Abstract
“Women’s efforts achieve little without the help from men,” wrote the author of the life of Saint Gilbert.1 He did not stand alone. Medieval men and women were deeply convinced that men and women were essentially different, in particular that women were weaker than men and that women’s weakness required care by (the stronger) men, like the sick required care by the healthy, and the poor by the rich. As a consequence, men carried a burden of responsibility for women. For professed religious men such as monks and canons, the care for women presented a dilemma: they wanted to help religious women, but at the same time, they wanted to distance themselves from the female presence because they were concerned that contact with women would tempt them to break their vow of chastity. For women, care by men was convenient, but it also burdened them with dependence. The tension resulting from their perceived need to cooperate and the simultaneous wish to limit interaction underlies the history of female monasticism.
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Notes
“Sane quaniam sine solatio virili parum proficit sollicitudo feminae …” The Book of St. Gilbert, ed. Raymonde Foreville and trans. Gillian Keir (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), pp. 36, 37.
Giles Constable, The Reformation of the Twelfth Century (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 71.
James W. Brodman, Charity and Religion in Medieval Europe (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2009), pp. 127–49.
Soldiers of Christ: Saints and Saints’ Lives from Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, ed. Thomas F. X. Noble and Thomas Head (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995), pp. xxxiv–xxxv, 265.
Valerie L. Garver, Women and Aristocratic Culture in the Carolingian World (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009), pp. 113–15.
Penelope D. Johnson, Equal in Monastic Profession: Religious Women in Medieval France (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), p. 246. Heloise, however, makes a different case for female superiority. According to her, the female body was at an advantage because its humid and porous nature absorbed less food and alcohol, with the result that women were less likely to fall into gluttony or drunkenness. The Letters of Abelard and Heloise, trans. Betty Radice, revised edn. (London: Penguin, 2003), p. 166.
Jean Leclercq, “Medieval Feminine Monasticism: Reality versus Romantic Images,” in Benedictus: Studies in Honor of St. Benedict of Nursia, ed. Roxane Elder (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1981), p. 61.
Corpus iuris canonici, ed. Aemelius L. Richter and Emil A. Friedberg, 2 vols. (Leipzig: Tauchnitz, 1879–1881), 1. vi, t. iii, c. 16.
“Les Statuts de Jully,” in Études sur Saint Bernard et le texte de ses écrits, ed. Jean Leclercq (Rome: Curiam Generalem Sacri Ordinis Cisterciensis, 1953), pp. 192–94.
Histoire du prieuré de Jully-les-Nonnais, avec pièces justificatives, ed. Jean Baptiste Jobin (Paris: Bray et Retaux, 1881), nos. 3–10.
See for strict enclosure and its effects in the period 500 to 1100, Jane T. Schulenburg, “Strict Active Enclosure and Its Effects on the Female Monastic Experience (ca. 500–1100),” in Medieval Religious Women. Vol. 1, Distant Echoes, ed. John A. Nichols and Lilian T. Shank (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1984), pp. 51–86.
Fiona J. Griffiths, The Garden of Delights. Reform and Renaissance for Women in the Twelfth Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), p. 6.
Bruce L. Venarde, Women’s Monasticism and Medieval Society: Nunneries in France and England, 890–1215 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997), p. 68.
François Petit, Norbert et l’origine des Prémontrés (Paris: Cerf, 1981), pp. 135–39.
Venarde, Women’s Monasticism, p. 69, and in detail in Th. M. van Schijndel, “De premontratenzer koorzusters: Van dubbelkloosters naar autonome konventen,” in Gedenkboek Orde van Premontre, 1121–1971, ed. Koenraad E. Stappers (Averbode: Altiora, 1971), pp. 163–77.
Statuta capitulorum, ed. Canivez, 2:68 (1228).
For a study of the Gilbertine order, see Brian, Gilbert of Sempringham and the Gilbertine Order, c.1130—c.1300 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995).
And for a study of its liturgy, Janet T. Sorrentino, “Choice Words: The Liturgy of the Order of Sempringham” (PhD diss.; University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1999).
Aelred’s story is printed as Aelred of Rielvaux, “De Sanctimoniali de Wattun,” in Historiae Anglicanae scriptores, vol. 10, ed. Roger Twysden (London: Jacob Flesher, 1652).
For analysis, see Giles Constable, “Aelred of Rievaux and the Nun of Watton: An Episode in the Early History of the Gilbertine Order,” in Medieval Women, ed. Derek Baker (Oxford: Blackwell, 1978), pp. 205–26.
Sharon K. Elkins, Holy Women of Twelfth-Century England (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), pp. 106–11.
The Book of St. Gilbert, ed. Foreville and Keir, pp. 42, 43; Golding, Gilbert of Sempringham, p. 84. Whether the assembly was a general chapter is a different matter. Constance H. Berman, The Cistercian Evolution: The Invention of a Religious Order in Twelfth-Century Europe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), p. 146. Apparently the Cistercian order changed its mind in 1186 when it accepted the Order of Calatrava into the order as an affiliate of Morimond.
Richard Southern, Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970), pp. 250, 317, 320.
Herbert Grundmann, Religious Movements in the Middle Ages: The Historical Links between Heresy, the Mendicant Orders, and the Women’s Religious Movement in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Century, with the Historical Foundations of German Mysticism, trans. Steven Rowan (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995), pp. 91–92.
