Female Monastic Community Research Articles

Politics, Power, and Prestige in Female Conventual Communities of Medieval Latium: The Exemplary Case of Santa Maria in Viano (Frosinone)

Abstract: The renewed academic interest in religious women has not resulted in any overarching or detailed study of Latium. A thorough historiography is still lacking for the region's late medieval convents. This is surprising as the region was densely populated by female monastic settlements between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. An emblematic case in this regard is the convent of Santa Maria in Viano in Sgurgola (Frosinone). By the fourteenth century, almost half of the Conti family estate in Sgurgola was owned by the nunnery of Santa Maria in Viano. The convent played a pivotal role in shifting the delicate power balance between feudal lords in the region. What emerges is the prominent and strategic role of female monastic communities whose political agency casts a new light on an overlooked but historically dynamic period. Rural monastic settlements functioned as strategic frontiers, which were crucial to regional baronial land interests during the earlier period. Unsurprisingly, the presence of innovative architectural and artistic elements inside the church of Santa Maria in Viano also showcases the synthesis of Cistercian architectural models and local building traditions.

The Fragmentary History of Female Monasticism in Thailand: Community Formation and Development of Monastic Rules by Thai Mae Chis

A major challenge in the historical study of female monasticism in Thailand is the paucity of texts written by or about Thai Buddhist female practitioners prior to 1950. Biographical and autobiographical texts and other substantial Buddhist texts authored by Thai female practitioners emerged arguably only in the 20th century and are generally relatively rare, with only few notable exceptions. In this paper, I will utilize some of the earliest available Thai texts that allow more detailed insights into female monasticism and soteriological teaching and practice, the creation of female monastic spaces and the interrelationships between male and female monastics. Thus, I will examine sets of monastic training rules that, even though based on Pali canonical precepts and teachings, were created in the early 20th century. In addition to monastic code texts and the narratives of foundation stories, other important sources for my study include the biographies of monastic and female lay practitioners, important benefactors of female monastic communities and prominent male monastic supporters of female monastic and spiritual practice. I will also draw on sermon texts by female and male monastics. Here, I will focus only on the lives of those individuals and histories of female monastic communities that I regard as representative of larger issues, trends and challenges in the history of female monasticism in 20th century Thai Buddhism. Given the scarcity of sources, the present study cannot aspire to provide comprehensive accounts of the history of female monastic communities in Thailand and their interrelationships. Nor will I be able to reconstruct exhaustively the history of their monastic codes of rules. However, based on the sources that are available I will trace the history of attempts to create a blueprint for the organisation of Thai Buddhist female coenobitic monasticism.

The destiny of several female monastic communities in the South of Russia after the Revolution of 1917

The article provides an overview of the history of some women’s monasteries in the South of Russia in the first post-revolutionary years. The conclusion is made about the organizational and economic stability of the women’s communities. The destruction of the monastic households and the nun`s communities themselves occurred as a result of the targeted efforts of local Soviet authorities, and sometimes even direct repression. However, separate groups of nuns in many places continued their religious life and influence on the population until the 1980s. The phenomenon of women’s monastic communities in Russia in the 20th century requires further comprehensive study.

Female Monasticism in Revolutionary Times: The Nizhnii Novgorod Convent of the Exaltation of the Cross, 1917–1935

AbstractEven though after the October Revolution in 1917 the Bolsheviks enjoyed uninterrupted power and pursued radical secularist objectives, the majority of female monastic communities in Nizhnii Novgorod province were able to survive much longer than their counterparts in the French and Mexican Revolutions. Using the Convent of the Exaltation of the Cross as a case study, this article shows how—despite extremely challenging conditions and the hostility of the Soviet state—female monastic communities proved to be remarkably resilient and managed to exploit openings created by both the Bolsheviks’ strategy for subverting them and conflicts between Soviet authorities. The resiliency of the community at the Convent of the Exaltation of the Cross stemmed from the solidarity, flexibility, and leadership skills it cultivated prior to World War I through the combination of its religious character and practices and its communal organization. By the early 1920s, the community had adapted effectively to post-civil war Soviet urban conditions and was able to survive local attempts to dissolve it. But by the late 1920s, the survival of the community had become intolerable for Soviet authorities, who—like the revolutionary regimes in France and Mexico—ultimately resorted to compulsory means to “liquidate” the community between 1927 and 1935.

