Chapter VI: Education (1)

Abstinence the abbesse myn a. b. c. me taughte.
_Piers Plowman._

The Benedictine ideal set study together with prayer and labour as the three bases of monastic life and in the short golden age of English monasticism women as well as men loved books and learning. The tale of the Anglo-Saxon nuns who corresponded with St Boniface has often been told. Eadburg, Abbess of Thanet, wrote the Epistles of St Peter for him in letters of gold and sent books to him in the wilds of Germany. Bugga, Abbess of a Kentish house, exchanged books with him. The charming Lioba, educated by the nuns of Wimborne, sent him verses which she had composed in Latin, which "divine art" the nun Eadburg had taught her, and begged him to correct the rusticity of her style. Afterwards she came into Germany to help him and became Abbess of Bischofsheim and her biographer tells how

she was so bent on reading that she never laid aside her book except
to pray or to strengthen her slight frame with food and sleep. From
childhood upwards she had studied grammar and the other liberal arts,
and hoped by perseverance to attain a perfect knowledge of religion,
for she was well aware that the gifts of nature are doubled by study.
She zealously read the books of the Old and New Testaments and
committed their divine precepts to memory; but she further added to
the rich store of her knowledge by reading the writings of the holy
Fathers, the canonical decrees and the laws of the Church.

So also an anonymous Anglo-Saxon nun of Heidenheim wrote the lives of Willibald and Wunebald[794].

The Anglo-Saxon period seems, however, to have been the only one during which English nuns were at all conspicuous for learning. There is indeed very scant material for writing their history between the Norman Conquest and the last years of the thirteenth century, when Bishops' Registers begin. It is never safe to argue from silence and some nuns may still have busied themselves over books; but two facts are significant: we have no trace of women occupying themselves with the copying and illumination of manuscripts and no nunnery produced a chronicle. The chronicles are the most notable contribution of the monastic houses to learning from the eleventh to the fourteenth centuries; and some of the larger nunneries, such as Romsey, Lacock, and Shaftesbury, received many visitors and must have heard much that was worth recording, besides the humbler annals of their own houses. But they recorded nothing. The whole trend of medieval thought was against learned women and even in Benedictine nunneries, for which a period of study was enjoined by the rule, it was evidently considered altogether outside the scope of women to concern themselves with writing. While the monks composed chronicles, the nuns embroidered copes; and those who sought the gift of a manuscript from the monasteries, sought only the gift of needlework from the nunneries.

It is not, perhaps, surprising that the nuns should have written no chronicles and copied few, if any, books. But it is surprising that England should after the eighth century be able to show so little record of gifted individuals. Even if the rule of a professedly learned order were unlikely to prevail against the general trend of civilisation and to produce learned women, still it might have been expected that here and there a genius, or a woman of some talent for authorship, might have flourished in that favourable soil; or even that a whole house might have enjoyed for a brief halcyon period the zest for learning, when "alle was buxomnesse there and bokes to rede and to lerne." In Germany, at various periods of the middle ages, this did happen. The Abbey of Gandersheim in Saxony was renowned for learning in the tenth century and here lived and flourished the nun Roswitha, who not only wrote religious legends in Latin verse, but even composed seven dramas in the style of Terence, a poem on the Emperor Otto the Great and a history of her own nunnery. From the internal evidence of her works it has been thought that this nun was directly familiar with the works of Virgil, Lucan, Horace, Ovid, Terence and perhaps Plautus, Prudentius, Sedulius, Fortunatus, Martianus Capella and Boethius; but apart from this evidence of learning, her plays show her to have been a woman of originality and some genius; they are strange productions to have emanated from a tenth century convent[795]. It was in Germany again, at Hohenburg in Alsace, that the Abbess Herrad in the twelfth century compiled and decorated with exquisite illuminations the great encyclopedia known as the _Hortus Deliciarum_. This book, one of the finest manuscripts which had survived from the middle ages and a most invaluable source of information for the manners and appearance of the people of Herrad's day, was destroyed in the German bombardment of Strasburg in 1870[796]. The same century saw the lives of the two great nun-mystics, St Hildegard of Bingen and St Elisabeth of Schoenau, who saw visions, dreamed dreams and wrote them down[797]. In the next century the convent of Helfta in Saxony was the home of several literary nuns and mystics and was distinguished for culture; its nuns collected books, copied them, illuminated them, learned and wrote Latin, and three of them, the beguine Mechthild, the nun Saint Mechthild von Hackeborn and the nun Gertrud the Great, have won considerable fame by their mystic writings[798]. Even in the decadent fifteenth century examples are not wanting of German nuns who were keenly interested in learning; and in the early sixteenth century Charitas Pirckheimer, nun of St Clare at Nuremberg and sister of the humanist Wilibald Pirckheimer, was in close relations with her brother and with many of his friends and full of enthusiasm for the new learning[799].

