Apostate Nuns in the Later Middle Ages by Elizabeth Makowski

Abstract

Reviewed by: Apostate Nuns in the Later Middle Ages by Elizabeth Makowski Sr. Nancy Bauer, OSB Apostate Nuns in the Later Middle Ages. By Elizabeth Makowski. Studies in the History of Medieval Religion. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2019. Pp. xiv + 227; $64.00. In her first book, Canon Law and Cloistered Women: Periculoso and its Commentators, 1298–1545 (CUA Press, 1997), Elizabeth Makowski (1951–2021) made a valuable contribution to the history of canon law regarding religious life for women by providing a comprehensive study of the thirteenth century decree by which Pope Boniface VIII inaugurated what came to be known as papal enclosure for nuns. M., a historian who focused on medieval monastic women, made another contribution to the history of canon law and female religious life in her final book, Apostate Nuns in the Later Middle Ages. The title might suggest that this is just another bawdy recounting of misdeeds of medieval nuns, but such is not the case. This is a scholarly but very readable account of the canonical fates of specific women who attempted to escape a [End Page 212] monastic life for which they were perhaps never suited and often never chose for themselves. M. selected cases that date from 1300 to 1540. The beginning date is significant because by then most of the major ecclesiastical legislation on religious life that remained in effect into the twentieth century had been promulgated. The end date coincides with the dissolution of monasteries under Henry VIII. During this period, the term "apostate" applied canonically to several categories of Catholics, including vowed women and men who, without dispensations, abandoned the religious state to return to secular society. Authorities, ecclesiastical and civil, were expected to capture apostate nuns and monks, who also incurred the penalty of excommunication, and forcibly return them to their monasteries where they endured severe punishment for the crime of running away. The only reprieve from this fate was to prove that one's vows had been coerced and were therefore invalid. Thus, M. devotes the first chapter to the canon law on validity of profession. In the next three chapters, she addresses specific cases of runaway nuns. Chapter 2 deals with nuns who fled their monasteries and then petitioned to have their vows declared null based on vim et metum (force and fear), that is, on having been compelled to enter religious life and make profession. It was not uncommon in the Middle Ages that "the summons to religious life came not from God but from parents, relatives, or other interested parties" (45). For those with a genuine vocation, the monastery was a "safe haven," but for those who were forced into it, "the monastery became a prison" (45). M. uncovers the stories of girls as young as four years old given to monasteries by their parents and coerced to make profession before the canonically recognized minimum age of thirteen, often to exclude them from family inheritance. Chapter 3 deals with nuns who made valid professions, but later fled monastic life "motivated by love, whether of landed wealth or of the opposite sex" (22). In other words, they succumbed to "temptations against the vows of poverty and chastity" (78). Nuns who apostatized for these reasons, even those who married and bore children, were expected to return to monastic life unless they were able to acquire dispensations from their vows. Chapter 4 focuses on nuns who were, with or without permission, away from their monasteries for "diversions" such as pilgrimages and family visits or "disasters" such as war and pestilence, but who failed to return. It was war in the French countryside surrounding their monastery that prompted a group of Cistercian nuns to scatter to safe places in 1368. When they chose to remain in secular life at the end of the war, Pope Urban V ordered their capture and forcible return to their monastery. Chapters 5 and 6 describe the penalties, chilly reception, and difficult reintegration that often awaited apostate nuns who returned to their monasteries, [End Page 213] whether willingly and repentant or forcibly and unrepentant. Historians of canon law will appreciate M.'s review in chapter 5 of commentary by medieval decretists and decretalists...