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3

Accounting for Themselves

Nuns’ Everyday Practices and

Alternative Monastic Identities

Brigittines and Minoresses: Autonomy in Practice

Profession services, visitation ceremonies, and monastic rules shape nuns’ identities through their impact on nuns’ participation in financial, textual, and spiritual economies. Nuns’ everyday practices provide another perspective, making visible identities which at times harmonize with and at times compete with the complex interpretive schemes set out in foundational texts and ceremonies. Obedientiaries’ accounts and legal documents are valuable records of such quotidian practices; they indicate what nuns possessed, what they needed, and how they obtained these things. They also provide insights on nuns’ interactions with each other and with the world outside the cloister. What these documents say and the ways in which they say it illuminate women religious’ views of themselves, the world, and their place in it.

The English Brigittines and Minoresses provide prime examples of nuns’ temporal independence; in these communities are found degrees of financial autonomy and success in keeping with, and possibly enabled by, the enlarged spiritual and material foundations laid down in profession and visitation. I wish to stress that I am not arguing for a simple or direct correlation between modes of profession and visitation and material success or lack thereof. There were certainly Benedictine nunneries (for instance, Barking) that achieved notable economic success, and there were houses of Minoresses (for example, Bruisyard) of decidedly modest means. Furthermore, it is important to note that the much more recent origins of the Franciscan, and especially the Brigittine, Rules allowed for a closer “fit” between monastic theory and later medieval practice than that enabled by the centuries-old Rule of St. Benedict. Clare, Isabella, and Birgitta had the advantage of observing the difficulties inherent in shaping Benedictine monasticism for women, and they were able to craft religious identities with reference to systems of social relations they themselves inhabited.

Houses of Brigittine and Franciscan nuns were fortunate to be not only generally wealthy but also largely independent of secular and ecclesiastical authorities. This status allowed them to manage their property without a great deal of outside intervention and to increase their wealth. Syon’s foundation charter, for example, gives the community significant privileges. Henry V granted that during a vacancy, the nuns would have custody of all lands, rents, tenements, profits, and emoluments “without the interference of us, our heirs or successors.”¹ They were not even required to present “any accounts thereof … to us, our heirs or successors” at the time of the vacancy.² When a new abbess was created, the charter ensured that the community would not have to pay any charges for the right to nominate, nor would they “be charged in future with the giving, granting, or assigning of any pension, portion or maintenance for any person or persons at the request of us, our heirs, or successors.”³ This was no small freedom, since the right of a founder to nominate women religious or corrodians was a common feature of nunneries’ foundation charters. Supporting those nominated members of the community could be a financial as well as a social burden for the nuns.⁴

In 1447, Syon was granted “vast liberties … so that the tenants upon its estates were almost entirely exempt from royal justice.”⁵ Their perquisites of justice extended to “all issues and amercements, redemptions and forfeitures as well before our heirs and successors, as before the chancellor, treasurer and barons of our exchequer, the justices and commissioners of us, our heirs or successors whomsoever made, forfeited or adjudged … of all the people … in the lordships, lands, tenements, fees and possessions aforesaid.”⁶ In the Valor Ecclesiasticus Syon’s income from all its perquisites of court was 133li 0s 6d out of a total income of 1944li 11s 5 1/4d,⁷ so these privileges clearly did much to add to Syon’s great wealth. Building on such grants and privileges, Syon became the wealthiest nunnery in England.

Syon’s foundation charter also manifests the abbess’s power in the Brigittine tradition, stressing her control of the house’s resources. It states that Matilda Newton, whom Henry V preferred as abbess, and her successors, “shall preside over the nuns or sisters aforesaid, and take upon themselves the whole government of the aforesaid monastery, as well in spirituals as temporals, and that they shall do and execute those things which in anywise do or may belong to the abbess of the said place, (excepting only that the same confessor shall preside over the aforesaid religious men in spirituals as is aforesaid).”⁸ A letter written to the abbess of Syon by a servant makes clear that the authority constructed for her in profession and visitation and reiterated in the foundation charter was recognized in materially significant ways. The servant reports to the abbess that as promised he has “delyuered to maister confessor a bill of all the some of wode in eny lordship that I haue sold & taken money for sethen I was furst offecer.”⁹ He says that of the total sum he delivered 3li 11s 4d to the Lord of Surrey’s officer since that officer claimed that amount of wood as his. Thus, he continues:

the hole some with that cometh to xvli viiis iiiid[.] [O]f this xvli viiis iiiid[,] xiiili part of xxxili that my ladie alowed me in myn acount is parte ther of as the boke of acount will shewe[.] [T]his will I abide bie[.] [I]f eny persone or persones will sey the contrarie[,] or that I haue done eny extorcion[,] taken eny brybes[,] or mysordered my self wetyngly & wylfully in eny cause othrwyse than a true crysten man or true offecer shuld[,] so lete hym or theym be cald be fore you & your councell & I in lyke case[.] & in eny thyng then so proued contrarie to this my wrytyng take of me what ye will in satesfaccon.¹⁰