It is strange that in England there is no record of any house which can compare with Gandersheim, Hohenburg or Helfta; no record of any nun to compare with the learned women and great mystics who have been mentioned. The air of the English nunneries would seem to have been unfavourable to learning. The sole works ascribed to monastic authoresses are a _Life of St Catherine_, written in Norman-French by Clemence, a nun of Barking, in the late twelfth century[800], and _The Boke of St Albans_, a treatise on hawking, hunting and coat armour, printed in 1486, by one Dame Juliana Berners, whom a vague and unsubstantiated tradition declares to have been Prioress of Sopwell. Nor do nuns seem to have been more active in copying manuscripts. Several beautiful books, which have come down to our own day, can be traced to nunneries, but there is no evidence that they were written there and all other evidence makes it highly improbable that they were. It is true that in 1335 we find this entry among the issues of the Exchequer:

To Isabella de Lancaster, a nun of Amesbury, in money paid to her by
the hands of John de Gynewell for payment of 100 marks, which the lord
the King commanded to be paid her for a book of romance purchased from
her for the King's use, which remains in the chamber of the lord the
King, 66 l. 13 s. 4 d[801],

but it is unlikely that the book thus purchased by the King from his noble kinswoman was her own work.

This period of the later ages was, indeed, unfavourable to learning among monks as well as among nuns. As the universities grew, so the monasteries declined in lustre; learning had no longer need to seek refuge behind cloister walls, and the most promising monks now went to the universities, instead of studying at home in their own houses. The standard of the chronicles rapidly declined and the best chronicler of the fourteenth century was not a monk like Matthew Paris, but a secular, a wanderer, a hanger-on of princes, Froissart. As the fifteenth century passed learning declined still further; and it is evident from the visitations of the time that the monks, whatever else they might be, were not scholars. We should expect the decline in learning to be more marked still among the nuns, considering how little they had possessed in preceding centuries; and the matter is worth some study, because it concerns not only the education of the nuns themselves, but the education which they were qualified to give to the children who were sent to school with them.

A word may first be said on the subject of nunnery libraries. Concerning these we have very little information; and, such as it is, it does not leave the impression that nunneries were rich in books. No catalogue of a nunnery library[802] has come down to us and such references to libraries as occur in inventories show great poverty in this respect, the books being few and chiefly service-books. An inventory of the small and poor convent of Easebourne, taken in 1450, shows what was doubtless quite a large library for a house of its size. It contained two missals, two _portiforia_ (breviaries), four antiphoners, one large _Legenda_, eight psalters, one book of collects, one tropary, one French Bible, two _ordinalia_ in French, one book of the Gospels and one martyrology[803]. The inventories of Henry VIII's commissioners give very little information as to books and seem to have found few that were of any value. The books found at Sheppey are thus described: "ij bokes with ij sylver clapses the pece, and vj bokes with one sylver clasp a pec, l bokes good and bad" (in the church), "vij bokes, whereof one goodly mase boke of parchement and dyvers other good bokes" (in the vestry), and "an olde presse full of old boks of no valew" (in a chapel in the churchyard) and "a boke of Saynts lyfes" (in the parlour)[804]. At Kilburn were found "two books of _Legenda Aurea_, one in print, the other written, both English, 4_d._"; the one in print must have been Caxton's edition, thus valued, together with a manuscript, at something like 6_s._ 8_d._ in present money for the pair! Also "two mass books, one old written, the other in print, 20_d._, four processions in parchment (3_s._) and paper (10_d._), two Legends in parchment and paper, 8_d._, and two chests, with divers books pertaining to the church, of no value"[805]. It will be noted that the books are almost always connected with the church services. It is perhaps significant that in only one list of the inmates of a house is a nun specifically described as librarian[806].

Something may be gleaned also from the legacies of books left to nuns in medieval wills. These again are nearly always psalters or service books of one kind or another; and indeed the average layman was more likely to possess these than other books, for all alike attended the services of the church. Thus Sir Robert de Roos in 1392 leaves his daughter, a nun, "a little psalter, that was her mother's"[807]; Sir William de Thorp in 1391 leaves his sister-in-law, a nun of Greenfield, a psalter[808]; William Stow of Ripon in 1430 leaves the Prioress of Nunmonkton a small psalter[809], William Overton of Helmsley in 1481 leaves his niece Elena, a nun of Arden, "one great Primer with a cover of red damask"[810], and so on. There may be some significance in the fact that John Burn, chaplain at York Cathedral, leaves the Prioress and Convent of Nunmonkton "an English book of Pater Noster"[811]. It strikes a strange and pleasant note when Thomas Reymound in 1418 leaves the Prioress and Convent of Polsloe 20_s._ and the _Liber Gestorum Karoli, Regis Francie_[812], and when Eleanor Roos of York in 1438 leaves Dame Joan Courtenay "unum librum vocatum Mauldebuke," whatever that mysterious tome may have contained[813].

Some light is also thrown backward upon their possessors by isolated books which have come down to our own day and are known to have belonged to nuns. These come mostly, as might be expected, from the great abbeys of the south, where the nuns were rich and of good birth, from Syon and Barking, Amesbury, Wilton and Shaftesbury, St Mary's Winchester, and Wherwell[814]. Sometimes the MS. records the name of the nun owner. Wright and Halliwell quote from a Latin breviary, in which is an inscription to the effect that it belonged to Alice Champnys, nun of Shaftesbury, who bought it for the sum of 10_s._ from Sir Richard Marshall, rector of the parish church of St Rumbold of Shaftesbury. There follows this prayer for the use of the nun:

Trium puerorum cantemus himnum quem cantabant in camino ignis
benedicentes dominum. O swete Jhesu, the sonne of God, the endles
swetnesse of hevyn and of erthe and of all the worlde, be in my herte,
in my mynde, in my wytt, in my wylle, now and ever more, Amen. Jhesu
mercy, Jhesu gramercy, Jhesu for thy mercy, Jhesu as I trust to thy
mercy, Jhesu as thow art fulle of mercy, Jhesu have mercy on me and
alle mankynde redemyd with thy precyouse blode. Jhesu, Amen[815].