ЖЕНЩИНЫ В ИСТОРИИ БУДДИЙСКОЙ КУЛЬТУРЫ СРЕДНЕВЕКОВОЙ ЯПОНИИ

The article is devoted to the consideration of the role of women in the history of Buddhist culture in medieval Japan. The article examines the formation of the first female Buddhist monastic community in Japan. It is noted that the formation of the first Buddhist monastic community here was associated with women of Korean origin. A significant role in the institutionalization of Buddhism in Japan and its transformation into the dominant ideology was played by the Japanese empresses, who were impressed by the Buddhist approach to the religious status of women. The Japanese empresses actively supported the construction of Buddhist temples, donated land and significant funds to them. While pursuing a policy of strengthening the Buddhist church, they simultaneously contributed to its centralization and the establishment of strict control over the sangha by the state. The social and confessional status of women in the history of medieval Japan was constantly changing. If, until the end of the Nara period, nuns had the same social and confessional status as monks, then in the Heian era, nuns were removed from government positions and state ceremonies, and in religious treatises the opinion that women could not find salvation until will not be reborn as men. During the Kamakura and Muromachi eras, women again began to play an active role in society, including in religious institutions. During this period, new directions of Buddhism appeared (Amidaism, Soto-Zen, the Nichiren school), in whose doctrines the attitude towards women was more respectful. In the subsequent period, there was an increase in the influence of Confucianism and a weakening of the position of Buddhism in Japanese society, which negatively affected the social status of women and the state of the female monastic community.

The Female Tonsure and Female Monasticism in Old Russia and the Balkans

This paper describes a rare rite of female tonsure that is known from five Slavonic Euchologia (Trebnik) of the 13th–16th centuries and attempts to investigate on the basis of historical sources how this rite of tonsure could be applied in the Balkans and in Early Russia. N. F. Krasnosel′tsev suggested that this tonsure was of a very ancient origin and was intended for tonsuring virgins who took the vow of celibacy. The Greek original of this rite is preserved only in one known Euchologion Coisl.213 (1027). We argue that its Slavonic translation is of a Serbian origin and was made not earlier than in the 13thcentury, but that it apparently was not used in the Balkans afterwards. In Early Russia this rite is scantily attested in written sources — since the 14thcentury its content was shortened and influenced by the later practice of tonsure. However, historical sources prove that tonsuring of virgins was very common in Kievan Rus′ with its urban convents, while it was practically unknown in the Balkans. In medieval Bulgaria and Serbia there were recorded cases of widows tonsured without entering the monastery. It is difficult to say whether before the end of 14th century any fully developed female monastic communities existed in this region in the form in which they are known in Rus′. Probably, the rite of tonsure of virgins in Old Russia was very close to the rite from the manuscript Gilf.21, though, most likely, it did not contain the final part — the prayer for the removal of the veil (kukol'), as in Coisl.213.

