1363. When Mother Angelica, the old prioress at Northwick Priory, dies, many of the nuns presume Sister Rosa – formerly Johanna de Bohun, of Meonbridge – will take her place. But Sister Evangelina, Angelica’s niece, believes the position is hers by right, and one way or another she will ensure it is.
The background to Sister Rosa’s Rebellion
The latest book in my
Meonbridge Chronicles series, set in medieval England, is Sister Rosa’s Rebellion. For this novel, the storyline centres, not on Meonbridge – as the other novels do for the most part – but on a priory, to which one of the characters in the first Chronicle,
Fortune’s Wheel, departed under something of a cloud. I always wanted to follow up what happened to her, but wasn’t sure that setting a novel almost entirely in a nunnery would make for an engaging story. So, I wrote other novels, about other characters, as the idea for this latest one gradually developed in my mind.
Then I discovered – or, actually, I think, re-discovered – Medieval English Nunneries, c. 1275 to 1535, a vast tome written in the 1920s by the medieval historian, Eileen Power, and what I learned from it really opened my eyes. Soon enough I understood that writing a story about a medieval nunnery could indeed be engaging, not to say surprising and even exhilarating.
For what I read was that some medieval nunneries weren’t at all the havens of peace and prayer I might have expected them to be…
There were apparently around 140 nunneries (priories and a few abbeys) in England in the later Middle Ages. Most were very poor, despite being largely inhabited by the aristocracy and gentry and, later, some women from upper-middle-class mercantile families. Many nunneries were small, very few with more than thirty nuns, a little over a quarter with between 10 and 20, well over half fewer than 10. As economic units, some of them must have struggled.
From what I gather, nunneries were not necessarily poor from lack of good management, but simply because their income was low. They would have relied on donations from benefactors, either permanent or long-term endowments, or shorter term or even one-off gifts from friends, relatives or people who wanted the nuns to pray for their or their loved-ones’ souls.
The nunnery would also have the income from its estate, such as rents from tenants and money from the sale of crops and livestock. But their expenses were many: the costs of day-to-day living, food, clothing, candles, firewood; wages for servants (of which there could be several, even in relatively poor establishments); the costs of maintaining the buildings, which clearly could be huge; alms-giving to the poor, something nuns were supposed to do, albeit they were poor themselves! A few houses were wealthy, and presumably didn’t really struggle, but in many, if not most, the expenses often outstripped the income. Even in well-managed houses, the battle to keep their heads above the choppy waters of destitution must have been a real challenge.
That this was a problem can be construed from the measures put in place by bishops to safeguard nunneries’ financial health. The prioress was not supposed to make decisions by herself, but together with all the nuns – this communality of decision-making was a requirement of the Benedictine rule, and likely that of other orders too. Accounts were to be presented regularly to the bishop’s representatives, and it might seem obvious that a nunnery should have someone with specific responsibility for its finances (i.e. a treasuress), rather than letting the prioress have sole oversight.
But what if a prioress had neither the ability nor the motivation to grapple with the mammoth task of managing the priory? Some prioresses were clearly terrible at their job. Yet perhaps it’s not surprising that some were unable to manage their priories properly, for, after all, they had no training. Maybe it is more surprising that so many were reasonably well managed, even if they did remain relatively poor!
However, in some cases, incompetence was not the (only) problem. For imagine a prioress who is discontented with the ascetic life and wants a bit of comfort, or even luxury, or who has a yen to assert herself above her sisters and do things “her way”, instead of by the Rules of her order, Benedictine or otherwise.
For a start, she might try to force her own election by whatever devices necessary. Eileen Power describes various examples of election subterfuge, where the community splits into rival factions, and the prospective prioress uses bribery or slander or some other devious, most “un-nun-like” means to win the day.
Once in place, the prioress might then succumb to whatever “temptations” could help her assert her authority or implement her desires. Bishops tried to deal with such prioresses, but their efforts were often in vain. For nunneries were typically visited and examined – by means of the bishop’s visitation, which was how all religious institutions, including religious houses and churches, were monitored and managed – only once every three years or so. Therefore, the nuns – and therefore recalcitrant prioresses – were essentially left to their own devices for years at a time, during which all sorts of mayhem might be perpetrated.