A manuscript of Capgrave's _Life of St Katharine of Alexandria_, which belonged to Katherine Babyngton, subprioress of Campsey in Suffolk, has a very different inscription:

Iste liber est ex dono Kateryne Babyngton quondam subpriorisse de
Campseye et si quis illum alienauerit sine licencia vna cum consensu
dictarum [sanctimonialium] conuentus, malediccionem dei omnipotentis
incurrat et anathema sit[816].

Sometimes the owner of a manuscript is known to us from other sources. There is a splendid psalter, now in St John's College, Cambridge, which belonged to the saintly Euphemia, Abbess of Wherwell from 1226 to 1257, whose good deeds were celebrated in the chartulary of the house[817]. In the Hunterian Library at Glasgow there is a copy of the first English translation of Thomas a Kempis's _Imitatio Christi_, which belonged to Elizabeth Gibbs, Abbess of Syon from 1497 to 1518; it is inscribed

O vos omnes sorores et ffratres presentes et futuri, orate queso pro
venerabili matre nostra Elizabeth Gibbis, huius almi Monasterii
Abbessa [_sic_], necnon pro deuoto ac religioso viro Dompno Willielmo
Darker, in artibus Magistro de domo Bethleem prope sheen ordinis
Cartuciensis, qui pro eadem domina Abbessa hunc librum conscripsit;

the date 1502 is given[818].

The books known to have been in the possession of nuns throw, as will be seen, but a dim light upon the educational attainments of their owners. More specific evidence must be sought in bishops' registers, and in such references to the state of learning in nunneries as occur in the works of contemporary writers. It is clear that nuns were expected to be "literate"; bishops sending new inmates to convents occasionally assure their prospective heads that the girls are able to undertake the duties of their new state[819]. What to be sufficiently lettered meant, from the convent point of view, appears in injunctions sent to the Premonstratensian house of Irford, forbidding the reception of any nun "save after such fashion as they are received at Irford and Brodholme, to wit that they be able to read and to sing, as is contained in the statute of the order"[820]; and again in injunctions sent by Bishop Gray to Elstow about 1432:

We enjoin and charge you the abbess and who so shall succeed you ...
that henceforward you admit no one to be a nun of the said monastery
... unless she be taught in song and reading and the other things
requisite herein, or probably may be easily instructed within a short
time[821].

Further light is thrown on the question by an episode in the life of Thomas de la Mare, Abbot of St Albans from 1349 to 1396. At that time the subordinate nunnery of St Mary de Pre consisted of two grades of inmates, nuns and sisters, who were never on good terms. The Abbot accordingly transformed the sisters into nuns and ordained that no more sisters should be received, but only "literate nuns." But hitherto the nuns also had been illiterate; "they said no service, but in the place of the Hours they said certain Lord's Prayers and Angelic Salutations." The Abbot therefore ordered that they should be taught the service and that in future they should observe the canonical hours, saying them without chanting, but singing the offices for the dead at certain times. Since they had apparently no books, from which to read the services, he gave them six or seven ordinals, belonging to the Abbey of St Albans, which caused not a little annoyance among the monks. In order that nuns should not be rashly and easily admitted, he ordered that henceforth all who entered the house were to profess the rule of St Benedict in writing[822].

The requirements seem to be that the nun should be able to take part in the daily offices in the quire, for which reading and singing were essential. It was not, it should be noted, essential to write, though Abbot Thomas de la Mare required the nuns of St Mary de Pre to profess the rule in writing and about 1330 the nuns of Sopwell (another dependency of St Albans) were enjoined by the commissary of a previous Abbot to give their votes for a new Prioress in writing[823]. Nevertheless, strange as this may appear to many who are wont to credit the nuns with teaching reading, writing, arithmetic and a number of other accomplishments to their pupils, it is probable that some of the nuns of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were unable to write. The form of profession of three novices at Rusper in 1484 has survived and ends with the note "Et quelibet earum fecit tale signum crucis manu sua propria [Maltese cross]"[824] which might possibly imply that these nuns could not write their names. It is significant that the official business of convents, their annual accounts and any certificates which they might have to draw up, were done by professional clerks, or sometimes by their chaplains. Payment to the clerk who made the account occurs regularly in their account rolls; and the Visitations of Bishop Alnwick, to which reference will be made below, show that they were often completely at a loss, when writing had to be done and there was no clerk to do it.

Again it would seem clear that the nun who was fully qualified to "bear the burden of the choir" ought to be able to understand what she read, as well as to read it, and this raises at once the study of Latin in nunneries. Here again the nuns do not emerge very well from inquiry. Some there were no doubt who knew a little Latin, even in the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; but the more the inquirer studies contemporary records, the more he is driven to conclude that the majority of nuns during this period knew no Latin; they must have sung the offices by rote and though they may have understood, it is to be feared that the majority of them could not construe even a _Pater Noster_, an _Ave_ or a _Credo_. Let us take the evidence for the different centuries in turn. The language of visitation injunctions affords some clue to the knowledge of the nuns. It must be remembered that throughout the whole period Latin was always the learned and ecclesiastical language; and the communications addressed by a bishop to the monastic houses of his district, notices of visitation, mandates and injunctions would normally be in Latin; and when he was addressing monks they were in fact almost always in this tongue. After Latin the language next in estimation was French. This had been the universal language of the upper class and up till the middle of the fourteenth century it was still _par excellence_ the courtly tongue. But it was rapidly ceasing to be a language in general use and the turning-point is marked by a statute of 1362, which ordains that henceforth all pleas in the law courts shall be conducted in English, since the French language "is too unknown in the said realm." At the close of the century even the upper classes were ceasing to speak French and the English ambassadors to France in 1404 had to beseech the Grand Council of France to answer them in Latin, French being "like Hebrew" to them[825]. In the fifteenth century French was a mere educational adornment, which could be acquired by those who could get teachers.