Buddhism in the Feminist Context: Historical Experience and Modern Discourse

The author considers the problems of women's place in Buddhist culture in the context of feminist discourse. He notes that Buddhism is distinguished by a tolerant and respectful attitude to the female. Buddhism admits that women, along with men, are able to achieve enlightenment and find Nirvana. However, the relationship between male and female monastic orders in Buddhism was not fully equal. The order of nuns was considered to be the youngest in comparison with the order of monks, and the rules restricting the behavior of the nuns were more than for the monks, which was probably a forced step aimed at taking into account the realities of society. Despite this, the Foundation of the women's monastic organization, which opened the way for women to religious knowledge and spiritual rank, was in its essence a radical social revolution for that time. The emergence of the female monastic community was an example of a fundamentally new view of women and their position in society. With the release of Buddhism outside India female monasticism became widespread in many Asian countries. Later, however, in the countries of South, South-East Asia and Tibet, the Institute of full female monasticism disappeared. In the second half of the twentieth century the attempts to revive the Institute that have led to the emergence of the phenomenon of neonuns. As a result of the spread of Buddhism in the West, it was included in the field of gender studies and feminist discourse. The question of equality between women and men in Buddhism has been actively developed by Western female Buddhists in the feminist discourse, that has formed a statement about the original equality of the sexes in Buddhism. The theme of the status of women in society and their rights has become an important part of the social concept of Western Buddhism. The result was the emergence of the international women's Buddhist Association "Sakyadhita".

Женские монастыри Англии IX — середины XI веков

The historical features of Anglo-Saxon convents from the 9th to the middle of the 11th centuries are considered in the article. The scientific novelty of the study is due to the fact that in domestic historiography this issue has not been previously studied. The study is based on a wide range of historical evidence: hagiographic writings, biographies, letters, chronicles. The factors determining the decline of double monasteries in England in the 9th century are revealed. The data of Anglo-Saxon letters illustrating the conflicts of bishops and abbesses are analyzed. It is shown that in the late Anglo-Saxon period, despite the weakening influence of the abbesses, female monastic communities continued to maintain close ties with the royal house. The material well-being of women’s monasteries was often determined by the presence of representatives of the royal family among their inhabitants. Particular attention is paid to the history of Anglo-Saxon convents during the Benedictine reform initiated by King Edgar (959-975). The features of the relationship of queens with convents at the end of the 10 th - middle of the 11 th centuries are analyzed. The historical specificity of the involvement of conventions in the reform process was studied mainly on the basis of the history of the Wilton monastery, in which one of the most famous Anglo-Saxon ascetics - Saint Edith lived.

Eating in silence: isotopic approaches to nuns\u2019 diet at the convent of Santa Catalina de Siena (Belmonte, Spain) from the sixteenth to the twentieth century

Advances in geochemical and physical anthropological studies have provided new tools to reconstruct ancient lifestyles, especially of those minorities not commonly mentioned in historical texts. In comparison to males, little is known about everyday life in female monastic communities, and how it has changed over time. In this paper, we present a paleodietary (δ13C and δ15N in bone collagen) study of human (n = 58) and animal (n = 13) remains recovered from the former Convent of Santa Catalina de Siena in Belmonte (Cuenca, central Spain). Two funerary areas used by Dominican nuns were sampled: one dated to the sixteenth (n = 34) and the seventeenth (n = 15) centuries, and the other dated in the nineteenth and twentieth (n = 9) centuries. The isotopic values for sheep (n = 7) suggest the animals consumed at the convent came from diverse ecosystems or were raised under a range of management strategies. The human samples reflect a terrestrial diet, and those from the nineteenth to twentieth century, in some cases, reveal the presence of C4 plants (millet, corn or sugar cane). Due to their religious practice, the consumption of terrestrial animal protein was restricted, and although they were allowed to eat fish, the isotopic signatures show little evidence of this. The individuals from the sixteenth and seventeenth century show a continuous shift in δ15N (9.7–12.7‰), with few significant differences in relation to the period, age, or pathologies (osteoporosis, periostitis, and brucellosis). The nineteenth- to twentieth-century samples can be divided into two groups: (a) one that fits the trend of previous centuries, albeit with a higher δ15N, possibly related to extensive access to animal protein; and (b) a second group with elevated δ13C values (up to − 15.7‰). Different customs in the assumed homogeneous monastic life are discussed as possible sources of isotopic variation, including access to luxury products such as animal protein or sugar, or the practice of periods of food abstinence, which were especially popular with these communities, according to historical records.

