Bishop Richard Fox's Manuscript Gifts to his Winchester Nuns: A Second Surviving Example

Abstract

To regularise and strengthen female monastic life in his Winchester diocese, in the early sixteenth century Bishop Richard Fox made a new translation of the Rule of St Benedict explicitly for women. He had it printed by Richard Pynson in 1517, thus taking advantage of the ability of the printing press to provide multiple copies for all the members of the four Hampshire womens' houses he addressed: St Mary Winchester (Nunnaminster), Wherwell, Romsey and Wintney.

In addition to these printed copies Bishop Fox provided additional manuscript books for each of the four houses, as his preface to the Rule tells us: ‘And by cause we wolde not/that there shulde be any lacke amongis them of the bokis of this sayd translation/we haue therfore/aboue and besyde certayne bokes ther of/which we haue yeven to the sayde monasteris: caused it to be emprinted’ [italics mine] (sig. Aiiv).