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Title: Woman under Monasticism

Author: Lina Eckenstein

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WOMAN
UNDER MONASTICISM ***

WOMAN UNDER MONASTICISM.

London: C. J. CLAY and SONS,
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE
AVE MARIA LANE.
Glasgow: 263, ARGYLE STREET.

Leipzig: F. A. BROCKHAUS.
New York: MACMILLAN AND CO.

WOMAN UNDER MONASTICISM
CHAPTERS ON
SAINT-LORE AND CONVENT LIFE
BETWEEN A.D. 500 AND A.D. 1500

BY

LINA ECKENSTEIN.

‘Quia vita omnium spiritualium hominum sine litteris mors est.’
Acta Murensis Monasterii.

CAMBRIDGE:
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.
1896
[All Rights reserved.]

Cambridge:
PRINTED BY J. & C. F. CLAY,
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.

TO
MY FRIENDS
KARL and MARIA SHARPE PEARSON.

PREFACE.
The restlessness, peculiar to periods of transition, is a characteristic of the
present age. Long-accepted standards are being questioned and hitherto
unchallenged rules of conduct submitted to searching criticism. History
shows us that our present social system is only a phase in human
development, and we turn to a study of the past, confident that a clearer
insight into the social standards and habits of life prevalent in past ages will
aid us in a better estimation of the relative importance of those factors of
change we find around us to-day.
Monasticism during the ten centuries between a.d. 500 and a.d. 1500
exhibits phases of vital significance for the mental and moral growth of
Western Europe. However much both the aims and the tone of life of the
members of the different religious orders varied, monasticism generally
favoured tendencies which were among the most peaceful and progressive
of the Middle Ages. For women especially the convent fostered some of the
best sides of intellectual, moral and emotional life. Besides this it was for
several centuries a determining factor in regard to women’s economic
status.
The woman-saint and the nun are however figures the importance of which
has hitherto been little regarded. The woman-saint has met with scant
treatment beyond that of the eulogistic but too often uncritical writer of
devotional works; the lady abbess and the literary nun have engrossed the
attention of few biographers. The partisan recriminations of the
Reformation period are still widely prevalent. The saint is thrust aside as a
representative of gross superstition, and the nun is looked upon as a slothful
and hysterical, if not as a dissolute character. She is still thought of as those
who broke with the Catholic Church chose to depict her.
The fact that these women appeared in a totally different light to their
contemporaries is generally overlooked; that the monk and the nun enjoyed
the esteem and regard of the general public throughout a term bordering on
a thousand years is frequently forgotten. Even at the time of the

Reformation, when religious contentions were at their height, the nun who
was expelled from her home appeared deserving of pity rather than of
reproach to her more enlightened contemporaries. As part of an institution
that had outlived its purpose she was perhaps bound to pass away. But the
work she had done and the aims for which she had striven contributed their
share in formulating the new standards of life. The attitude of mind which
had been harboured and cultivated in the cloister, must be reckoned among
the most civilizing influences which have helped to develop mental and
moral strength in Western Europe.
The social value of cloistered life in itself may be disputed. To the
Protestant of the 16th century a profession which involved estrangement
from family ties appeared altogether harmful. Moreover monasteries and
religious houses were bound up in the reformer’s mind with the supremacy
of Rome from which he was striving hard to shake himself free. Wherever
the breach with Rome was effected the old settlements were dissolved and
their inmates were thrust back into civic life. To men this meant much, but
it meant less to them than to women. In losing the possibility of religious
profession at the beginning of the 16th century, women lost the last chance
that remained to them of an activity outside the home circle. The subjection
of women to a round of domestic duties became more complete when
nunneries were dissolved, and marriage for generations afterwards was
women’s only recognised vocation.
But even in some of these same Protestant countries where nunneries were
summarily dissolved, the resulting complete subjection of women has in
modern times been felt to have outlived its purpose. How far this subjection
was a needful stage of growth which has helped to develop a higher
standard of willing purity and faithfulness need not now be discussed. In
certain countries, however, where the monastic system with all the
privileges it conferred on women was swept away, we now find a strong
public opinion against the restriction of women’s activity to the domestic
circle, and these countries were among the first to break down the artificial
barriers imposed on woman’s influence and grant her some share in the
intellectual and political life of the community.
The right to self-development and social responsibility which the woman of
to-day so persistently asks for, is in many ways analogous to the right which

the convent secured to womankind a thousand years ago. The woman of to-
day, who realises that the home circle as at present constituted affords
insufficient scope for her energies, had a precursor in the nun who sought a
field of activity in the convent. For the nun also hesitated, it may be from
motives which fail to appeal to us, to undertake the customary duties and
accept the ordinary joys of life. This hesitation may be attributed to
perversion of instinct, it can hardly in the case of the nun be attributed to
weakness of character, for she chose a path in life which was neither
smooth nor easy, and in this path she accomplished great things, many of
which have still living value.
It is with a view to the better appreciation of the influence and activity of
women connected with the Christian religion that the following chapters
have been written. They contain an enquiry into the cult of women-saints,
and some account of the general position of woman under monasticism.
These subjects however are so wide and the material at the disposal of the
student is so abundant that the analysis is confined to English and German
women.
At the outset an enquiry into the position of women among the Germans of
pre-Christian times appeared necessary, for early hagiology and the lives of
women who embraced the religious profession after Christianity was first
introduced, recall in various particulars the influence of woman and her
association with the supernatural during heathen times. The legends of
many saints contain a large element of heathen folk-tradition, together in
some cases with a small, scarcely perceptible element of historical fact. In
order therefore to establish the true importance of the Christian women,
whose labour benefited their contemporaries, and who in recognition of
their services were raised to saintship, the nature of early women-saints in
general had to be carefully considered.
In the chapters that follow, the spread of monasticism is dealt with in so far
as it was due to the influence of women, and some of the more
representative phases of convent life are described. Our enquiry dealing
with monasticism only as affecting women, the larger side of a great subject
has necessarily been ignored. There is a growing consciousness now-a-days
of the debt of gratitude which mankind as a whole owes to the monastic and
religious orders, but the history of these orders remains for the most part