The letter attests to the abbess’s active involvement in the details of the house’s business, and the servant responds to her as he would to any man of business. The details show that he fully expects the abbess to comprehend accounts, and he clearly thinks that she will be up to date on the state of the house’s possessions. Since Syon was a community in which female education and literacy flourished, the servant’s belief that the abbess would be well equipped to manage the house’s considerable resources was likely accurate.¹¹ The servant’s statement concerning the funds “that my ladie alowed me” reveals both the abbess’s secular dignity in the form of address (“my ladie”) and her authoritative agency in the allocation of resources. The fact that the servant reports to the abbess having delivered the bill of sale to the master confessor underscores her role as the community’s chief administrator of money and property. Furthermore, the servant’s concern with proving he has not taken bribes or otherwise behaved improperly highlights the abbess’s status as an acknowledged judge of morality and equity with the power to punish transgressions.

The Syon servant’s addressing the abbess as “my ladie” also suggests that in daily life, as in visitation practices, the high social status of the Brigittine nuns may have enhanced their independence. St. Birgitta herself was, after all, connected with the royal house of Sweden, a fact that certainly helped her further her efforts to found a new religious order (and that may well have helped to protect her from the worst sort of persecution faced by less well-connected holy women, visionaries, and religious reformers, including Margery Kempe, who identified so closely with Birgitta). Religious identity and social identity are not entirely separable, even though theoretically both men and women religious leave behind their secular identities upon entry into a monastic order. The assertion of female power at Syon is thus simultaneously an assertion of aristocratic privilege, just as the symbolic capital available to Benedictine brides of Christ works in concert with the aristocratic origins of the Barking nuns to enhance their ability to command social and spiritual respect.

English Minoresses share with the Brigittines an aristocratic heritage, tracing their lineage back to Isabella’s own foundation of Longchamp. English communities of Minoresses also possessed privileges nearly as enviable as those of Syon. The London Minoresses, like the Brigittines, enjoyed significant independence from secular authority which bolstered their wealth and their ability to administer their resources. For instance, as a consequence of a 1404 grant by Henry IV, which exempted the community from all lay jurisdiction except in cases of treason or felony touching the Crown, they were entirely outside even the mayor of London’s jurisdiction.¹²

The Minoresses also had important ecclesiastical freedoms which enhanced their material circumstances. Bulls from 1295 and 1296 exempted the London house “from episcopal and archiepiscopal jurisdictions, payment for chrism, sacraments, and consecration of their church and altars and excommunication by bishops and rectors.” As Martha Carlin observes, “These privileges reduced the nuns’ obligations to and dependence on their parish church (St. Botolph Aldgate) and its rector, the prior and convent of Holy Trinity.” Additionally, in 1303, the London community’s precinct was completely detached from the parish when the prior of Holy Trinity “quitclaimed to the abbess and convent all the priory’s parochial rights in the precinct.”¹³

The house of Minoresses at Waterbeach was covered by the thirteenth-century papal bulls which applied to the London Minoresses, and in 1343, when the Waterbeach nuns were transferred to Denney, that community received the same exemptions.¹⁴ The founder of Denney, Mary de St. Pol, countess of Pembroke and a childless widow who was quite able in managing her own resources, worked to secure that her foundation was, like the London community, independent of external authorities.¹⁵ In 1356, thanks to her procurement, Alan de Walshingam, prior of Ely, formally abandoned all claim that he and the convent might have on Denney Abbey and its possessions.¹⁶ Such privileges enhanced the Franciscan nuns’ ability to administer their resources and increased their wealth; the London Minoresses, for instance, were among the wealthiest nuns in England.

