What Nuns Read: The State of the Question

Summary

In 1995 I had occasion to publish a study of books and libraries in the nunneries of medieval England. It was entitled What Nuns Read: Books and Libraries in Medieval English Nunneries [hereafter WNR] and was divided into two parts. The second part comprised a list of all those books, manuscript and printed, surviving and not surviving, which (at the time) had been traced to English nunneries. The first part contained a summary of the second part, and also (especially in Chapter 3) a discussion of what could be learned from these materials with regard to the learning and literacy of English nuns in the Middle Ages, especially the later Middle Ages. The Anglo-Saxon nuns – different women in a different world – were not my concern. My conclusion, which now needs some slight amendment, was that

The old and well-worn adages – ‘Nuns’ libraries were always small’, ‘Only Anglo- Saxon nuns had any pretensions to learning’, ‘Nuns in the later Middle Ages could not read Latin’, and so on – require some revision; and although it would obviously be just as silly to state the direct opposite – ‘Nuns’ libraries were always large’, and so forth – it is possible (I would say probable) that what has long been accepted as unquestioned and canonical may not be quite true. I am not, therefore, calling for radical revision with regard to the scholarly attainments of women religious in the later Middle Ages, but only arguing for a modicum of honest reassessment.

WNR was not, of course, the first book to deal at length with female religious in England. Eileen Power's Medieval English Nunneries had been published in 1922 and still remains an invaluable repository of information. Nowadays, naturally, we must read it with caution, for Miss Power was too deeply influenced by the work of George G. Coulton, whose views were far from unbiased, and her main sources – primarily the series of episcopal Visitations edited by A. Hamilton Thompson – were somewhat too limited, but the book remains of interest and use. The author could also write English, which, these days, is not a common accomplishment.