Chapter VI: Education

The education of the nuns:
Learning of Anglo-Saxon nuns, and of German nuns at a later
date 237
Little learning in English nunneries during the later middle
ages 238
Nunnery libraries and nuns' books 240
Education of nuns 244
Latin in nunneries 246
Translations for the use of nuns 251
Needlework 255
Simple forms of medicine 258

Nunneries as schools for children:
The education of novices 260
The education of secular children 261
Boys 263
Limitations:
(1) not all nunneries took children 264
(2) only gentlefolk taken 265
(3) disapproval and restriction of nunnery schools by the
ecclesiastical authorities 270
What did the nuns teach? 274
Life of school children in nunneries 279
'Piety and breeding' 281

CHAPTER VII. ROUTINE AND REACTION

Division of the day by the Benedictine Rule 285

The Benedictine combination of prayer, study and labour breaks
down 288

Dead routine 289

The reaction from routine 290
(1) carelessness in singing the services 291
(2) _accidia_ 293
(3) quarrels 297
(4) gay clothes 303
(5) pet animals 305
(6) dancing, minstrels and merry-making 309

CHAPTER VIII. PRIVATE LIFE AND PRIVATE PROPERTY

The monastic obligation to (1) communal life, (2) personal
poverty 315

The breakdown of communal life: division into _familiae_ with
private rooms 316

The breakdown of personal poverty 322
(1) the annual _peculium_ 323
(2) money pittances 323
(3) gifts in money and kind 324
(4) legacies 325
(5) proceeds of a nun's own labour 330

Private life and private property in the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries 331

Attitude of ecclesiastical authorities 336