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Expressing Selfhood in the Convent: Anonymous Chronicling and Subsumed Autobiography

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 April 2015

Victoria van Hyning
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Abstract

Convent autobiography took many forms. We find it in conversion narratives and vidas por mandato, as well as in less obvious places, including chronicles, trans-lations, poetry, saints’ lives and the myriad forms of governance documents that structured convent life. Sometimes nuns wrote under their own names, but frequently they composed anonymously. How do we locate autobiographical acts within anonymous texts? This article proposes a new genre called ‘subsumed autobiography’ to describe anonymously composed texts whose authors shape and influence their work around themes that grow out of their personal interests, theology, politics and so on. It analyses the authorial strategies deployed by the first chronicler of the English Augustinian community of St Monica's (Louvain), and pays particular attention to the themes of Catholic education, Latinity, and the legacy of Sir Thomas More. This work is predicated on an earlier article in which the anonymous author of the chronicle was identified as Mary Copley (1591/2–1669).

Type
Research Article
Information
British Catholic History , Volume 32 , Issue 2 , October 2014 , pp. 219 - 234
Copyright
Copyright © Catholic Record Society 2014

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References

Notes

1 ‘The Three Lives of the Vida: The uses of Convent Autobiography’, in Women, Texts and Authority in the Early Modern Spanish World, ed. by Vincente, Marta V. and Corteguera, Luis R. (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), pp. 107–125 Google Scholar, p. 107.

2 Ibid.

3 For several excellent examples of early modern English Carmelite nuns’ responses to and appropriations of Teresa's self-writing, see Hallett, Nicky, Lives of Spirit: English Carmelite Self-Writing of the Early Modern Period, The Early Modern Englishwoman: 1500–1750 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007) esp. pp. 8–10 Google Scholar, 26–29 and 35–36. This volume also offers insightful commen-tary into nuns’ auto/biographical writing techniques. I am very much indebted to Hallett's work on convent autobiography, and am grateful to her for her guidance and supervision during my doctoral work.

4 My doctoral thesis examines autobiography in most of these genres. See ‘Cloistered Voices: English Nuns in Exile, 1550–1800’ (Sheffield, June 2014), http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/6308/.

5 Further information about St Monica's can be found in the ‘Convent notes’ on the Who were the nuns? Project website: http://wwtn.history.qmul.ac.uk/about/convent-notes/index.html

6 ‘Naming Names: Chroniclers, Scribes and Editors of St Monica's Convent, Louvain, 1630–1906’, in English Convents in Exile, 1600–1800: Communities, Culture and Identity, ed. by Bowden, Caroline and Kelly, James (Farnham, England: Ashgate, 2013), pp. 87–108.Google Scholar

7 All nuns are identified by their unique ID from the Who were the nuns? Project: http://wwtn.history.qmul.ac.uk/index.html.

8 ‘Abbess Neville's Annals of Five Communities of English Benedictine Nuns in Flanders 1598–1687’, in Miscellanea V, ed. by Rumsey, M.J. CRS (London: W.H. Smith & Son, 1909), pp. 1–72 Google Scholar (p. 60).

9 See English Convents In Exile, 1600–1800, gen. ed. by Bowden, Caroline, 6 vols (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2012–2013)Google Scholar, especially the ‘rouen Chronicle’, ed. by Bowden, C. in Vol. 1: History Writing (2012)Google Scholar; and the English Carmelite ‘Annals’, ed. by Daemen-de-Gelder, Katrien, in Vol 4: Life Writing II (2013)Google Scholar. See Lowe, K. for examples of Italian chronicle writing, Nuns’Chronicles and Convent Culture in Renaissance and Counter-Reformation Italy (Cambridge: CUP, 2003).Google Scholar

10 For an incisive discussion of anonymous writing by English nuns in exile see Hallett, Nicky, ‘Shakespeare's Sisters: Anon and the Authors in Early Modern Convents’, in The English Convents in Exile, 1600–1800: Communities, Culture and Identity, ed. by Bowden, Caroline and Kelly, James, Christendom, Catholic, 1300–1700 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), pp. 139–158 Google Scholar and Lives of Spirit (2007).

11 I first proposed this subgenre in my doctoral thesis, which includes examples of subsumed autobiography from St Monica's and Nazareth chronicles, devotional guidance literature and governance documents.

12 ‘The Autobiographical Contract’, in French Literary Theory Today, ed. and trans. by Todorov, T. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 193–202 Google Scholar (p. 193).