unwritten. At some periods of monasticism the life of men and that of
women flow evenly side by side and can be dealt with separately, at others
their work so unites and intermingles that it seems impossible to discuss the
one apart from the other. Regarding some developments the share taken by
women, important enough in itself, seemed to me hardly capable of being
rated at its just value unless taken in conjunction with that of men. These
developments are therefore touched upon briefly or passed over altogether,
especially those in which the devotional needs of the women are interesting
chiefly in the effect which they had in stimulating the literary
productiveness of men. Other phases are passed over because they were the
outcome of a course of development, the analysis of which lies beyond the
scope of this work. This applies generally to various continental movements
which are throughout treated briefly, and especially to convent life in the
Netherlands, and to the later history of mysticism. The history of the
beguines in the North of France and the Netherlands is full of interesting
particulars, marked by the inclusion in the Acta Sanctorum of women like
Marie of Oignies († c. 1213), Lutgardis of Tongern († 1246) and Christine
of Truyen († 1224), whose fame rests on states of spiritual ecstasy, favoured
and encouraged by the Dominican friars. So again the women in Southern
Germany, who cultivated like religious moods and expressed their feelings
in writing, were largely influenced by the Dominicans, apart from whom it
seemed impossible to treat them. In England the analysis of writings such as
the ‘Revelations’ of Juliana of Norwich and of Margery Kempe necessitates
a full enquiry into the influence and popularity of Richard Rolle († 1349)
and Walter Hylton († 1395).
During the later Middle Ages the study of the influences at work in the
convent is further complicated by the development of religious associations
outside it. Pre-eminent among these stands the school of Deventer which
gave the impulse to the production of a devotional literature, the purity and
refinement of which has given it world-wide reputation. These associations
were founded by men not by women, and though the desire to influence
nuns largely moulded the men who wrote for and preached to them, still the
share taken by women in such movements is entirely subordinate.
It is needless to multiply instances of the chapters on convent life which are
here omitted; in those which I place before the reader it has been my aim
not so much to give a consecutive history of monasticism as it affected

women, as to show how numerous are the directions in which this history
can be pursued. Having regard to the nature of the subject I have addressed
myself in the first place to the student, who in the references given will, I
trust, find corroboration of my views. In quoting from early writings I have
referred to the accounts printed in the Acta Sanctorum Bollandorum and to
the edition of Latin writings published under the auspices of Migne in the
‘Patrologiae Cursus Completus,’ except in those few cases where a more
recent edition of the work referred to offered special advantages, and
regarding the date of these writings I have been chiefly guided by A.
Potthast, Wegweiser durch die Geschichtswerke des europäischen
Mittelalters, 1862. In accordance with a division which has been adopted by
some histories of art and seems to me to have much in its favour, I have
taken Early Christian times to extend to the close of the 10th century; I have
spoken of the period between 1000 and 1250 as the Earlier, and of that
between 1250 and 1500 as the Later Middle Ages. The spelling of proper
names in a work which extends over many centuries has difficulties of its
own. While observing a certain uniformity during each period, I have as far
as possible adhered to the contemporary local form of each name.
While addressing myself largely to the student, I have kept along lines
which I trust may make the subject attractive to the general reader, in whose
interest I have translated all the passages quoted. There is a growing
consciousness now-a-days that for stability in social progress we need
among other things a wider scope for women’s activity. This scope as I
hope to show was to some extent formerly secured to women by the
monastic system. Perhaps some of those who are interested in the
educational movements of to-day may care to recall the history and
arrangements of institutions, which favoured the intellectual development
of women in the past.
I cannot conclude these prefatory remarks without a word of thanks to those
who have aided me by criticism and revision. Besides the two friends to
whom I have dedicated this book, I have to cordially thank Mrs R. W.
Cracroft for the labour she has spent on the literary revision of my work in
manuscript. To Dr H. F. Heath of Bedford College I am indebted for many
suggestions on points of philology, and to Robert J. Parker, Esq. of
Lincoln’s Inn for advice on some points of law and of general arrangement.
Conscious as I am of the many defects in my work, I cannot but be grateful

to the Syndics of the University Press, for the assistance they have rendered
me in its publication, and I trust that these defects may not deter readers
from following me into somewhat unfrequented paths, wherein at any rate I
have not stinted such powers of labour as are mine.
LINA ECKENSTEIN.
December, 1895.

CONTENTS.
PAGE

Preface vii

CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.
§ 1. The Borderland of Heathendom and Christianity 1
§ 2. The Tribal Goddess as a Christian Saint 15
§ 3. Further Peculiarities of this Type of Saint 28

CHAPTER II.
CONVENTS AMONG THE FRANKS, A.D. 550-650.
§ 1. At the Frankish Invasion 45
§ 2. St Radegund and the Nunnery at Poitiers 51
§ 3. The Revolt of the Nuns at Poitiers. Convent Life in the North 65

CHAPTER III.
CONVENTS AMONG THE ANGLO-SAXONS, A.D. 630-730.
§ 1. Early Houses in Kent 79
§ 2. The Monastery at Whitby 88
§ 3. Ely and the influence of Bishop Wilfrith 95
§ 4. Houses in Mercia and in the South 106

CHAPTER IV.
ANGLO-SAXON NUNS IN CONNECTION WITH BONIFACE.
§ 1. The Women corresponding with Boniface 118