Throughout the Middle Ages, until about the middle of the fourteenth century, English monasteries, like other landholders, largely relied on direct exploitation of their estates. From 1350 to 1450, though, throughout England the gradual leasing of demesne was the most important change in estate administration.¹⁷ Due to low prices of agricultural products and high costs of large-scale farming, landlords increasingly abandoned direct exploitation of lands.¹⁸ Religious houses were as subject to these market forces as other landlords, and they likewise turned to leasing their lands rather than exploiting them directly. Setting aside London convents, which drew large portions of their income from money rents for streets of houses and shops, and setting aside a smattering of urban holdings distributed among various other houses, by the later fourteenth century the greatest proportion of nunneries’ incomes was “the money derived from the possession of agricultural land, and in particular the rents paid by tenants in freehold, copyhold, customary and leasehold land.”¹⁹ Nuns thus participated in the “commercialisation” of the English economy, which R. H. Britnell argues was the key long-term trend throughout the Middle Ages.²⁰

Extracts from the Court Rolls of Denney preserved in MS BL Add. 5837 provide evidence that the Minoresses’ participation in “commercialisation” led to opportunities for temporal independence on a personal level.²¹ These records contain detailed evidence for the distribution of resources among individual nuns in that community using the prebend system. In this system, the community as a whole approved division of the convent’s property into portions for which sisters individually received rent. The prebend system thus provided occasions both for women religious to act as a corporate body independent of outside ecclesiastical authority in the distribution of portions and for them to act individually in their own names in the management of portions. For instance, in 10 Henry V, the abbess, Margaret Milly “by the Consent of the whole Convent & Chapter there, doth graunt to Johan Colcestr, & Margert Hyston, Sisters of the Abbey of Denney, one Acre & one Roode of Severall in the Marish of Waterbeche, called the Lughallough, for their Lives, without Rent.”²² This extract shows that the nuns, rather than stewards or ministers of the Franciscan order, allocated the portions, which then belonged to Joan and Margaret to manage however they saw fit.

An entry in the court records from 2 Henry V indicates that Joan Colchester already held other property as well—“one Place lying in Lugfen, abutting on the High Barke, & of another in Rushfen, late Jeffrey Burwell’s.” The entry shows that she claimed to hold these properties “freely of her own Purchase,” and that the property was held of the abbey and convent of Denney “by the service of 4s 1d. ob. yearly.”²³ That Joan purchased this property and then held it by paying a yearly fee to the house suggests that the portion may well have been property which she bought before becoming a nun and brought with her as an entry gift, and which the house subsequently returned to her for her to administer personally. It is also possible that she bought the property after becoming a nun with entry gift funds remaining in her control after her profession.

Some sisters at Denney seem to have formed lasting business relationships with members of the surrounding community through managing their portions. In 6 Henry V, Edmund Bartlett took to farm of Isabell Winter “one close, called Hetes Holt, with Oysers” for a term of ten years, paying 9s per annum.²⁴ Evidently, Isabell and Edmund had a satisfactory relationship, because in 5 Henry VI he takes “a Close called Letysʒere nigh the Depe” for a term of ten years “by the Assent of Isabell.”²⁵ For this he agrees to render “to the aforesaid Isabell” 12s per annum.²⁶

In developing and cultivating such relationships, nuns worked to ensure their own financial security. Successful, long-term business relationships also made nuns known in the community at large as competent, independent agents in charge of resources. Such status counteracts, at least to some extent, the frequently asserted “myth of women’s financial incompetence,”²⁷ a myth to which ecclesiastical officials frequently had recourse in seizing control of nunneries’ resources and in imposing additional layers of masculine supervision. The experience of success thus opens a locus of resistance to discourses of feminine inferiority and dependence both spiritual and temporal.

The business relationships of Minoresses with others outside the convent were not always satisfactory. Legal documents recording these troubled relationships do have the advantage, however, of highlighting the ways in which the Minoresses made visible “demonstrated or desired identities.”²⁸ Beginning in 1452, Denney had a long-running dispute with Thomas Burgoyne, whose manor of Impington adjoined their manor at Histon, regarding the convent’s property and perquisites there. After Thomas Burgoyne died in 1470, the abbess Joan Ketteryche brought a case in chancery against Alys Burgoyne and John Burgoyne, Thomas’s executors.²⁹ Ketteryche claimed that Thomas “ordeynyd by his wille and testament that his executors shulde paye and restore any Iniuries and wrongges don by hym.”³⁰ The abbess said that the executors should therefore make satisfaction because Thomas had prevented Denney’s tenants from attending Denney’s courts, had stopped the convent’s officers from “takyng of weyff and straye” in some of their fields, had prohibited their tenants from feeding and pasturing cattle in particular fields, and had impounded the cattle, only releasing them upon payment of a fine of 1d for “every fote of the bestes.”³¹ Furthermore, Thomas Burgoyne was “justice of peasse and keper of the bookes withynne the saide counte of Cambridge,” and he “by feynyd accions” caused Denney’s tenants and servants to be indicted before himself. When writs were served “for the removing of the same,” Thomas would claim “ther were noo suche recordes.”³²