13 The Forms of Autobiography: Episodes in the History of a Literary Genre (London: Yale University Press, 1980), p. xiii.Google Scholar

14 Jelinek, Estelle C., The Tradition of Women's Autobiography: From Antiquity to the Present (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1986)Google Scholar; Dragstra, H., Ottway, S., and Wilcox, H., eds., Betraying OurSelves: Forms of Self-Presentation in Early Modern English Texts (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2000).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15 Genre and Women's Life Writing in Early Modern England, (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), p. 1.Google Scholar

16 ‘Autobiography’, in Cambridge Companion of Early Modern Women's Writing, ed. by Knoppers, Laura Lunger (Cambridge: CUP, 2009), pp. 194–207 CrossRefGoogle Scholar (p. 207).

17 Dragstra, et al, Betraying Our Selves (2000), p. 3.Google Scholar

18 ‘Louvain Chronicle’ quotations are taken from Douai Abbey Archive, reading, Box W.M.L.C., MS C2 (hereafter MS C2); and Hamilton, Adam, [and Lambert, Alphonse] eds, The Chronicle of the English Augustinian Canonesses Regular of the Lateran, at St. Monica's in Louvain (now at St. Augustine's Priory, Newton Abbot, Devon) 1548–1644, 2 vols (Edinburgh: Sands & Co. Ltd., 1904–1906)Google Scholar, I: 1548–1626, II: 1625–1644 (hereafter Chronicle). MS C2, pp. 139–140; Hamilton [and Lambert], Vol. I, p. 122.

19 ‘Women Catholics and Latin Culture’ in Catholic Culture in Early Modern England, ed. by Corthell, Ronald et al (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007), pp. 52–71 Google Scholar (p. 59).

20 More's biological daughters were Margaret More roper (1505–1544; ODNB), Elizabeth (1506–1564) and Cecily More (1507–d. unknown). Elizabeth and Cecily do not have their own ODNB entries. Biographical details taken from M. Wood, ‘The Family and Descendants of Sir Thomas More’, <http://www.thomasmorestudies.org/docs/DescendantsJohn.pdf> [accessed 3 December 2013; first published on 18 November 2008].

21 over the last three decades some scholars have criticized More for circumscribing his daugh-ters’ learning to fit within a Christian moral framework that explicitly limited their authorial power on the basis of their gender. Annabel Patterson provides a useful overview of this strand of the scholarship in Reading Holinshed's Chronicles (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), chap. 10 ‘Women’, pp. 215–233 wherein she summarizes the positions of several feminist scholars with regards to the More school. She writes of Woodbridge's, Linda Women and the English Renaissance: Literature and the Nature of Womankind, 1540–1620 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984)Google Scholar ‘that the feminist tendencies of the early humanists, More, Colet, Vives and others had been “overestimated” (p. 16)’ and Lisa Jardine's assertion that More's ‘real goal was female “docility and obedience”.’ (Still Harping on Daughters). See Patterson, p. 315, n. 4. Jaime Goodrich has recently observed that More roper's ‘apparent acquiescence to More's patriarchal control has discomfited feminist critics, who tend to privilege early modern women who seem to defy or subvert patriarchy,’ in ‘Thomas More and Margaret More roper: A Case for rethinking Women's Participation in the Early Modern Public Sphere’, The Sixteenth Century Journal, 39 (2009), 1021–1040 (p. 1022). She offers an alternative reading, arguing that More roper should not be excluded from the canon of important women writers even though her ‘life and her literary work are inseparable from her father's influence’ (p. 1022).

22 More, The Correspondence of Sir Thomas More, ed. by Rogers, E.F. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1947)Google Scholar; and More, T., Workes of Syr Thomas More, ed. by Rastell, William (London: J. Cawod, J. Waly, and R. Tottell, 1557)Google Scholar.

23 Study for the Family Portrait of Thomas More’, described as: ‘Pen and brush in black on top of chalk sketch, 38.9 × 52.4 cm. Kupferstichkabinett, Öffentliche Kunstsammlung, Basel‘(c.1527) in <http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hans_Holbein_d._J._-_Study_for_the_Family_Portrait_of_Sir_Thomas_More_-_WGA11595.jpg> Margaret Giggs Clement is the second figure on the left.

24 Elizabeth Shirley professed in 1596, died 1641 (LA229; ODNB). She authored ‘The Life of our reverent ould Mother Margrit Clement’ in 1626. A non-autograph copy of the ‘Life’ with corrections in Shirley's hand is held at Bruges, Nazareth MS A.III St Ursula, Arch.CXI. The text has been edited by Hallett, in English Convents in Exile, 1600–1800, gen. ed. Bowden, C., Vol 3: Life Writing LI (Pickering & Chatto, 2012), Vol. 3, pp. 1–34.Google Scholar

25 Nazareth, MS ‘Life’, pp. 4–5; Shirley, ‘Life’, ECIE, 1600–1800, ed. by Hallett, III, pp. 6–7, emphasis added. A discipline is a small whip made of rope, leather or metal which an individual would use against themselves during the act of penance and prayer. A haircloth is a coarse vest worn against the skin as an act of penance. It was often worn secretly beneath clothing, keeping the act of penance private.