§ 2. Anglo-Saxon Nuns abroad 134

CHAPTER V.
CONVENTS IN SAXON LANDS BETWEEN A.D. 800-1000.
§ 1. Women’s Convents in Saxony 143
§ 2. Early History of Gandersheim 154
§ 3. The Nun Hrotsvith and her Writings 160

CHAPTER VI.
THE MONASTIC REVIVAL OF THE MIDDLE AGES.
1. The new Monastic Orders 184
§ 2. Benedictine Convents in the Twelfth Century 201
§ 3. The Order of St Gilbert of Sempringham 213

CHAPTER VII.
ART INDUSTRIES IN THE NUNNERY.
§ 1. Art Industries generally 222
§ 2. Herrad and the ‘Garden of Delights’ 238

CHAPTER VIII.
PROPHECY AND PHILANTHROPY.
§ 1. St Hildegard of Bingen and St Elisabeth of Schönau 256
§ 2. Women-Saints connected with Charity and Philanthropy 285

CHAPTER IX.
EARLY MYSTIC LITERATURE.
§ 1. Mystic Writings for Women in England 305
§ 2. The Convent of Helfta and its Literary Nuns 328

CHAPTER X.
SOME ASPECTS OF THE CONVENT IN ENGLAND DURING
THE LATER MIDDLE AGES.
§ 1. The external Relations of the Convent 354
§ 2. The internal Arrangements of the Convent 365
§ 3. The Foundation and internal Arrangements of Sion 383

CHAPTER XI.
MONASTIC REFORM PREVIOUS TO THE REFORMATION.
§ 1. Visitations of Nunneries in England 398
§ 2. Reforms in Germany 414

CHAPTER XII.
THE DISSOLUTION.
§ 1. The Dissolution of Nunneries in England 432
§ 2. The Memoir of Charitas Pirckheimer 458

Conclusion 477
Appendix. The Rhyme of Herrad 485
Index 488

ERRATA.
date of St Ida in A. SS. Boll. should be Sept. 4 instead
Page 23, note 1,
of June 20.
" 26, line 7, read tilth instead of silk.
" 162, " 21, read Martianus instead of Marianus.
" 190, " 32, read 1240 as the date of Jacobus di Vitriaco’s death.
" 241, " 8, read Bergen instead of Berg.

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY.
‘Die mit dem goldenen Schuh und dem
Geiger ist auch eine Muttergottes.’ Bavarian
Saying.

§ 1. The Borderland of Heathendom and Christianity.

In order to gain an insight into the causes of the rapid development of
monasticism among the German races, it is necessary to enquire into the
social arrangements of the period which witnessed the introduction of
Christianity, and into those survivals of the previous period of social
development which German Christianity absorbed. Among peoples of
German race monastic life generally, and especially monastic life which
gave scope for independent activity among women, had a development of
its own. Women of the newly-converted yet still barbarian race readily
gathered together and dwelt in religious settlements founded on their own
initiative and ruled independently of men. A reason for this must be sought
in the drift of contemporary life, which we shall thus have to discuss at
some length.
During the period of declining heathendom—for how long, measuring time
by centuries, it is not yet possible to say—the drift of society had been
towards curtailing woman’s liberty of movement and interfering with her
freedom of action. When the Germans crossed the threshold of history the
characteristics of the father-age were already in the ascendant; the social
era, when the growing desire for certainty of fatherhood caused individual
women and their offspring to be brought into the possession of individual
men, had already begun. The influence of women was more and more

restricted owing to their domestic subjection. But traditions of a time when
it had been otherwise still lingered.
Students of primitive history are recognising, for peoples of German race
among others, the existence of an early period of development, when
women played a greater part in both social and tribal life. Folk-lore,
philology, and surviving customs yield overwhelming evidence in support
of the few historic data which point to the period, conveniently called the
mother-age, when women held positions of authority inside the tribal group
and directly exercised influence on the doings of the tribe[1].
This period, the mother-age, is generally looked upon as an advance from
an earlier stage of savagery, and considered to be contemporaneous with the
beginnings of settled tribal life. It brought with it the practice of tilth and
agriculture, and led to the domestication of some of the smaller animals and
the invention of weaving and spinning, achievements with which it is
recognised that women must be credited.
In matters of polity and sex it established the paramount importance of the
woman; it is she who regulates the home, who notes the changes of the
seasons, who stores the results of experience, and treasures up the
intellectual wealth of the community in sayings which have come down to
us in the form of quaint maxims and old-world saws. As for family
arrangements, it was inside the tribal group and at the tribal festival that sex
unions were contracted; and this festival, traditions of which survive in
many parts of Europe to this day, and which was in its earliest forms a
period of unrestrained license for the women as well as the men, was
presided over by the tribal mothers, an arrangement which in various
particulars affords an explanation of many ideas associated with women in
later times.
The father-age succeeding to the mother-age in time altogether
revolutionised the relations of the sexes; transient sex unions, formerly the
rule, were gradually eliminated by capture and retention of wives from
outside the tribal group. The change marks a distinct step in social advance.
When men as heads of families succeeded to much of the influence women
had held in the tribe, barbarous tendencies, such as blood sacrifice, were
checked and a higher moral standard was attained. But this was done at the