The linguistic learning of English nuns at different periods was similar to that of the gentry outside the convent. It was not possible after the beginning of the fourteenth century (perhaps even during the last half of the thirteenth century) to assume in them that acquaintance with Latin, the learned and ecclesiastical tongue, which was generally assumed in their brothers the monks. Their learning was similar to that of contemporary laymen of their class, rather than of contemporary monks; and it went through exactly the same phases as did the coronation oath. About 1311 the King's oath occurs in Latin among the State documents, with the note appended that "if the King were illiterate" he was to swear in French, as Edward II did in 1307; but in 1399 when Henry IV claimed the throne, he claimed it in English, "In the name of the Fadir, Son and Holy Gost, I Henry of Lancastre, chalenge şis Rewme of Yngland"[826]. Similarly towards the close of the thirteenth century the English bishops begin to write to their nuns in French, because they are no longer "literate," in the sense of understanding Latin. Throughout this century the nuns are able to speak the courtly tongue; they use it for their petitions; and Chaucer's Prioress boasts it among her accomplishments at the close of the century,

And Frensh she spak ful faire and fetisly
After the scole of Stratford atte Bowe,
For French of Paris was to her unknowe.

But French, like Latin, is beginning to die away. It hardly ever occurs in petitions after the end of the century; and in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the Bishops almost invariably send their injunctions to the nuns in English. The majority of nuns during these two centuries would seem to have understood neither French nor Latin[827].

The evidence of the bishops' registers is worth considering in more detail. The bishops were genuinely anxious that the reforms set forth in their injunctions should be carried out by the nuns, and they were therefore at considerable pains to send the injunctions in language which the nuns could understand. There are few surviving injunctions belonging to the thirteenth century; and their evidence is missed. Archbishop Walter Giffard in 1268[828] and Archbishop Newark in 1298[829] write to the nuns of Swine in Latin, a language which they seem to have employed habitually when writing to nunneries. Archbishop Peckham sometimes writes to the Godstow nuns in Latin (1279) and sometimes in French (1284)[830]; it is to be noted that his French letter is of a more familiar type. Bishop Cantilupe of Hereford writes about 1277 to the nuns of Lymbrook in Latin, but his closing words raise considerable doubt as to whether an understanding of Latin can be generally assumed in nunneries at this period, for he says "you are to cause this our letter to be expounded to you several times in the year by your penancers, in the French or English tongue, whichever you know best"[831].

The evidence for the next century is even less ambiguous, for nearly all injunctions are in French and sometimes it is specifically mentioned that the nuns do not understand Latin. Bishop Norbury in 1331 translates his injunctions to Fairwell into French[832], because the nuns do not understand the original in Latin, and Bishop Robert de Stretton, writing to the same house in 1367, orders his decree to be "read and explained in the vulgar tongue by some literate ecclesiastical person on the day after its receipt"[833]. Bishop Stapeldon's interesting injunctions to Polsloe and Canonsleigh in 1319 are in French, but he seems to assume some knowledge of Latin in the nuns, for he orders that if it be necessary to break silence in places where silence is ordained, speech should be held in Latin, though not in grammatically constructed sentences, but in isolated words[834]. In 1311 Bishop Woodlock sending a set of Latin injunctions to the great Abbey of Romsey, announces that he has caused them to be translated into French, that the nuns may more easily understand them[835]; but Wykeham writes to them in Latin in 1387[836]. In the Lincoln diocese during this century the custom of the bishops varies. Gynewell writes to Heynings and to Godstow in French, but to Elstow in Latin[837]; Bokyngham writes to both Heynings and Elstow in Latin, but in ordering the nuns of Elstow in 1387 to keep silence at due times, he adds "Et vulgare gallicum addiscentes inter se eo utantur colloquentes"[838], a significant contrast to Stapeldon's recommendation of Latin in similar circumstances some seventy years earlier.

When we pass from the fourteenth to the fifteenth century it is clear that even French was becoming an unknown tongue to the nuns; nearly all injunctions are from this time forward written in English. At Redlingfield in 1427, the seven nuns and two novices were assembled in the chapter house, where the deputy visitor read his commission, first in Latin and then in the vulgar tongue, in order that the nuns might better understand it[839]. It is true that Bishops Flemyng and Gray send Latin injunctions to Elstow and Delapre Abbeys in 1422 and 1433 respectively; but Flemyng orders "that the premises, all and sundry, be published and read openly and in the vulgar mother tongue eight times a year"[840], and Gray writes that his injunctions are to be translated into the mother tongue and fastened in some conspicuous place[841]. The best evidence of all for the state of learning in nunneries during the first half of the fifteenth century is to be found in the invaluable records of Alnwick's visitations of the Lincoln diocese. Now it should be noted that when Alnwick visited houses of monks or canons, the sermon, which was generally preached on such occasions by one of the learned clerics who accompanied him, was invariably preached in Latin. Moreover, all injunctions sent to male houses after visitation were sent in Latin also. The assumption still was that these monasteries were homes of learning and acquainted with the language of learning. With the nunneries it was otherwise. The sermons were always preached "in the vulgar tongue" and the injunctions were always sent in English. It was not even pretended that the nuns would understand Latin. Moreover it is quite plain that when the preliminary notices of visitation had been sent in Latin, they had been very imperfectly understood; and that when it was necessary for a Prioress herself to draw up a certificate in writing, she was often quite unable to do so.