English

In the Frankish period of the 7th and 8th centuries, settlements along the Dussel (thusila or Doson) included farming and fishing outposts where the tributary flowed into the Rhine. The women's community in Gerresheim, Dusseldorf was a foundation of the Frankish nobleman Gerricus, established towards the end of the 9th century. The Magyar invasion of Gerresheim in 919 led to a transition of leadership of the female monastic community there to the supervision of the Archbishop of Cologne, Hermann I in 922.

Rogatrix atque donatrix: the silver cover of the Berta Evangeliary (Vatican, S. Maria in Via Lata, MS. I 45) and the patronage of art by women in early medieval Rome

A luxury silver manuscript cover in the Vatican Library bearing an inscription identifying the patron as a nun named Berta offers the opportunity to investigate the patronage of art by women in early medieval Rome. The cover housed an evangeliary that served the female monastic community of SS. Ciriaco e Nicola in Via Lata founded in the tenth century by the family of Prince Alberic of Rome (d. 954). This paper argues that the cover was a product of Roman monasticism that had personal and liturgical significance for the nun Berta, who was a scion of the monastery's founding family.

Clares in Procession: The Processional and Hours of the Franciscan Minoresses at Aldgate

Clares in Procession:The Processional and Hours of the Franciscan Minoresses at Aldgate Anne Bagnall Yardley (bio) The cranston library, England's oldest public lending library, houses a fifteenth-century manuscript from the English Franciscan convent of the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. Francis outside Aldgate, near the Tower of London. This manuscript, Cranston 2322, has been cataloged as an "Horae, etc.," or book of hours, but is in fact a volume that contains a substantial quantity of noted liturgical music as well as the hours of the Virgin, devotional material in Middle English, and a variety of other prayers and antiphon texts.1 Although a complete general description of this manuscript has been available since 1992, scholars have not examined the extensive liturgical material in the manuscript as a reflection of the communal musical-liturgical life of the convent.2 Indeed, the continued listing of the manuscript as an "Horae, etc.," has almost certainly obscured the fact that this manuscript is the only extant English Franciscan processional. This volume provides the modern liturgical historian a unique opportunity to study the chants for processions, the commendatio animae (commendation of the soul), and the profession of nuns for an English Franciscan house. In this article I will describe and analyze the contents of the manuscript, comparing it to both Franciscan and English sources. This analysis reveals the ways in which the practices at Aldgate were drawn from the corpus of Franciscan repertoire [End Page 1] but influenced also by English monastic practices. The texts and notated chants in this single volume expand the concept of the processional beyond its usual liturgical function to include processions to and from the frater, the chapter house, and the bedside of dying nuns. On the basis of this analysis I will argue that this manuscript would more appropriately be entitled "Processional and Hours" and suggest that it may have been created for the use of the cantrix of the order.3 In the broader scholarly sense this article contributes to feminist reclamation history through a detailed source study depicting the musical life of a particular musical community. It also adds to the burgeoning literature of material on female monastic practices and women's spirituality in medieval England. Many authors have focused on the reading practices of nuns or women more generally, but few have given any detailed attention to their musical practices other than a general nod to the importance of liturgical life.4 Thus, in this article I illuminate many aspects of practices in one female monastic community through a study of a particular manuscript from the house. As much as possible my work attempts to create this picture without reliance on assumed norms from studies of male monastic practices.5 This approach partakes of the postmodern rejection of metanarratives and emphasizes the important lens of particularity in the study of historical documents.6 The Liturgical Context of the Manuscript The Minories The Minories is the name commonly given to the house of Franciscan women (minoresses) founded in 1293 at Aldgate, immediately outside of the walls of London.7 The founder of the Minories, Edmund, Earl of Lancaster, and his wife, Blanche, Queen of Navarre, imported nuns from the community at Longchamp in France to inaugurate the house. The one surviving English version of a rule for Franciscan nuns is a Middle English version of the Isabella rule created for the nuns at Longchamp.8 Thus, Aldgate and [End Page 2] Longchamp are connected both through the written rule and through the presence of sisters who followed that rule and could transmit the unwritten traditions and expectations of the order. The Minories grew to be a moderately large establishment, as indicated by the fact that at the time of the dissolution of the house in 1539 there were twenty-four nuns and an abbess who received pensions.9 David Bell lists five extant manuscripts from the Minories: The Doctrine of the Heart, Walter Hilton's The Ladder of Perfection and Mixed Life, the Rule for Enclosed Minoresses, a Psalter, and the volume under discussion here. Bell also indicates other volumes that have been associated with the Minories through wills.10 The volumes indicate that...