cost of her prerogative to the woman; and her social influence to some
extent passed from her.
It must be granted that the character of the mother-age in some of its
bearings is hypothetical, but we can infer many of the social arrangements
of the period from surviving customs and usages, and its organisation from
the part woman played in tradition and saga, and, as we shall see later, from
folk-traditions preserved in the legends of the saints. And further, unless we
admit that the social arrangements of the earlier period differed from those
of the later, we are at a loss to account for the veneration in which woman
was held and for the influence exerted by her as we confront her on the
threshold of written history. When once we grasp the essentials of these
earlier arrangements, we hold the clue to the existence of types of character
and tendencies which otherwise appear anomalous.
For at the time when contact with Christianity brought with it the possibility
of monastic settlements, the love of domestic life had not penetrated so
deeply, nor were its conditions so uniformly favourable, but that many
women were ready to break away from it. Reminiscences of an
independence belonging to them in the past, coupled with the desire for
leadership, made many women loth to conform to life inside the family as
wives and mothers under conditions formulated by men. Tendencies
surviving from the earlier period, and still unsubdued, made the advantages
of married life weigh light in the balance against a loss of liberty. To
conceive the force of these tendencies is to gain an insight into the elements
which the convent forthwith absorbs.
In the world outside the convent commanding figures of womankind
become fewer with outgoing heathendom, and the part played by women
becomes of less and less importance. There is less room left for the Gannas
of history or for the Kriemhilds of saga, for powerful natures such as the
Visigoth princess Brunihild, queen of the Franks, or Drahomir of
Brandenburg, queen in Bohemia, who gratify their passion for influence
with a recklessness which strikes terror into the breasts of their
contemporaries. As the old chronicler of St Denis remarks, women who are
bent on evil do worse evil than men. But in the convent the influence of
womankind lasted longer. Spirited nuns and independent-minded abbesses
turn to account the possibilities open to them in a way which commands

respect and repeatedly secures superstitious reverence in the outside world.
The influence and the powers exerted by these women, as we shall see
further on, are altogether remarkable, especially during early Christian
times. But we also come across frequent instances of lawlessness among the
women who band together in the convent,—a lawlessness to which the
arrangements of the earlier age likewise supply a clue. For that very love of
independence, which led to beneficial results where it was coupled with
self-control and consciousness of greater responsibility, tended in the
direction of vagrancy and dissoluteness when it was accompanied by
distaste for every kind of restraint.
In this connection we must say a few words on the varying status of loose
women, since the estimation in which these women were held and the
attitude assumed towards them affected monasticism in various particulars.
It is true that during early Christian times little heed was taken of them and
few objections were raised to their influence, but later distinct efforts were
made by various religious orders to prevent women from drifting into a
class which, whatever may have been its condition in past times, was felt to
be steadily and surely deteriorating.
The distinction of women into so-called respectable and disreputable
classes dates from before the introduction of Christianity. It arose as the
father-age gained on the mother-age, when appropriated women were more
and more absorbed into domesticity, while those women outside, who either
resented or escaped subjection, found their position surrounded by
increasing difficulties, and aspersion more and more cast on their
independence. By accepting the distinction, the teachers of Christianity
certainly helped to make it more definite; but for centuries the existence of
loose women, so far from being condemned, was hardly discountenanced
by them. The revenues which ecclesiastical courts and royal households
derived from taxes levied on these women as a class yield proof of this[2].
Certainly efforts were made to set limits to their practices and the disorderly
tendencies which in the nature of things became connected with them and
with those with whom they habitually consorted. But this was done not so
much to restrain them as to protect women of the other class from being
confounded with them. Down to the time of the Reformation, the idea that
the existence of loose women as a class should be discountenanced does not
present itself, for they were a recognised feature of court life and of town

life everywhere. Marshalled into bands, they accompanied the king and the
army on their most distant expeditions, and stepped to the fore wherever
there was question of merrymaking or entertainment. Indeed there is reason
to believe, improbable though it may seem at first sight, that women of
loose life, as we come across them in the Middle Ages, are successors to a
class which had been powerful in the past. They are not altogether depraved
and despised characters such as legislation founded on tenets of Roman
Law chose to stamp them. For law and custom are often at variance
regarding the rights and privileges belonging to them. These rights and
privileges they retained in various particulars till the time of the
Reformation, which indeed marks a turning point in the attitude taken by
society towards women generally.
Different ages have different standards of purity and faithfulness. The loose
or unattached women of the past are of many kinds and many types; to
apply the term prostitute to them raises a false idea of their position as
compared with that of women in other walks of life. If we would deal with
them as a class at all, it is only this they have in common,—that they are
indifferent to the ties of family, and that the men who associate with them
are not by so doing held to incur any responsibility towards them or towards
their offspring.
If we bear in mind the part these women have played and the modifications
which their status has undergone, it will be seen that the subject is one
which nearly affects monasticism. For the convent accepted the dislike
women felt to domestic subjection and countenanced them in their refusal
to undertake the duties of married life. It offered an escape from the tyranny
of the family, but it did so on condition of such a sacrifice of personal
independence, as in the outside world more and more involved the loss of
good repute. On the face of it, a greater contrast than that between the loose
woman and the nun is hard to conceive; and yet they have this in common,
that they are both the outcome of the refusal among womankind to accept
married relations on the basis of the subjection imposed by the father-age.
In other respects too the earlier heathen period was not without influence on
the incoming Christian faith, and helped to determine its conceptions with
regard to women. In actual life the sacerdotal privileges, which tribal
mothers had appropriated to themselves at the time of the introduction of