A few extracts from Alnwick's records will illustrate the complete ignorance of Latin and general illiteracy in these houses. At Ankerwyke (1441) it is noted:

And then when request had been made of the prioress by the reverend
father for the certificate of his mandate conveyed to the said
prioress for such visitation, the same prioress, instead of the
certificate delivered the original mandate itself to the said reverend
father, affirming that she did not understand the mandate itself, nor
had she any man of skill or other lettered person to instruct what she
should do in this behalf[842].

At Markyate (1442), when the same certificate was asked for, the Prioress

said that she had not a clerk who was equipped for writing such a
certificate, on the which head she submitted herself to my lord's
favour and then showed my lord in lieu of a certificate the original
mandate itself and the names of the nuns who had been summoned[843].

Similarly the Prioress of Fosse showed the original mandate in place of the certificate, and the Prioresses of St Michael's Stamford and Rothwell had failed to draw up the certificate[844]. The Prioress of Gokewell (1440) was said to be "exceedingly simple," all the temporalities of the house being ruled by a steward; she also declared that "she knows not how to compose a formal certificate, in that she has no lettered persons of her counsel who are skilled in this case," and she had been unable to find the document reciting the confirmation of her election[845]. The poor convent of Langley seems to have been reduced to complete confusion by the episcopal mandate. The Prioress

says that she received my lord's mandate on the feast of St Denis
last. Interrogated whether she has a certificate touching execution
thereof, she says no, because she did not understand it, nor did her
chaplain also, to whom she showed it; concerning the which she
surrendered herself to my lord's favour. Wherefore, when the original
mandate had been delivered to my lord and read through in the vulgar
tongue, my lord asked her if she had executed it. She says yes, as
regards the summons of herself and her sisters.... Interrogated if she
has the foundation charter of the house and who is the founder, she
says that Sir William Pantolfe founded the house, but because they are
unversed in letters they cannot understand the writings[846].

It is unnecessary to multiply the evidence of visitation records for the rest of the fifteenth and for the early sixteenth century: the general effect is to show us nuns who know only the English language[847]. Let us turn to the interesting corroborative evidence provided by those who were at pains to make translations for their use. It must be admitted that this evidence only confirms the suggestion made above that the nuns often did not understand the very services which they sang, let alone the Latin version of their rule, or the Latin charters by which they held their lands. That they often sang the services uncomprehendingly like parrots is actually stated by Sir David Lyndesay, the Scottish poet, in his _Dialog concerning the Monarche_ (1553). He apologises for writing in his native tongue, unlike those clerks, who wish to prohibit the people from reading even the scriptures for themselves, and adds

Tharefore I thynk one gret dirisioun
To heir thir Nunnis & Systeris nycht and day
Syngand and sayand psalmes and orisoun,
Nocht vnderstandyng quhat thay syng nor say,
Bot lyke one stirlyng or ane Papingay
Quhilk leirnit ar to speik be lang usage
Thame I compair to byrdis in ane cage[848].

Several translations of the rule of St Benet were made for the special use of nuns, who knew no Latin. A northern metrical version of the early fifteenth century explains

Monkes and als all leryd men
In Latin may it lyghtly ken,
And wytt tharby how they sall wyrk
To sarue god and haly kyrk.

Bott tyll women to mak it couth,
That leris no latyn in thar youth,
In inglis is it ordand here,
So that thay may it lyghtly lere[849].

About a century later, in 1517, Richard Fox, the Bishop of Winchester, published for the benefit of the nuns of his diocese another English translation of the Rule of St Benedict. In the preface he rehearses how nuns are professed under the Rule and are bound to read, learn and understand it:

and also after their profession they should not onely in them selfe
kepe observe execute and practise the said rule but also teche other
and heir sisters the same, and so moche that for the same intent they
daily rede and cause to be rede some parte of the sayd rule by one of
the sayd sisters amonges them selfe as well in their Chapiter House
after the redinge of the Martyrologe as some tyme in their Fraitur in
tyme of refections and collacions, at the which reding is always don
in the latin tonge, whereof they have no knowledge nor understandinge
but be utterly ignorant of the same, whereby they do not only lose
their tyme but also renne into the evident danger and perill of the
perdicion of their soules.

He adds that in order to save the souls of his nuns, and in particular to ensure that novices understand the Rule before profession,

so that none of them shall nowe afterward probably say that she wyste
not what she professed, as we knowe by experience that some of them
have sayd in tyme passed, for these causes at thinstant requeste of
our ryght dere and well-beloved daughters in oure Lorde Jhesu, the
Abbasses of the Monasteries of Rumsay, Wharwel, Seynt Maries within
the Citie of Winchester and the Prioresses of Wintnay, our right
religious diocesans, we have translated the sayd rule unto our moders
tonge; comune, playne rounde Englishe, easy and redy to be understande
by the sayde devoute religiouse women[850].

