Medieval English nunneries c. 1275 to 1535 / by Eileen Power.

  • Power, Eileen, 1889-1940.
Date:
1922
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Medieval English nunneries c. 1275 to 1535 / by Eileen Power. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    of recreation or convalescence, where sick nuns could be sent for a change. For instance there were six nuns of Montivilliers at St Paul by Rouen in 1263 and it was noted that there ought to be four, but that two others were there because of illness; the nuns had a lay boarder staying with them and two servants; their income—as assessed for the tithe—was ^140 and their debts amounted to £40; they complained that the king’s foresters oppressed them by frequently dining at their expense and by unjustly molesting their servants in the forest, although they had usage (i.e. rights of hunting, gathering wood, etc.) there; the Archbishop had no fault to find with them except that they did not sing the service cum nota, because there were so few of them, and that they had only a single mass, the parochial mass, daily1. It is evident that a close connection was supposed to be kept up between the mother house and the cell, for in 1260 the Abbess of Montivilliers had been ordered to visit them diligently2; and in 1258 Rigaud noted, ‘‘Alice prioress of Saint Paul by Rouen was presented to us by the prioress of Montivilliers, she having been elected by the convent of the said place3. At his first visitation of St Amand in 1248 the Archbishop found that they had a single priory at Saane, where there are four nuns4. In 1261 he ordered the Abbess to visit these nuns at Saane more often than had been her custom and at subsequent visitations he noted the number of nuns (varying from four to five) in residence there5. Ste Austreberte, the daughter cell of St Saens, was hardly more than a grange with a chapel attached. In 1254 Rigaud found that one nun was living there alone and ordered that another should be sent to join her; in 1257 there was still a single inmate, but in 1258 and 1259 the number had been raised to two6. In 1260 the Archbishop decided to recall the inmates to St Saens: Because truly the place of St Austrebert is very slenderly endowed with rents, so that these two nuns cannot live there conveniently and decently, we ordered the prioress to call them back and forbade her henceforth to send any more thither, on account of the danger7. But now7 complications arose. Evidently the dependent house had been used for the purpose of getting rid of a quarrelsome nun, for in 1261 Rigaud found that the Prioress had not obeyed his order to re¬ call the two nuns, “because, as she says, Marie d’Eu (de Augo) one of these two, was a scold and she feared lest she should upset the whole convent if she returned 8. The order was repeated and was apparently obeyed as far as the ill-tempered Marie was concerned (although there were still two nuns at Ste Austreberte in 1264 9), for in 1265 the Arch¬ bishop found the whole convent “living in discord and in disorder, especially the prioress and Marie d’Eu 10; he would perhaps have done better to leave her where she was. An echo of her regime at 1 P- 457- 3 P- 316. 6 pp. 187, 273, 310, 338. 2 p- 384* 4 p. 16. 5 pp. 401, 456, 471, 512. 7 p. 380. 9 10