Christianity, were retained by the priestess; while in the realm of the ideal
the reverence in which tribal mothers had been held still lived on in the
worship of the tribal mother-divinity. It is under this twofold aspect, as
priestess and as tribal mother-goddess, that the power of women was
brought face to face with Christianity; the priestess and the mother-goddess
were the well-defined types of heathen womanhood with which the early
Church was called upon to deal.
We will show later on how the ideal conception prevailed, and how the
heathen mother-goddess often assumed the garb of a Christian woman-
saint, and as a Christian woman-saint was left to exist unmolested. Not so
the heathen priestess and prophetess. From the first introduction of
Christianity the holding of sacerdotal powers by women was resented both
within and without the Church, and opprobrium was cast on the women
who claimed to mediate between the human and the divine.
At the time of the advent of Christianity the Gannas and Veledas of the
Roman period are still a living reality; they are the ‘wise women’ who every
now and then leave their retreat and appear on the stage of history. A
prophetess in gorgeous apparel makes her entry into Verdun in the year 547,
drawing crowds about her and foretelling the future. She is in no way
intimidated by the exorcisms of prelates, and presently leaves to betake
herself to the court of the Frankish queen Fredegund. Again in 577 we find
the Frankish king Guntchramm in consultation with a woman soothsayer,
and other cases of the kind are on record[3].
In the ninth century the Church more effectually exercised her influence in
the case of the woman Thiota, who coming from Switzerland inflamed the
minds of the folk in Mainz; for she was accused of profanity and publicly
scourged[4]. But for all the attacks of the Church, the folk persisted in
clinging to its priestesses and in believing them gifted with special powers.
Grimm shows how the Christian accusers of soothsaying women made
them into odious witches[5]; Wuttke and Weinhold, both well-known
students of folk-lore, consider that witches were originally heathen
priestesses[6]. The intrinsic meaning of the word hexe, the German
designation for witch, points to some one who originally belonged to a
group living in a particular manner, but whose practices made her
obnoxious to those who had apprehended the higher moral standard of a

later social period. But the Church failed to stamp even the witch as wholly
despicable; for in popular estimation she always retained some of the
attributes of the priestess, the wise woman, the bona domina, the ‘white
witch’ of tradition; so that the doctrine that the soothsaying woman is
necessarily the associate of evil was never altogether accepted. Even now-a-
days incidents happen occasionally in remote districts which show how the
people still readily seek the help of women in matters of wisdom, of
leechcraft, and of prescience. It was only under the influence of a scare that
people, who were accustomed to consult the wise woman in good faith,
could be brought to abhor her as a witch. It was only during the later
Middle Ages that the undisputed and indisputable connection of some ‘wise
women’ with licentious customs gave their traducers a weapon of which
they were not slow to avail themselves, and which enabled them to rouse
fanaticism of the worst kind against these women.
The practices and popularity of witchcraft were in truth the latest survivals
of the mother-age. The woman, who devised love-charms and brewed
manifold remedies for impotence and for allaying the pangs of childbirth,
who pretended to control the weather and claimed the power to turn the
milk of a whole village blue, carried on traditions of a very primitive
period. And her powers, as we shall see, always had a close parallel in those
attributed to women-saints. For example St Gertrud of Nivelles has left a
highly prized relic to womankind in the form of a cloak which is still hung
about those who are desirous of becoming mothers[7]; and the hair of a
saint, Mechthild, is still hung outside the church at Töss in Switzerland to
avert the thunderstorm[8]; and again St Gunthild of Biberbach and others are
still appealed to that they may avert the cattle plague[9]. What difference, it
may be asked, is there between the powers attributed to these saints and the
powers with which witches are usually credited? They are the obverse and
reverse of woman’s connection with the supernatural, which in the one case
is interpreted by the sober mind of reverence, and in the other is dreaded
under the perturbing influence of a fear encouraged, if not originated, by
Christian fanatics.
In the Christian Church the profession of the nun was accepted as holy, but
an impassable gulf separated her from the priestess. During early Christian
times we come across the injunction that women shall not serve at the
altar[10], and that lady abbesses shall not take upon themselves religious

duties reserved to men by the Church. When we think of women gathered
together in a religious establishment and dependent on the priest outside for
the performing of divine worship, their desire to manage things for
themselves does not appear unnatural, encouraged as it would be by
traditions of sacerdotal rights belonging to them in the past. And it is
worthy of notice that as late as the 13th century, Brother Berthold, an
influential preacher of south Germany, speaks ardently against women who
would officiate at divine service and urges the mischief that may result from
such a course.
Turning to the question of how far these obvious survivals from a heathen
age are determined by time and place, we find broad lines of difference
between the heathen survivals of the various branches of the German race,
and considerable diversity in the character of their early Christianity and
their early women-saints. This diversity is attributable to the fact that the
heathen beliefs of these various peoples were not the same at the time of
their first contact with Christianity, and that they did not accept it under like
circumstances.
For while those branches of the race who moved in the vanguard of the
great migration, the Vandals, the Burgundians and the Goths, readily
embraced Christianity, it was Christianity in its Arian form. Arianism,
which elsewhere had been branded as heresy and well-nigh stamped out,
suddenly revived among the Germans; all the branches of the race who
came into direct contact with peoples of civilized Latinity readily embraced
it. Now one of the distinguishing features of Arian belief was its hatred of
monasticism[11]. The Arian convert hunted the monk from his seclusion and
thrust him back to the duties of civic life. It is not then among Germans
who adopted Arian Christianity that the beginnings of convent life must be
sought. Indeed as Germans these peoples soon passed away from the theatre
of history; they intermarried and fell in with the habits of the people among
whom they settled, and forfeited their German language and their German
traditions.
It was otherwise with the Franks who entered Gaul at the close of the fourth
century, and with the Anglo-Saxons who took possession of Britain. The
essentially warlike character of these peoples was marked by their worship
of deities such as Wodan, a worship before which the earlier worship of