It is through the records of the bishops’ visitations that Power is able to tell us so much about the difficulties of medieval nunneries and the measures the bishops tried to put in place to help them but also to curb their failings.
In Sister Rosa’s Rebellion, apart from the problem of having a self-seeking and profligate prioress, other issues that could also cause a nunnery to be less than contented are central to the story.
One is rooted in the very reason why and how some women became nuns, and the other is the impact upon some of them wrought by the cloistered life. For not every nun chose to be so. A girl might be sent to a nunnery – sometimes whilst still a child – for various reasons, one of which might be that her father could not afford the dowry to get her a worthy husband, and becoming a nun was a cheaper, as well as honourable, alternative to marriage. The girl herself would probably have no say in the matter, so the cloistered life was not her vocation but an imposition. One can imagine that the restricted life she then discovered was now to be her future could easily lead her into unhappiness and even misbehaviour.
My novel, obviously, focuses on the various sorts of mischief that went on in some – if probably very few – medieval nunneries.
I really liked the idea of political manoeuvring – electoral subterfuge – for the potential for duplicity and conflict that would arise between factions. Also, I was attracted by the concept of a prioress imposing her own inappropriate or even immoral desires on a place where her word was “law”, given that nuns owed her complete obedience, regardless of the worth or rationality of her decisions. And finally, I was fascinated by the notion that the dissipation she might create would engender such grief amongst those nuns for whom such degeneracy was anathema that they might be willing to cast obedience aside and rise up against her. I thought it might all make for a stimulating if surprising story.
However, as I have written in my Author’s Note, this picture of a medieval nunnery should not be taken as the norm! Most of the nunneries in Medieval England (and also the monasteries) were probably reasonably pious and tranquil, working hard to make ends meet as best they could, although the very few wealthy institutions presumably didn’t have to work so hard. But, as Eileen Power writes, the evidence – from the bishops’ visitations – shows clearly that there were a few that were badly managed, had prioresses who were hopeless managers and/or incorrigibly self-seeking, where discipline was lax, piety at a minimum, and the inmates possibly feeling like prisoners.
Power’s book has been criticised for overstating the case for mismanagement and especially depravity in medieval nunneries, but I don’t feel she does especially overegg the situation. She draws on reports from the bishops’ visitations, which describe the “goings-on” in a few nunneries, sometimes in considerable detail. They certainly make intriguing reading, but there is no need to extrapolate from the few extraordinary examples to deduce that such behaviour was commonplace.
In truth, I feel that it is perhaps surprising that more nuns did not succumb to misbehaviour, given the circumstances in which some of them had entered their cloistered life, and the constraints with which they were required to live.
Anyway, I’ve drawn on Power’s descriptions of a few particular cases of prioresses or abbesses who brought either financial failure or shame, or both, to their houses, and overlaid them with my imagination to create a story that I hope gives a flavour of what life might have been like in those few houses that had the misfortune to be headed by a woman who was more interested in her own comfort, advancement and control than the well-being of her sisters.
Carolyn Hughes
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About the Author
Carolyn Hughe
s has lived much of her life in Hampshire. With a first degree in Classics and English, she started working life as a computer programmer, then a very new profession. But it was technical authoring that later proved her vocation, word-smithing for many different clients, including banks, an international hotel group and medical instruments manufacturers. Although she wrote creatively on and off for most of her adult life, it was not until her children flew the nest that writing historical fiction took centre stage. But why historical fiction? Serendipity! Seeking inspiration for what to write for her Creative Writing Masters, she discovered the handwritten draft, begun in her twenties, of a novel, set in 14th century rural England… Intrigued by the period and setting, she realised that, by writing a novel set in the period, she could learn more about the medieval past and interpret it, which seemed like a thrilling thing to do. A few days later, the first Meonbridge Chronicle, Fortune’s Wheel, was under way.Seven published books later (with more to come), Carolyn does now think of herself as an Historical Novelist. And she wouldn’t have it any other way…Find out more from Carolyn's website
https://carolynhughesauthor.com/ and find her on
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