26 MS C2, p. 6; Chronicle, ed. by Hamilton [and Lambert], Vol. I, p. 26.

27 MS C2, p. 123, Chronicle, ed. by Hamilton [and Lambert], Vol. I, p. 112.

28 Loomie, A.J. S.J., ‘Richard Stanyhurst in Spain: Two Unknown Letters of August 1593’, Huntington Library Quarterly 28 (1965), 145–155 CrossRefGoogle Scholar (p. 152). The letters are held at the royal English College Archive, Valladolid.

29 MS C2, p. 322; Chronicle, ed. by Hamilton [and Lambert], Vol. II, p. 47. NB, Hubbard's WWTN? entry is currently incorrect stating her given name as well as her name in religion as Paula, whereas the chronicle states that Elizabeth was her given name.

30 MS C2, p. 167; Chronicle, ed. by Hamilton [and Lambert], Vol. I, p. 163. The Latin quotations are from Psalm 65.12 and Psalm 44.3.

31 MS C2, p. 127; Chronicle, ed. by Hamilton [and Lambert], Vol. I, p. 114, emphasis added. It is unclear from the narrative when or why Mary Copley went out of the Low Countries and into England.

32 We can assume that Copley was known to her fellow nuns because the opening lines of the chronicle state that she composed it by interviewing them and writing their stories down.

33 For discussion of the Chronicles’ contributors and sources see the new interdisciplinary collection Oxford Handbook of Holinshed's Chronicles, ed. by Kewes, Paulina, Ian W. Archer and Felicity Heal (Oxford: OUP, 2013)Google Scholar, esp. Henry Summerson, ‘Sources: 1577’, pp. 61–76, and ‘Sources: 1587’, pp. 77–92; and Marshall, Peter, ‘religious Ideology’, pp. 411–426.Google Scholar

34 On the political agenda of the Aeneis see Loeber, Rolf and Stouthamer-Loeber, Magda, ‘Pale Martyr: Politicizing richard Stanihurst's Aeneis ’ in Dublin and the Pale in the Renaissance, c.1540–1660 ed. by Potterton, Michael and Herron, Thomas (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2011), pp. 291–318.Google Scholar

35 Stanyhurst, Aeneis, A.ii.

36 Chronicles: The Writing of History in Medieval England (London: Hambledon Continuum, 2007), pp. 2–3.

37 MS C2, pp. 95–96; Chronicle, ed. by Hamilton [and Lambert], Vol. I, pp. 80–81, emphasis added. Prioress Jane Wiseman's sisters who became Bridgettine nuns were Anne Wiseman, in religion Anne (1556–1650; LB169), and Barbara Wiseman, in religion Barbara de Sta Maria (1557–1649; LB170). Their sister Bridget Wiseman, in religion Bridget (p. 1595, d. 1627; LA302), served as Subprioress at St ursula’s, and Arcaria and Novice Mistress at St Monica’s.

38 A reference to a text about More's death appears in a booklist within a small manuscript miscellany from St Monica's convent, which is now housed at Nazareth in Bruges, MS R.M.A. IV. I refer to it here and in my thesis as ‘St Monica's Miscellany’. It states: ‘The day of Sir Tøhomas More is upon the 6 of July and we read Ł his death’, p. 4. See figure 3.

39 [Robert Basset], Lyf, ed. by Elsie Vaughn-Hitchcock, p. 151, emphasis added, spelling as it appears in the edition.

40 MS ‘Life’, p. 12; ‘Life’, ECIE, 1600–1800, ed. by Hallett, Vol. 3., ‘of Vertuous Inclination The Fourth Chapter’, p. 10.

41 MS C2, p. 369, p. 372; Chronicle, ed. by Hamilton [and Lambert], Vol. II, p. 104.

42 The ‘Bruges Chronicle’ and the Nazareth accounts abundantly attest to the dispute over Bedingfield's membership, and her financial acumen. These materials have not been edited, but I have written about them in my doctoral thesis. The manuscripts are housed at Nazareth: MS CA ‘Annals, Vol. 1: 1629–1729’ for which there is a typed transcript: CA ‘Annals, Vol 1: 1629–1729’, by Sister Agnes Joseph Coppieters, 2 vols (Vol. 1a, 1629–1704; Vol. 1b, 1704–1779) (1997). The Accounts are MS ‘Ark reckonings Alms II, Alms received between 1629–1639’; MS ‘Ark reckonings Alms II, 1639–1645’ and MS ‘Ark reckonings Alms II, 1650–1658’.

43 MS C2, p. 227; Chronicle, ed. by Hamilton [and Lambert], Vol. I, p. 240.

44 MS C2, p. 229; ibid.

45 MS C2, p. 229; ibid.

46 Nazareth, TS ‘BC, 1629–1729’, pp. 37–38.