mother-divinities was giving way. Women had already been brought into
subjection, but they had a latent desire for independence, and among the
Franks and Anglo-Saxons women of the newly converted race eagerly
snatched at the possibilities opened out by convent life, and in their ranks
history chronicles some of the earliest and most remarkable developments
of monasticism. But the Franks and the Anglo-Saxons, in leaving behind the
land of their origin, had left behind those hallowed sites on which primitive
worship so essentially depends. It is in vain that we seek among them for a
direct connection between heathen mother-divinity and Christian woman-
saint; their mother-divinities did not live on in connection with the Church.
It is true that the inclination to hold women in reverence remained, and
found expression in the readiness with which they revered women as saints.
The women-saints of the Anglo-Saxons and the Franks are numerous, and
are nearly all known to have been interested in convent foundations. But the
legends, which in course of time have crystallised round them, and the
miracles attributed to them, though containing certain elements of heathen
folk-tradition, are colourless and pale compared with the traditions which
have been preserved by saint legend abroad. It is in Germany proper, where
the same race has been in possession of the same sites for countless
generations, that the primitive character of heathen traditions is most
pronounced and has most directly determined and influenced the cult and
the legends of women-saints.
Besides the reminiscences of the early period which have survived in saint
legend, traditions and customs of the same period have lived on in the
worship of the Virgin Mary. The worship of the Virgin Mary was but
slightly developed in Romanised Gaul and Keltic Britain, but from the
beginning of the sixth century it is a marked feature in the popular creed in
those countries where the German element prevailed.
As Mrs Jameson says in her book on the legends of the Madonna: ‘It is
curious to observe, as the worship of the Virgin mother expanded and
gathered in itself the relics of many an ancient faith, how the new and the
old elements, some of them apparently most heterogeneous, became
amalgamated and were combined into the earlier forms of art...[12].’
Indeed the prominence given to the Virgin is out of all proportion to the
meagre mention of her in the gospels. During the early Christian period she

was largely worshipped as a patron saint in France, England and Germany,
and her fame continued steadily increasing with the centuries till its climax
was reached in the Middle Ages, which witnessed the greatest concessions
made by the Church to the demands of popular faith.
According to Rhys[13] many churches dedicated to Mary were built on spots
where tradition speaks of the discovery of a wooden image, probably a
heathen statue which was connected with her.
In the seventh century Pope Sergius (687-701) expressly ordered that the
festivals of the Virgin Mary were to take place on heathen holy days in
order that heathen celebrations might become associated with her[14]. The
festivals of the Virgin to this day are associated with pilgrimages, the taste
for which to the Frenchman of the Middle Ages appeared peculiarly
German. The chronicler Froissart, writing about 1390, remarks ‘for the
Germans are fond of performing pilgrimages and it is one of their
customs[15].’
Mary then, under her own name, or under the vaguer appellation of Our
Lady (Unser liebe frau, Notre Dame, de heilige maagd), assimilated
surviving traditions of the heathen faith which were largely reminiscences
of the mother-age; so that Mary became the heiress of mother-divinities,
and her worship was associated with cave, and tree, and fountain, and hill-
top, all sites of the primitive cult.
‘Often,’ says Menzel[16], ‘a wonder-working picture of the Madonna is
found hung on a tree or inside a tree; hence numerous appellations like
“Our dear Lady of the Oak,” “Our dear Lady of the Linden-tree,” etc. Often
at the foot of the tree, upon which such a picture is hung, a fountain flows
to which miraculous power is ascribed.’
In the Tyrol we hear of pictures which have been discovered floating in a
fountain or which were borne to the bank by a river[17].
As proof of the Virgin Mary’s connection with festivals, we find her name
associated in Belgium with many pageants held on the first of May.
Throughout German lands the Assumption of the Virgin comes at the
harvest festival, and furnishes an occasion for some pilgrimage or fair

which preserves many peculiar and perplexing traits of an earlier
civilization.
The harvest festival is coupled in some parts of Germany with customs that
are of extreme antiquity. In Bavaria the festival sometimes goes by the
name of the ‘day of sacred herbs,’ kräuterweihtag; near Würzburg it is
called the ‘day of sacred roots,’ würzelweihtag, or ‘day of bunch-gathering,’
büschelfrauentag[18]. In the Tyrol the 15th of August is the great day of the
Virgin, grosse frauentag, when a collection of herbs for medicinal purposes
is made. A number of days, frauentage, come in July and August and are
now connected with the Virgin, on which herbs are collected and offered as
sacred bunches either on the altar of Our Lady in church and chapel, or on
hill-tops which throughout Germany are the sites of ancient woman-
worship[19]. This collecting and offering of herbs points to a stage even
more primitive than that represented by offerings of grain at the harvest
festival.
In a few instances the worship of Mary is directly coupled with that of some
heathen divinity. In Antwerp to this day an ancient idol of peculiar
appearance is preserved, which women, who are desirous of becoming
mothers, decorate with flowers at certain times of the year. Its heathen
appellation is lost, but above it now stands a figure of the Virgin[20].
Again we find the name of Mary joined to that of the heathen goddess Sif.
In the Eiffel district, extending between the rivers Rhine, Meuse and Mosel,
a church stands dedicated to Mariasif, the name of Mary being coupled with
that of Sif, a woman-divinity of the German heathen pantheon, whom
Grimm characterizes as a giver of rain[21]. The name Mariahilf, a similar
combination, is frequently found in south Germany, the name of Mary as
we hope to show further down being joined to that of a goddess who has
survived in the Christian saint Hilp[22].
These examples will suffice to show the close connection between the
conceptions of heathendom and popular Christianity, and how the cloak of
heathen association has fallen on the shoulders of the saints of the Christian
Church. The authorities at Rome saw no occasion to take exception to its
doing so. Pope Gregorius II. (590-604) in a letter addressed to Melitus of
Canterbury expressly urged that the days of heathen festival should receive