“Cum femina semper esse et non cognoscere feminam nonne plus est quam mortuum suscitare?” Bernard of Clairvaux, “Sermones in cantica canticorum: Sermo LXV,” Patrologiae cursus completus, ed. Jacques-Paul Migne, Series latina (Paris, 1854), 183:col. 1091B; Southern, Western Society, pp. 314–15.
Jean Leclercq, Women and Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, trans. Marie-Bernard Saïd (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1989), p. 61.
Sally Thompson, “The Problem of the Cistercian Nuns in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries,” in Medieval Women, ed. Derek Baker and Rosalind Hill (Oxford: Blackwell, 1978), pp. 227–52; Berman, Evolution, pp. 39–45. The assertion that that there were no female Cistercians in 1147 necessarily needs to be revised if we accept that the Vita reflected the attitudes of 1202 rather than 1147.
Ernest Zaragoza Pascual, Catàleg dels monestirs catalans (Barcelona: Publicacions de l’Abadia de Montserrat, 1997), organized by place name.
Javier Perez-Embib Wamba, El Císter en Castilla y León: Monacato y dominios rurales, siglos XII–XV (Salamanca: Junta de Castilla y León, 1986), p. 271.
Vincente-Angel Alvarez Pelenzuela, Monasterios cistercienses en Castilla, siglos XII–XIII (Valladolid: Universidad de Valladolid, 1978), pp. 82, 140–43.
Documentos de Casbas, ed. Augustín Ubieto Arteta (Valencia: Anubar, 1966), no. 3.
Documentación del monasterio de las Huelgas de Burgos, ed. José Manuel Lizoain Garrido and Araceli Castro Garrido, Fuentes medievales catellano-leonesas 30 (Burgos: Garrido Garrido, 1983), no. 11.
La règle de Saint Augustin, ed. Luc Verheijen (Paris: Etudes augustiniennes, 1967), 1:11–14, 439–41.
George Lawless, Augustine of Hippo and his Monastic Rule (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), pp. 65–69.
Caroline Walker Bynum, Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), pp. 35–40.
Benedict of Nursia, “Regula, cum commentariis,” in Patrologiae Cursus Completus, ed. Jacques-Paul Migne, Series latina, (Paris, 1866), 66:col. 0215D.
Alexis Grélois, “Les chanoines réguliers et la conversion des femmes au XIIe siècle,” in Les chanoines réguliers. Émergence et expansion (XIe–XHIe siècles), ed. Michel Parisse (Saint-Étienne: Publications de l’Université de Saint-Étienne, 2009), pp. 233–63.
Jo Ann McNamara, Sisters in Arms: Catholic Nuns through Two Millenia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), pp. 177–79.
The Second Lateran Council decreed in 1139 that “Ad haec perniciosam et detestabilem consuetudinem quarumdam mulierum, quae licet neque secundum regulam B. Benedicti, neque Basilii, aut Augustini vivant, sanctimoniales tamen vulgo censeri desiderant, aboleri decernimus. Cum enim juxta regulam degentes in coenobiis tam in ecclesia quam in refectorio atque dormitorio communiter esse debeant, propria sibi aedificant receptacula et privata domicilia, in quibus sub hospitalitatis velamine passim hospites et minus religiosos, contra sacros canones et bonos mores suscipere nullatenus erubescunt. Quia ergo omnis qui male agit odit lucem ac per hoc ipsae absconditae injustorum tabernaculo opinantur se posse latere oculos Judicis cuncta cernentis, hoc tam inhonestum detestandumque flagitium ne ulterius fiat, omnimodis prohibemus, et sub poena anathematis interdicimus.” Disciplinary Decrees of the General Councils: Text, Translation and Commentary, ed. H. J. Schroeder (St. Louis: B. Herder, 1937), p. 548 (canon 26), p. 211 (translation). The Church’s concern was repeated at the Council of Rheims in 1148 with the provision that the women should choose between the Rules of Saint Augustine and Saint Benedict. McNamara, Sisters in Arms, p. 223.
Brodman, Charity and Religion, p. 115; Elena Bellomo, The Templar Order in North-West Italy, 1142–c. 1330 (Boston: Brill, 2008), pp. 68–73.
James W. Brodman, “Rule and Identity: The Case of the Military Orders,” The Catholic Historical Review 87.3 (2001): 386 [383–400].
Cartulaire général de l’ordre des Hospitaliers de S. Jean de Jérusalem, 1100–1310, ed. Joseph Delaville Le Roulx, 4 vols. (Paris: E. Leroux, 1894–1906), 1:no. 70.
La règle du Temple, ed. Henri de Curzon (Paris: Librairie Renouard, 1886), nos. 4, 8.
The Order of Saint Thomas was an English organization in Acre of Augustinian Canons devoted to the care of the poor and the ransoming of captives. It was reformed as a military order in the late 1220s. Alan Forey, “St. Thomas of Acre,” English Historical Review 9 (1977): 481–503. The very limited number of surviving documents do not indicate presence of female members.
Penny Shine Gold, The Lady and the Virgin: Image, Attitude, and Experience in Twelfth-Century France (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), p. 80.
Gold, Lady and the Virgin, p. 80; Max Weber, The Sociology of Religion, trans. Ephraim Fischoff (Boston, 1922; repr. Boston: Beacon Press, 1993), p. 104.
Elizabeth Makowski, Canon Law and Cloistered Women: Periculoso and its Commentators, 1298–1500 (Washington DC: Catholic University Press, 1997), p. 2.
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© 2012 Myra Miranda Bom
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Bom, M.M. (2012). Female Monasticism. In: Women in the Military Orders of the Crusades. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137088307_2
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