To Find God in Work? Female Social Stratification in Early Modern Italian Convents

Early modern female monastic communities hosted two different groups – technically ‘classes’ – of nuns: choir nuns and servant nuns. Choir nuns usually came from an urban elite background, and occupied the most important administrative and governing positions in the community. Servant nuns, in contrast, often came from humble backgrounds, and entered the convent with the specific duty of performing all the manual and heavy domestic jobs. In return for this work contribution, these nuns could be admitted into monastic profession with a reduced dowry, or even with no dowry at all. For these nuns the religious house represented a work opportunity, and a guarantee of social and economic security. The communal monastic regime was therefore a stratified microsociety, which reproduced the most common social dynamics that governed the world outside. Inside as well as outside the convent, unmarried women shared similar conditions: privileges on the one hand, manual work and servant status on the other. This article examines the complex social and religious dynamics within convents, and in particular between the two main groups of servant and choir nuns. Drawing on a sample of prescriptive texts on convent life, my analysis develops along two dimensions. First, I examine the stratification behind convent walls in connection with the ideal of female religious life promoted by the Catholic Church, in the decades following the Council of Trent. The major reform programme launched by the Council in the middle of the sixteenth century sponsored a renewed spiritual european history quarterly 

The Privilege of Poverty: Clare of Assisi, Agnes of Prague, and the Struggle for a Franciscan Rule for Women (review)

The Privilege of Poverty: Clare of Assisi, Agnes of Prague, and the Struggle for a Franciscan Rule for Women. By Joan Mueller. (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. 2006. Pp. x, 182. $40.00.) With Clare ofAssisi, it is practically obligatory to identify as the first woman to write a monastic rule for other women. This achievement, the culmination of a decades-long battle with the papal curia to secure the right for a female monastic community to live without endowments, is Joan Mueller's subject. As a Franciscan herself, Mueller writes sensitively about what it meant for these women to choose radical poverty following the model of the Poor Christ. For historians, main contribution is that of bringing Clare together with the Bohemian princess, Agnes of Prague, to show how some women could negotiate effectively with the papacy to define how their institutions developed. When Francis ofAssisi died in 1226, Clare realized that community at San Damiano needed ecclesiastical recognition of their commitment to radical poverty. However, papal efforts to monasticize San Damiano and likeminded communities with endowments provoked a crisis. Mueller characterizes Pope Gregory IX as moving from sympathetic regard for the sisters' evangelical vocation, to an adversarial role in which the commitment to radical poverty became mere rhetoric (p. 36) and pious flourishes (p. 48). Apparent victories, such as the Privilege of Poverty granted to San Damiano in 1228 (and a few other houses at later times), were rather temporary compromises offered in the hope that the women eventually would accept possessions. By 1230, Clare and the pope were at loggerheads, and Mueller asserts rather dramatically that her soul, identity, and the quality of the monastery were at stake (pp. 51-52). Enter Agnes of Prague, whom Mueller casts as Clare's collaborator and soul mate. These chapters, drawing on earlier studies, represent the book's most original contribution. The women and their allies used diplomacy to achieve their goals, while invoking spiritual authorities for their commitment to evangelical poverty. Agnes also secured exemptions that allowed community to live without possessions, but the papacy remained determined to secure their welfare. In 1247 Pope Innocent IV issued a new rule designed to unify standards within female Franciscan communities. It required endowments, a situation that was not unwelcome to many houses. …

Teaching & Learning Guide for: Breaking Old Habits: Recent Research on Women, Spirituality and the Arts in the Middle Ages