solemnity through dedication to some holy martyr[23]. The Christian saint
whose name was substituted for that of some heathen divinity readily
assimilated associations of the early period. Scriptural characters and
Christian teachers were given the emblems of older divinities and assumed
their characteristics. But the varying nature of the same saint in different
countries has hardly received due attention. St Peter of the early British
Church was very different from St Peter who in Bavaria walked the earth
like clumsy good-natured Thor, or from St Peter who in Rome took the
place of Mars as protector of the city. Similarly the legends currently told of
the same saint in different countries exhibit markedly different traits.
For the transition from heathendom to Christianity was the work not of
years but of centuries; the claims made by religion changed, but the
underlying conceptions for a long time remained unaltered. Customs which
had once taken a divine sanction continued to be viewed under a religious
aspect, though they were often at variance with the newly-introduced faith.
The craving for local divinities in itself was heathen; in course of time the
cult of the saints altogether re-moulded the Christianity of Christ. But the
Church of Rome, far from opposing the multitude of those through whom
the folk sought intercession with the Godhead, opened her arms wide to all.
At the outset it lay with the local dignitary to recognise or reject the names
which the folk held in veneration. Religious settlements and Church centres
regulated days and seasons according to the calendar of the chief festivals
of the year, as accepted by the Church at Rome; but the local dignitary was
at liberty to add further names to the list at his discretion. For centuries
there was no need of canonisation to elevate an individual to the rank of
saint; the inscribing of his name on a local calendar was sufficient. Local
calendars went on indefinitely swelling the list of saintly names till the
Papal See felt called upon to interfere[24]. Since the year 1153 the right to
declare a person a saint has lain altogether with the authorities at Rome[25].
Considering the circumstances under which the peoples of German race
first came into contact with Christianity, it is well to recall the fact that a
busy Church life had grown up in many of the cities north of the Alps,
which were centres of the Roman system of administration previous to the
upheaval and migration of German heathen tribes, which began in the
fourth century. Legend has preserved stories of the apostles and their

disciples wandering northwards and founding early bishoprics along the
Rhine, in Gaul and in Britain[26]. The massacres of Christians in the reign of
Diocletian cannot be altogether fabulous; but after the year 313, when
Constantine at Rome officially accepted the new faith, until the German
invasion, the position of Christianity was well secured.
A certain development of monastic life had accompanied its spread. In
western Gaul we hear of Martin of Tours ( † 400) who, after years of
military service and religious persecution, settled near Poitiers and drew
about him many who joined him in a round of devotion and work. The
monastic, or rather cœnobite, settlement of his time consisted of a number
of wattled cells or huts, surrounded by a trench or a wall of earth. The
distinction between the earlier word, coenobium, and the later word,
monasterium, as used in western Europe, lies in this, that the coenobium
designates the assembled worshippers alone, while the monastery
presupposes the possession of a definite site of land[27]. In this sense the
word monastery is as fitly applied to settlements ruled by women as to
those ruled by men, especially during the early period when these
settlements frequently include members of both sexes. St Martin of Tours is
also credited with having founded congregations of religious women[28], but
I have found nothing definite concerning them.
Our knowledge of the Christian life of the British is very limited;
presumably the religious settlement was a school both of theology and of
learning, and no line of distinction divided the settlements of priests from
those of monks. From Gildas, a British writer, who at the time of the Anglo-
Saxon invasion (c. 560) wrote a stern invective against the irreligious ways
of his countrymen, we gather that women lived under the direction of
priests, but it is not clear whether they were vowed to continence[29]. But as
far as I am aware, there is no evidence forthcoming that before the Saxon
invasion women lived in separate religious establishments, the rule of
which was in the hands of one of their own sex[30].
The convent is of later date. During the early centuries of established
Christianity the woman who takes the vow of continence secures the
protection of the Church but does not necessarily leave her home-
surroundings.

Thus Ambrosius, archbishop of Milan († 397), one of the most influential
supporters of early Christianity, greatly inflamed women’s zeal for a
celibate life. But in the writings of Ambrosius, which treat of virginity, there
is no suggestion that the widow or the maiden who vows continence shall
seek seclusion or solitude[31]. Women vowed to continence moved about
freely, secure through their connection with the Church from distasteful
unions which their relatives might otherwise force upon them. Their only
distinctive mark was the use of a veil.
Similarly we find Hilarius († 369), bishop of Poitiers, addressing a letter to
his daughter Abra on the beauties of the unmarried state. In this he assures
her, that if she be strong enough to renounce an earthly bridegroom,
together with gay and splendid apparel, a priceless pearl shall fall to her
share[32]. But in this letter also there is no suggestion that the woman who
embraces religion should dwell apart from her family. It is well to bear this
in mind, for after the acceptance of Christianity by the peoples of German
race, we occasionally hear of women who, though vowed to religion, move
about freely among their fellows; but Church councils and synods began to
urge more and more emphatically that this was productive of evil, and that a
woman who had taken the religious vow must be a member of a convent.
To sum up;—the peoples of German race, at the time of their contact with
Christianity, were in a state of social development which directly affected
the form in which they accepted the new faith and the institutions to which
such acceptance gave rise. Some branches of the race, deserting the land of
their birth, came into contact with peoples of Latin origin, and embraced
Christianity under a form which excluded monasticism, and soon lost their
identity as Germans. Others, as the Franks and Anglo-Saxons, giving up the
worship of their heathen gods, accepted orthodox Christianity, and favoured
the mode of life of those who followed peaceful pursuits in the monastery,
pursuits which their wives especially were eager to embrace. Again, those
peoples who remained in possession of their earlier homes largely preserved
usages dating from a primitive period of tribal organization, usages which
affected the position of their women and determined the character of their
women-saints. It is to Germany proper that we must go for the woman-
priestess who lives on longest as the witch, and for the loose women who
most markedly retain special rights and privileges. And it is also in

Germany proper that we find the woman-saint who is direct successor to the
tribal mother-goddess.

§ 2. The Tribal Goddess as a Christian Saint.