The inconvenience of not being able to read the foundation charter and other legal documents of the house, as confessed by the Prioress of Langley at Alnwick's visitation, was very great; and about 1460 Alice Henley, the Abbess of Godstow, caused a translation to be made of the Latin register, in which were copied all the charters of her abbey. The translator's preface to the work is interesting:

The wyseman tawht hys chyld gladly to rede bokys and hem well
vndurstonde for, in defaute of vndyrstondyng, is ofttymes caused
neclygence, hurte, harme and hynderaunce, as experyence prevyth in
many a place. And for as muche as women of relygyone in redynge bokys
of latyn, byn excusyd of grete vndurstandyng, where it is not her
modyr tonge; Therfore, how be hyt that they wolde rede her bokys of
remembraunce of her munymentys wryte in latyn, for defaute of
undurstondyng they toke ofte tymes grete hurt and hyndraunce; and,
what for defaute of trewe lernyd men that all tymes be not redy hem to
teche and counsayl, and feere also and drede to shewe her euydence
opynly (that oftyntyme hath causyd repentaunce). Hyt wer ryht
necessary, as hyt semyth to the undyrstondyng of suche relygyous
women, that they myght haue, out of her latyn bokys, sum wrytynge in
her modyr tonge, wher-by they might haue bettyr knowlyge of her
munymentys and more clerely yeue informacyon to her serauntys, rent
gedurarys, and receyuowrs, in the absent of her lernyd councell.
Wher-fore, a poore brodur and welwyller ... to the goode Abbas of
Godstowe, Dame Alice henley, and to all her couent, the whych byn for
the more party in Englyssh bokys well y-lernyd, hertyly desyryng the
worship, profyt and welfare of that deuoute place, that, for lak of
vndurstondyng her munymentys sholde in no damage of her lyflod
huraftur fallyn, In the worship of our lady and seynt John Baptist
patron of thys seyd monastery, the sentence for the more partyre of
her munymentys conteynd in the boke of her regystr in latyn, aftyr the
same forme and ordyr of the seyd boke, hath purposyd with goddys grace
to make, aftur hys conceyt, fro latyn into Englyssh, sentencyosly, as
foloweth thys symple translacion[851].

It will be noticed that the benevolent translator of this Godstow register says that the nuns are for the most part well learned in English books. The same impression is given by the translations which were made for the nuns of Syon. The most famous of these is the _Myroure of Oure Ladye_, written for the nuns by Thomas Gascoigne (1403-58) and first printed in 1530. This book contains a devotional treatise on divine service, with a translation and explanation of the "Hours" and "Masses" of our Lady, as they were used at Syon. The author explains his purpose thus:

Forasmoche as many of you, though ye can synge and rede, yet ye can
not se what the meanynge therof ys; therefore to the onely worshyp
and praysyng of oure lorde Jesu chryste and of hys moste mercyfull
mother oure lady and to the gostly comforte and profyte of youre
soules, I haue drawen youre legende and all youre seruyce in to
Englyshe, that ye shulde se by the vnderstondyng therof, how worthy
and holy praysynge of oure gloryous Lady is contente therin & the more
deuoutely and knowyngly synge yt & rede yt and say yt to her worshyp.

He adds that he has explained the various parts of the divine service for "symple soulles to vnderstonde," but that he has translated few psalms, "for ye may haue them of Rycharde hampoules drawynge, and out of Englysshe bibles, if ye haue lysence therto"[852].

From a passage in the _Myroure_ it appears that the sisters were accustomed to spend some of their time in reading and advice is given to them as to the sort of books to read and the way in which to profit by them; from this it is quite clear that secular learning had no place among them, their reading being confined to works of ghostly edification[853]. It was their ignorance of Latin which caused the insertion of English rubrics in the Latin _Processionale_ of the house and which inspired Richard Whytford, one of the brothers, to translate the splendid _Martilogium_, which is now in the British Museum, "for the edificacyon of certayn religyous persones unlerned that dayly dyd rede the same martiloge in Latyn, not understandynge what they redde"; his translation was printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1526[854]. Gascoigne's mention of English bibles is interesting. Miss Deanesly, in her study of _The Lollard Bible_, has shown that "it is likely that English nuns were the most numerous orthodox users of English bibles between 1408 and 1526," but that the evidence for this use is slight and drawn almost entirely from Syon and Barking, two large and important houses[855]. Her conclusion is that

it was not the case that the best instructed nuns used Latin Bibles
and the most ignorant English ones: but that the best instructed nuns
were allowed to use English translations, perhaps by themselves,
perhaps to help in the understanding of the Vulgate, while the smaller
nunneries and least instructed nuns almost certainly did not have them
at all.

This goes to confirm the conclusion that even in the greatest houses, where the nuns were drawn from the highest social classes and might be supposed to be best educated, the knowledge of Latin was dying out.