Teaching & Learning Guide for: Breaking Old Habits: Recent Research on Women, Spirituality and the Arts in the Middle Ages

Convent Theatre in Early Modern Italy: Spiritual Fun and Learning for Women by Elissa B. Weaver (review)

MLR, 99.3, 2004 803 Convent Theatre in Early Modern Italy: Spiritual Fun and Learning for Women. By Elissa B. Weaver. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2002. xiii + 304pp. ?45. ISBN 0-521-55082-3. Elissa Weaver's pioneering study is a much-needed work that throws light on an almost completely unexplored area of literary and historical research. In a clear and enj oyable style, Weaver takes the reader through the history of Tuscan convent theatre between the mid-fifteenth and the mid-seventeenth centuries. She shows that nuns were engaged in many cultural and artistic activities, including commissioning, writ? ing, and performing theatrical representations that took place in the closed spaces of their convents. She examines the major developments in the genres of convent theatrical production?mainly sacre rappresentazioni, spiritual comedies, and some farces?and illustrates how convent theatre dealt with a variety of topics: lives of saints and virgin martyrs, episodes from the holy scriptures, stories of women who had unhappy marriages and took the vows. These stories were deemed appropri? ate and interesting for the convent audience and some female external associates. Drawing on a corpus of over fiftytexts, mostly unpublished and including anonymous and undated works, she points out the increasing interest in publishing convent plays throughout the seventeenth century. Although Weaver stresses that not all con? vent authors possessed literary talent or professional ability, we do learn about many well-known, and some less-known, nun playwrights, such as Antonia Tanini Pulci, Raffaella de Sernigi, Beatrice del Sera, Maria Clemente Ruoti, and Annalena Odoaldi. One of the most important aspects of this book is that it highlights the specificity of convent theatre and, at the same time, its relevance to and exchanges with the sur? rounding secular world. The nuns' theatrical tradition needs to be understood within the circumscribed context in which it was born: it owed its existence to the female monastic community's need for a 'feminine subculture'. Indeed, convent plays held a primary function in offeringthe nuns 'good fun [. . .] so they may improve them? selves' (p. 62) and promoting their spiritual and literary education, as well as being formidable antidotes against the boredom of cloistered life. But this literary tradi? tion was in close touch with wider society. Convent theatre followed the mainstream genres of society outside, borrowed and adapted texts, and gained inspiration from the literarycommunity beyond the cloister. Furthermore, Weaver emphasizes that the audience of convent plays included townswomen (female relatives and friends), and rarely men, who shared this theatrical culture with the nuns. In debatingthe meaning of convent theatre and its connections with early modern society, she goes as far as offering an assessment of its place in the history of theatrical writing. Indeed, she suggests that the nuns' theatrical tradition may have been an important model forthe Jesuits, in their effortto make theatre a crucial part of their educational programme for the young male members of the European elites. Weaver's research has the further merit and originality of paying attention to the history of material culture and the circumstances of the performances. Her book provides many practical details of how performances were organized: their timing (Christmas, carnival, convent celebrations), the invitations posted up in the nuns' rooms informing them of the time and place of the performances, the props and cos? tumes used, stage installations, and sometimes the areas where they performed, such as the cloister loggia, or the courtyard. One can fully appreciate how nuns managed to express their creativity and benefit from theatre, in spite ofthe obvious limitations of their physical segregation. Perhaps the only slight disappointment is the concluding chapter, on convent theatre beyond Tuscany. Here Weaver limits herself to mentioning some Italian and European examples, acknowledging that cloistered nuns propagated the theatrical tradition through the Catholic Church (i.e. their spiritual directors and confessors) 804 Reviews and their families, but without fully explaining exactly how they did this. This weak? ness apart, Spiritual Fun remains a wonderful example of how to use literature and history to understand early modern theatre, as well as the gendered dimension of the ltalian cultural tradition. University of Birmingham Silvia Evangelisti Lafigura della donna nel teatro di Eduardo...