It is quite proper that Joan pursued this case, since female superiors had legal responsibility for their houses’ holdings and possessions, and, by virtue of their office, were legal subjects. Female superiors were permitted to leave their monasteries to do homage on behalf of their communities to temporal lords, although only to temporal lords “since all ecclesiastical overlords would be expected to receive proctors in these cases.”³³ In spite of the juridical status they had through their offices, though, the fact that female superiors were women religious complicated matters. In his commentary on the papal bull Periculoso, which required strict active and passive claustration for nuns, the fourteenth-century canonist Dominicus de Sancto Gemiano desired to limit the involvement of female superiors in legal cases, since such involvement would take them out of the cloister. He affirms the “unique right of the abbess to leave her cloister to render homage or fealty” but also “cites Roman law authority to support the case that women in general should not be compelled to appear in courts of law.”³⁴ The abbesses of such nunneries as Shaftesbury, St. Mary’s Winchester, Wilton, and Barking had baronial status as landholders; as Eileen Power drily observes, though, “the privilege of being summoned to parliament was omitted on account of their sex” even though “the duty of sending a quota of knights and soldiers to serve the King in his wars was regularly exacted.”³⁵

The way in which Joan Ketteryche’s case plays out shows that she took her responsibilities for her house’s property quite seriously and that she did not see her rights to pursue the case as being in any respect curtailed by her status as a bride of Christ. Although the result was not a total victory for Joan, it does reinforce her authority over resources. The abbess did not recover all of the money—some £883—she sought in damages,³⁶ but she and John Burgoyne did agree that she would have her “leets and lawdays at Impyton and they and their tenants … of Histon shall intercommon at Impyton with the said John and his tenants of his manor of Impyton.”³⁷ The abbess of Denney would therefore continue to have the opportunity to act in her own name, and in the houses’ name, publicly appearing as legitimate possessor and controller in temporal matters.

Another aspect of this court case demonstrates that Joan Ketteryche was in fact remarkably shrewd in taking advantage of both her distinctive gendered status as bride of Christ and her maternal authority over resources suggested in foundational Franciscan texts and ceremonies. During the dispute with Thomas Burgoyne and his executors, she wrote a letter to her kinsman John Paston asking that he aid Denney with goods left in his hands as executor of John Fastolf’s estate. In this letter Joan, like the famous letter-writing Paston women with whom she is connected, mobilizes textual practices for material gain. Her rhetoric reveals not only a self-awareness of the implications of being scripted as a bride of Christ, enclosed and subject to spousal authority, but also a sophisticated ability to use this identity to achieve material goals.

Joan begins the letter with a reference to “the reverens of oure spouse ihu,”³⁸ and she makes the nuns’ enclosure, necessitated by their status as spouses of Christ, a reason for Paston to find them deserving of help. She also takes up a gendered religious stereotype to the house’s potential advantage by stressing in her request for aid that she was chosen as abbess “ful myche agens my will” and that she is “ful symple and ʒounge of age.”³⁹ Her use of this terminology brings into play the ideal of nuns’ detachment from material affairs and invokes the “myth of women’s financial incompetence,” the very myth so often reiterated by ecclesiastical officials as a reason for taking away nuns’ independent control of resources, in what is in fact a calculated effort to obtain a desired economic gain.

Benedictines: Brides of Christ in the Marketplace

As the preceding examples suggest, the religious identities constructed in profession and visitation for Franciscan and Brigittine nuns and the identities to which they laid claim in practice have much in common. Disjunctions between theory and practice are somewhat more pronounced, however, when one considers what Benedictine nuns were doing in their everyday lives. A chancery case brought in 1500–1501 by Elizabeth, the prioress of Sopwell (a Benedictine nunnery dependent on St. Albans Abbey), provides a compelling illustration with which to begin probing not only gaps between theory and practice but also ways in which Benedictine nuns enlarged windows of opportunity opened for them in their foundational ideological scripts.