Other occupations besides reading filled the working hours of the nuns and of these spinning and needlework were the most important. Most women in the middle ages possessed the art of spinning and Aubrey's Old Jacques may have remembered aright how "he saw from his house the nuns of the priory (Kington St Michael) come forth into the nymph-hay with their rocks and wheels to spin," though his memory misled him sorely as to the number of these ladies. Sometimes a visitation report gives us a glimpse of the nuns at work: at Easebourne in 1441 the nuns say that the Prioress "compels her sisters to work continually like hired workwomen and they receive nothing whatever for their own use from their work, but the prioress takes the whole profit"[856] and at Catesby in the following year a young nun complains that the Prioress "setts her to make beds, to sewing and spinning and other tasks"[857]. Nevertheless it does not seem that the nuns were in the habit of spinning the wool and flax for their own and their servants' clothes and account rolls often contain payments made to hired spinsters, as well as to fullers and weavers.

It is more probable that they busied themselves with needlework and embroidery, which were the usual occupations of ladies of gentle birth[858]. Very few traces have unfortunately survived of the work of English nuns. In earlier centuries English needlework had been famous and the nuns had been pre-eminent in the making of richly embroidered vestments. In the thirteenth century, too, English embroidery far surpassed that made in other countries and it has been conjectured that "the most famous embroidered vestments now preserved in various places in Italy are the handiwork of English embroiderers between 1250 and 1300 though their authorship is not as a rule recognised by their present possessors"[859]. Some of these may have been made by nuns; it is thought that the famous Syon cope, for long in the possession of the nuns of Syon, may have been made in a thirteenth century convent in the neighbourhood of Coventry; but such examples of medieval embroidery as have survived usually bear no trace of their origin; since a vestment cannot be signed like a book and it must be remembered that there was a large class of professional "embroideresses" in the country.

Some, however, of the splendid vestments and altar cloths possessed by the richer nunneries were probably the work of the nuns. At Langley in 1485 there were, among other rich pieces of embroidery

iiij fronteys (altar frontals) of grene damaske powdered with swanys
and egyls, ... iiij fronteys of blake powdered with swanys and rosys,
... a vestment of blew silke brodyt complete with all yt longyth to
hyt, a vestment of grene velwett complete with a crucifixe of silver
and gylte apon ye amys, a complete vestiment of red velwet, a
vestiment of swede (sewed) work complete, a vestiment of blake damaske
brodyrt with rosys and sterys, a complete vestiment of white brodyrte
with rede trewlyps (_true-love knots_), ... j gret cloth (banner) of
rede powderyd with herts heds and boturfleys ... a large coverlet of
red and blew with rosys and crossys, a tapett of ye same; j large
coverlett of rede and yowlowe with flowrs de luce, a tapett of ye
same; a large coverlett of blew and better blew with swanys and coks,
a tapett of ye same; a coverlett of grene and yowlowe with borys and
draguyns, a tapett of ye same; ... a coverlett of ostrych fydyrs and
crounyd Emmys (_monogram of the Blessed Virgin Mary_); a coverlet of
grene and yowlowe with vynys and rosys; a coverlet of grene and
yowlowe with lylys and swannys; a coverlet of blew and white whyl
knotts (_wheel knots_) and rosys; a coverlet of red and white with
traylest (_trellis_) and Bryds; a coverlet of red and blew with
sterrys and white rosys in mydste; a coverlet of yowlowe and grene
with egyles and emmys; v coveryngs of bedds, yat hys to sey A coveryng
of red saye, a coveryng of panes (_stripes_) of red and grene and
white saye, a coveryng of red and blake saye, a coveryng of red and
blew poudyrd with white esses and sterys, a blew saye with a red
dragne[860].

Many of these embroideries and tapestries were doubtless legacies or gifts; but it is impossible not to picture the white fingers of the nuns at work on swans and roses, harts' heads and butterflies, stars and true-love knots. One may deduce that the nuns of Yorkshire, at least, busied themselves in these pursuits from an injunction sent to Nunkeeling, Yedingham and Wykeham in 1314 that no nun should absent herself from divine service "on account of being occupied with silk work" (_propter occupacionem operis de serico_)[861].

Reference to the sale of embroidery by nuns is surprisingly rare in account rolls. The household roll of the Countess of Leicester in 1265 contains an item, "Paid to the nuns of Wintney, for one cope to be made for the use of Brother J. Angelus by the gift of the Countess at Panham 10_d._"[862], which small sum must have been a part payment in advance, perhaps towards the purchase of materials; the nuns of Gracedieu, too, sold a cope to a neighbouring rector for L10, early in the fifteenth century[863], and on one occasion the cellaress of Barking derived a part of her income for the year from the sale of a cope[864], but search has revealed no further instances. The nuns also probably made little presents for their friends, such as purses (though the Gracedieu nuns always bought the purses which they gave to their bailiff, to Lady Beaumont, or to other visitors) and the so-called "blood-bands." In an age when bleeding was the most common treatment for almost every illness and when monks, in particular, were regularly bled several times a year, these little bandages were common presents, being sometimes made of silk. The author of the _Ancren Riwle_ thus bade his anchoresses "make no purses to gain friends therewith, not blodbendes of silk, but shape and sew and mend church vestments and poor people's clothes"[865]. The nuns of the diocese of Rouen in the mid-thirteenth century were accustomed to knit or embroider silken purses, tassels, cushions or needlecases for sale or as gifts, and Archbishop Eudes Rigaud was continually forbidding them to do any silk work except for church ornament[866]. There is some reason to think that the nuns, then as now, sometimes eked out their income by doing fine needlework for ladies of the world, though there is no mention of it in nunnery accounts, or indeed in any English records. Among the correspondence of Lady Lisle in the first half of the sixteenth century, however, are several letters to and from a certain Antoinette de Favences at Dunkirk, who would appear to have been a nun, for she signs herself _sister_ Antoinette de Favences and is addressed by Lady Lisle as _Madame_ and _Dame_. This woman was employed to make caps and coifs for Lady Lisle's family and friends and there is much correspondence between them as to night-caps which are too wide, lozenge-work and such matters; in one letter Lady Lisle speaks of sending "16 rozimbos and 2 half angels of Flanders, a Carolus of gold," in payment for the caps[867].

