The statutes of the Gilbertine order, established by Gilbert of Sempringham in the second half of the twelfth century, underwent modification during the following century as a consequence of two legatine visitations, in 1238 and 1267. This paper examines these new regulations in the context of growing episcopal concern for the internal discipline of nunneries and considers the possible inter-relationships between the ‘self-regulating’ and internally-disciplined Gilbertine order and the synodal legislation of reforming bishops and their episcopal visitation of non-Gilbertine nunneries, particularly in Yorkshire. It suggests that the visitation by Ottobuono Fieschi of the Gilbertines in 1267 and his legatine council of London in 1268 informed the outcomes of both, leading to a convergence of Gilbertine legislation with the wider legislation that applied to all nunneries.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0022046908005897

Keeping Nuns in Order: Enforcement of the Rules in Thirteenth-Century Sempringham

It has been a truism in the history of medieval religious orders that the Cistercians only admitted women late in the twelfth century and then under considerable outside pressure. This view has posited a twelfth-century “Golden Age” when it had been possible for the abbots of the order of Citeaux to avoid contact with women totally. Only later did the floodgates burst open and a great wave of women wishing to be Cistercians flood over abbots powerless to resist it. This paper reassesses narrative accounts, juridical arguments, and charter evidence to show that such assertions of the absence of any twelfthcentury Cistercian nuns are incorrect. They are based on mistaken notions of how the early Cistercian Order developed, as well as on a biased reading of the evidence, including a double standard for proof of Cistercian status—made much higher for women's houses than for men's. If approached in a gender-neutral way, the evidence shows that abbeys of Cistercian women appeared as early as those for the order's men. Evidence from which it has been argued that nuns were only imitating the Cistercian Order's practices in the twelfth century in fact contains exactly the same language that when used to describe men's houses is deemed to show them to be Cistercian. Formal criteria for incorporation of women's houses in the thirteenth century are irrelevant to a twelfth-century situation in which only gradually did most communities of monks or nuns eventually identified as Cistercian come to be part of the newly developing religious order.

Were There Twelfth-Century Cistercian Nuns?

This thesis examines the interactions between medieval clergy and laity, which were complex, and its findings trouble dominant models for understanding the relationships between official and popular religions. In the context of an examination of these interactions in the Humber Region Lowlands during the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, this thesis illustrates the roles that laity had in the construction of official and popular cultures of medieval religion. Laity and clergy often interacted with each other and each other's culture, with the result that both groups contributed to the construction of medieval cultures of religion. After considering general trends through an examination of pastoral texts and devotional practices, the thesis moves on to case studies of interactions at local levels as recorded in ecclesiastical administrative documents, most notably bishops' registers. The discussion here, among other things, includes the interactions and negotiations surrounding hermits and anchorites, the complaints of the laity, and lay roles in constructing the religious identity of nuns. The Conclusion briefly examines the implications of the complex relationships between clergy and laity highlighted in this thesis. It questions divisions between cultures of official and popular religion and ends with a short case study illustrating how clergy and laity had the potential to shape the practices and structures of both official and popular medieval religion.

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Clergy and Commoners: Interactions between medieval clergy and laity in a regional context

In contrast with recent assertions that the term ‘double house’ is both anachronistic and dysfunctional when used with reference to mixed communities of the twelfth century, this paper demonstrates that contemporary writers did in fact perceive a difference between religious houses that housed both men and women, and a small group of ‘houses of canons and nuns’. The absence of a more specific term was in itself an indication of the perceived novelty of such houses, which were seen as diverging both from earlier Anglo-Saxon mixed communities, and from other twelfth-century houses for men and women.

‘Canonici Albi et Moniales’: Perceptions of the Twelfth-Century Double House

/pdf/power-relations-at-the-cistercian-abbey-of-st-mary-at-rushen-36w8fy2xwl.pdf

Power Relations at the Cistercian Abbey of St. Mary at Rushen: With Special Interest in Connections at Furness and Influence through the Kingdom of the Isles

ALTHOUGH historians of Cistercian monasticism in medieval England have seen their subject almost exclusively in terms of the activities of men, it has long been known that there was a sizable number of houses of women who professed that way of life: two abbeys and twenty-seven priories, most of which were concentrated in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire. Just why these houses have not been studied, as have their counterparts on the continent,1 is not readily to be explained without reference to factors which may have deterred scholars. The number of nuns in any one house was never very great; no famous personalities were associated with them; no single house was exceptionally wealthy or economically significant; and, lastly, records are sparse. For only three of the twenty-nine nunneries have cartularies been preserved,2 and since there are no chronicles, other medieval sources are scattered among episcopal registers and royal records. Despite these considerations the nunneries are worth investigation for the light they shed on the religious activities of women in the midst of the last great monastic reform of the Middle Ages.3 If the Cistercian nunneries were insignificant on all counts in comparison with the monasteries of men, when taken in the aggregate they provide ample witness to the fact that the Cistercian way of life was important for women as well as for men. The patrons and supporters who sustained them with privileges, property, or protection did so because they saw them as worthy representatives of the new spirituality of the twelfth century. In the midst of various choices the nuns consciously embraced the Cistercian mode of religious life, even at a time when there was no provision for them within the framework of the order.4 Later, when nunneries were incorporated, the priories in England failed to

Coburn V. Graves

Papers

English Cistercian Nuns in Lincolnshire

Alfonso X, el Sabio