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Chapter 1 - ‘Miserere, meidens’

Abbesses and Nuns

from I - Patrons, Owners, Writers, and Readers in England and Europe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2023

By
Elaine Treharne
Edited by
Corinne Saunders  and
Diane Watt
Corinne Saunders
Affiliation:
Durham University
Diane Watt
Affiliation:
University of Surrey
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Summary

This study of medieval nuns and abbesses as scribes focuses on manuscript evidence from post-Conquest England, especially in relation to changing institutional ownership. Looking initially at an early-twelfth-century legal manuscript from St Paulߣs London (Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 383), the essay draws our attention to short texts that were subsequently added to it by one ߢMatildaߣ for the benefit of a female audience. Similar additions are made to another manuscript (London, British Library, Cotton MS Vespasian D. xiv) which contains homilies and saintsߣ lives, this time by an ߢancillaߣ or nun, who inserted prayers that she had authored herself sometime in the late twelfth century. These findings are important because there is very little proof of womenߣs scribal activity in medieval England: hitherto scholars have assumed that manuscripts are written and glossed by men.

Keywords

medieval womenmedieval womenߣs writingliterary culturescribesconventsnunsearly medieval England
Type
Chapter
Information
Women and Medieval Literary Culture
From the Early Middle Ages to the Fifteenth Century
 , pp. 27 - 49
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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References

Further Reading

Beach, Alison I. (2004). Women as Scribes: Book Production and Monastic Reform in Twelfth-Century Bavaria, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Blanton, Virginia, O’Mara, Veronica, and Stoop, Patricia, eds. (2015). Nuns’ Literacies in Medieval Europe: The Kansas City Dialogue, Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts 27, Turnhout: Brepols.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, Michelle P. (2001). Female Book Ownership and Production in Anglo-Saxon England: The Evidence of the Ninth-Century Prayerbooks. In Lexis and Texts in Early English: Papers in Honour of Jane Roberts, ed. Kay, Christian J. and Sylvester, Louise M.. Amsterdam: Brepols, 45–68.Google Scholar
Conrad-O’Briain, Helen (2008). Were Women Able to Read and Write in the Middle Ages? In Misconceptions About the Middle Ages, ed. Harris, Stephen and Grigsby, Bryon L.. New York: Routledge, 236–9.Google Scholar
Haines-Eitzen, Kim (2012). The Gendered Palimpsest: Women, Writing, and Representation in Early Christianity, Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Radini, A., Tromp, M., Beach, A., et al. (2019). Medieval Women’s Early Involvement in Manuscript Production Suggested by Lapis Lazuli Identification in Dental Calculus. Scientific Advances 1, 1–8.Google Scholar
Robinson, Pamela R., and Zim, Rivkah, eds. (1997). Of the Making of Books: Medieval Manuscripts, their Scribes and Reader: Essays Presented to M. B. Parkes, Aldershot: Scolar Press.Google Scholar
Smith, Lesley, and Taylor, Jane H. M., eds. (1995). Women, the Book, and the Godly: Selected Proceedings of the St Hilda’s Conference, Woodbridge: D. S. Brewer.Google Scholar
Thompson, Sally (1991). Women Religious: The Founding of English Nunneries after the Norman Conquest, Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Watt, Diane (2020). Women, Writing and Religion in England and Beyond, 650–1100, Studies in Early Medieval History, London: Bloomsbury Academic.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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