What other accomplishments the nuns may have possessed we do not know. They were possibly skilled in herbs and in the more simple forms of home medicine and surgery, for it was the function of the lady of the manor to know something of these things, though doctors were available (for nuns as well as for lay folk) in more serious illnesses[868]. They doubtless bled each other as did the monks, else how was the wicked Prioress of Kirklees, who slew Robin Hood, so skilled?:

Doun then came Dame Prioress
Doun she came in that ilk,
With a pair of blood-irons in her hand,
Were wrapped all in silk....

She laid the blood-irons to Robin's vein
Alack the more pitye!
And pierc'd the vein and let out the blood
That full red was to see.

There is an occasional brief reference to the recreation of nuns in their "seynys" in visitations[869], but the precaution was less necessary and less frequent than it was in houses of monks[870]. No doubt, also, the nuns sometimes nursed their boarders, some of whom must have been old and ailing; wills are occasionally dated from nunneries[871]. The nuns of Romsey had a hospital attached to the house, in which were received as sisters any parents and relatives of the nuns, who were poor and ill[872], but this does not prove that the nuns nursed them, and references in visitation reports show that even sick nuns were often looked after by lay servants in the infirmary, or if permanently disabled, occupied a separate room, with a separate maid to attend them. It is not likely that the nuns left their convents, save very occasionally, to undertake sick-nursing; this would have been against the spirit of their rule, for their main business was not (as was that of the sisters who looked after spitals) to care for the sick, but to live enclosed in their houses, following the prescribed round of church services. It is however of interest that the will of Sir Roger Salwayn, knight of York (1420) contains this legacy: "Also I will that the Nunne that kepid me in my seknes haue ij nobles, and that ther be gif into the hous that she wonnes in xxs, for to syng and pray for me"[873]. Nuns may have emerged sometimes to nurse friends and relatives, whose sick-beds they were always allowed to attend; but there is no documentary evidence for the belief of modern writers, who would fain turn the nun into a district visitor, smoothing the pillows of all who ailed in her native village.

These then were the educational attainments of the English nuns in the later middle ages: reading and singing the services of the church, sometimes but not always writing, Latin very rarely after the thirteenth century, French very rarely after the fourteenth century; needlework and embroidery; and perhaps that elementary knowledge of physic, which was the possession of most ladies of their class. It was, in fact, very little more than the education possessed by laywomen of the same social rank outside and there is little trace of anything approaching scholarship. The study of the education of the nuns during this period leads naturally to one of the most vexed questions in the field of monastic history, the extent to which the nunneries acted as girls' schools. There is no doubt that every nunnery was prepared to educate young girls who entered in order to take the veil; if the nunnery were fairly large these _scolae internae_ probably included several novices at a time. At Ankerwyke in 1441 three young nuns complained that they had no governess to instruct them in "reading, song and religious observance," and mention is made of three other sisters "of tender age and slender discretion, seeing that the eldest of them is not more than thirteen years of age"; the Bishop appointed a nun to be their teacher, "enjoining her to perform the charge laid upon her and to instruct them in good manners"[874]. Similarly at Thetford, where there were three novices in 1526, the Bishop found "non habent eruditricem"[875]. At the larger houses, such as Romsey, the _magistra noviciarum_ was a regular obedientiary[876].

PAGE FROM _LA SAINTE ABBAYE_

(In the bottom left hand corner the mistress of the novices, with birch in hand, is instructing two young novices; in the bottom right hand corner the abbess and a nun are at prayer.)]

The vexed question, however, does not concern these schools for novices. It has been the custom, not only of writers on monasticism but also of the man in the street, to assume that the nunneries were almost solely responsible for the education of girls in the middle ages. There was little evidence for the assumption, but it was always made, and until the combined attack made upon it in 1910 by Mr Coulton and Mr Leach it was unchallenged[877]. With the publication of bishops' registers, however, we have something more definite to go upon and it is now possible to come to some sort of conclusion, based on the evidence of visitation injunctions, account rolls and other miscellaneous sources. This conclusion may be summarised as follows. It was a fairly general custom among the English nuns, in the two and a half centuries before the Dissolution, to receive children for education. But there are four limitations, within which and only within which, this conclusion is true. _First_, that by no means all nunneries took children and those which did take them seldom had large schools; _secondly_, that the children who thus received a convent education were drawn exclusively from the upper and the wealthy middle classes, from people, that is to say, of birth and wealth; _thirdly_, that the practice was a purely financial expedient on the part of the nuns, at first forbidden, afterwards restricted and always frowned upon by the bishops, who regarded it as subversive of discipline; and _fourthly_, that the education which the children received from the nuns, so far as book-learning as distinct from nurture is concerned, was extremely exiguous. In fine, though nunneries did act as girls' schools, they certainly did not educate more than a small proportion even of the children of the upper classes, and the education which they gave them was limited by their own limitations[878].