Writing History with Female Religious Communities: Medieval and Modern Hagiography

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Writing History with Female Religious Communities:Medieval and Modern Hagiography1 Máirín MacCarron (bio) The importance of hagiographies for the study of early medieval history cannot be overstated. These texts are used to illuminate contemporary social, religious, and political practices, and to understand the intellectual environment of hagiographers. However, an over-emphasis on the hagiographer's agenda, though crucial for understanding a work's historical context, sometimes introduces too great a separation between their endeavour as an individual and the role of their protagonist's community in preserving and curating their own history. This disparity can be particularly pronounced for female religious figures, as the earliest surviving sources concerning their lives often came from outside their monasteries and were written by men. In early medieval Ireland, the most famous female saint, Bridget of Kildare, is venerated in three early lives, all believed to be written by men.2 During the same period in Britain, most of our information about religious women is preserved in the Venerable Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, which was written at his monastery of Wearmouth and Jarrow.3 The double monasteries of Whitby and Coldingham, both ruled by abbesses and both featured in Bede's History, between them produced one surviving text, the Earliest Life of Gregory the Great, written by an unidentified member of the Whitby community around AD 700, which tells us little about life at Whitby and does not mention Hild (d. 680), the monastery's most famous abbess.4 The community of Barking recorded their early history, but this has only survived in excerpts preserved by Bede. And Bede is also the earliest surviving source for the community at Ely.5 The former Frankish queen, Radegund, who founded the monastery of Holy Cross at Poitiers, is an exception as her life was recorded by one of her sisters, Baudonivia, and this work has survived to the present day. However, the more celebrated account of Radegund's life is that by the acclaimed poet, Venantius Fortunatus, which [End Page 427] was commissioned by the community.6 The limited supply of first-hand information from female religious communities stands in sharp contrast to contemporary male institutions, such as, for example, Armagh, Iona, Lindisfarne, and Wearmouth and Jarrow, about which we know much because sources produced in and for these houses have survived.7 However, the nature of the surviving evidence should not lead us to overlook the role that women may have played in creating and preserving their own histories. I have spent many years studying hagiographies from early medieval Ireland and Britain, including examining the role and presentation of women in these texts, and my understanding of the genre of hagiography and the writing of history by members of a community was transformed by a year spent working for a modern religious congregation, the Poor Servants of the Mother of God. I worked on a biographical project about their foundress, Magdalen Taylor (1832–1900), as part of her canonisation cause. The following offers some reflections on my experience observing hagiography in action as a female religious community explored their own history. Focusing on charism and history The Poor Servants of the Mother of God were established in 1869 to address the diverse needs of the poor in Victorian London. Their foundress believed such needs were not being met by existing religious orders and ultimately decided to establish her own congregation to be active in society. Magdalen Taylor, born as Frances Margaret Taylor in Stoke Rochford, Lincolnshire, and in religion Mary Magdalen of the Sacred Heart, was the daughter of an Anglican minister and converted to Catholicism after working as a nurse in the Crimea from 1854–55. All her biographers agree that from an early age she was committed to helping others and her later vocation and subsequent foundation of a new religious congregation are presented as logical developments for a woman of her interests and abilities.8 The Poor Servants' distinctive charism inspired by Taylor's religious faith is their commitment to working with, rather than for, the poor. From the start, Taylor recognised the potential of teaching skills such as sewing to the poorest and most...