that convent. Warm clothing was made for the poor, who, in winter, had to bar out the light to keep out the cold by means of shutters, and whose chimney consisted of a simple hole in the roof through which the rain and wind poured down, while the smoke struggled up ineffectually. Were there any sick? it was the nuns to whom application was made for remedies, which were compounded within the convent walls. Were there any infirm and starving? there was food for them at the convent. Was there a wedding in the village? it was the nuns who provided the bride with her simple trousseau. Every year provision was made to give a couple of suits of clothing and the sum of ten shillings to six peasant girls on their marriage.[11]

Thus we find the nuns carrying on, as part of their service to the Church, all kinds of secular work, now largely performed by lay members of the community.

With the fall of the monastic houses much of this work was dropped. The Anglican Church, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, had no such hold on the people at large as the Romish Church had acquired. As an organization for dealing with the masses, it was particularly ineffective. In this century the Church has regained something of what it lost, or rather it has covered ground which it had never before really occupied. One of the most striking features of its remarkable activity at the present day is the large part taken by women. Without the service of women, the Church would be unable to carry on the greater portion of its secular work. But there is a noticeable difference between the way in which the work is undertaken in the present age and in what are called the Ages of Faith. That which is now accomplished by co-operation among individuals, without reference to any authority, was formerly only practicable under the ægis of the Church. Women could never have performed that kind of ministry to the community without the help of the Church. It was in the convent they obtained the qualification and the means, and it was the convent garb that protected them in the discharge of their outside duties.

There is another aspect in which women’s relation to the Church may be studied. The heads of the great religious houses were necessarily persons of importance, with privileges and great responsibilities. They had considerable wealth at their disposal, and in authority and influence they ranked among the nobles of the land, to whom they were often allied by birth. An abbess was a person to be reckoned with and consulted as much as an abbot. In the age of double monasteries she was superior in power. The origin of these institutions is a little obscure. It has been thought that the idea was derived from Gaul, whither the Saxon princesses were sent to be educated. Dr. Lingard has another theory. He considers the double monasteries were formed to prevent the nuns from having any excuse for intercourse with laymen. A convent could not be worked entirely by women; prejudice and tradition, as well as the limitations of sex, stood in the way.