Before considering the beginnings of convent life as the work of women
whose existence rests on a firm historic basis, we must enquire into the
nature of women-saints. From the earliest times of established Christianity
the lives of men and women who were credited with special holiness have
formed a favourite theme of religious narratives, which were intended to
keep their memory green and to impress the devout with thoughts of their
saintliness.
The Acts of the Saints, the comprehensive collection of which is now in
course of publication under the auspices of the Bollandists, form a most
important branch of literature. They include some of the most valuable
material for a history of the first ten centuries of our era, and give a most
instructive insight into the drift of Christianity in different epochs. The
aims, experiences and sufferings of Christian heroes and heroines inspired
the student and fired the imagination of the poet. Prose narrative told of
their lives, poems were written in their praise, and hymns were composed to
be sung at the celebration of their office. The godly gained confidence from
the perusal of such compositions, and the people hearing them read or sung
were impressed in favour of Christian doctrine.
The number of men and women whom posterity has glorified as saints is
legion. Besides the characters of the accepted and the apocryphal gospels,
there are the numerous early converts to Christianity who suffered for their
faith, and all those who during early Christian times turned their energies to
practising and preaching the tenets of the new religion, and to whose
memory a loving recollection paid the tribute of superstitious reverence.
Their successors in the work of Christianity accepted them as patron saints
and added their names to the list of those to whose memory special days
were dedicated. Many of them are individuals whose activity in the cause of
Christianity is well authenticated. Friends have enlarged on their work,
contemporary history refers to their existence, and often they have

themselves left writings, which give an insight into their lives. They are the
early and true saints of history, on whose shoulders in some cases the cloak
of heathen association has fallen, but without interfering with their great
and lasting worth.
But besides those who were canonised for their enthusiasm in the cause of
early Christianity, the Acts of the Saints mention a number of men and
women who enjoy local reverence, but of whose actual existence during
Christian times evidence is wanting. Among them are a certain number of
women with whom the present chapter purposes to deal, women who are
locally worshipped as saints, and whose claims to holiness are generally
recognised, but whose existence during Christian times is hypothetical.
Their legends contain a small, in some cases a scarcely sensible, basis of
historic fact, and their cult preserves traits which are pre-Christian, often
anti-Christian, in character.
The traveller Blunt, during a stay in Italy in the beginning of this century,
was struck with the many points which modern saints and ancient gods
have in common. He gives a description of the festival of St Agatha at
Catania, of which he was an eye-witness, and which to this day, as I have
been told, continues little changed. The festival, as Blunt describes it,
opened with a horse-race, which he knew from Ovid was one of the
spectacles of the festival of the goddess Ceres; and further he witnessed a
mummery and the carrying about of huge torches, both of which he also
knew formed part of the old pagan festival. But more remarkable than this
was a great procession which began in the evening and lasted into the night;
hundreds of citizens crowded to draw through the town a ponderous car, on
which were placed the image of the saint and her relics, which the priests
exhibited to the ringing of bells. Among these relics were the veil of
Agatha, to which is ascribed the power of staying the eruption of Mount
Aetna, and the breasts of the saint, which were torn off during her
martyrdom[33]. Catania, Blunt knew, had always been famous for the
worship of Ceres, and the ringing of bells and a veil were marked features
of her festivals, the greater and the lesser Eleusinia. Menzel tells us that
huge breasts were carried about on the occasion[34]. Further, Blunt heard
that two festivals took place yearly in Catania in honour of Agatha; one
early in the spring, the other in the autumn, exactly corresponding to the
time when the greater and lesser Eleusinia were celebrated. Even the name

Agatha seemed but a taking over into the new religion of a name sacred to
the old. Ceres was popularly addressed as Bona Dea, and the name Agatha,
which does not occur as a proper name during ancient times, seemed but a
translation of the Latin epithet into Greek.
The legend of Agatha as contained in the Acta Sanctorum places her
existence in the third century and gives full details concerning her
parentage, her trials and her martyrdom; but I have not been able to
ascertain when it was written. Agatha is the chief saint of the district all
about Catania, and we are told that her fame penetrated at an early date into
Italy and Greece[35].
It is of course impossible actually to disprove the existence of a Christian
maiden Agatha in Catania in the third century. Some may incline to the
view that such a maiden did exist, and that a strange likeness between her
experiences and name on the one hand, and the cult of and epithet applied
to Ceres on the other, led to the popular worship of her instead of the
ancient goddess. The question of her existence as a Christian maiden during
Christian times can only be answered by a balance of probabilities. Our
opinion of the truth or falsehood of the traditions concerning her rests on
inference, and the conclusion at which we arrive upon the evidence must
largely depend on the attitude of mind in which we approach the subject.
The late Professor Robertson Smith has insisted that myths are latter-day
inventions which profess to explain surviving peculiarities of ritual. If this
be so, we hold in the Eleusinia a clue to the incidents of the Agatha legend.
The story for example of her veil, which remained untouched by the flames
when she was burnt, may be a popular myth which tries to account for the
presence of the veil at the festival. The incident of the breasts torn off
during martyrdom was invented to account for the presence of these strange
symbols.
Instances of this kind could be indefinitely multiplied. Let the reader, who
wishes to pursue the subject on classic soil, examine the name, the legend
and the emblem of St Agnes, virgin martyr of Rome, who is reputed to have
lived in the third century and whose cult is well established in the fourth; let
him enquire into the name, legend and associations of St Rosalia of

Palermo, invoked as a protectress from the plague, of whom no mention
occurs till four centuries after her reputed existence[36].
I have chosen Agatha as a starting point for the present enquiry, because
there is much evidence to hand of the prevalence of mother-deities in pre-
Christian Sicily, and because the examination of German saint-legend and
saint-worship leads to analogous results. In Germany too the mother
divinity of heathendom seems to survive in the virgin saint; and in Germany
virgin saints, in attributes, cult and name, exhibit peculiarities which it
seems impossible to explain save on the hypothesis that traditions of the
heathen past survive in them. So much is associated with them which is pre-
Christian, even anti-Christian in character, that it seems legitimate to speak
of them as pseudo-saints.
I own it is not always possible to distinguish between the historical saint
and the pseudo-saint. Sometimes data are wanting to disprove the
statements made by the legend-writer about time and place; sometimes
information is not forthcoming about local traditions and customs, which
might make a suggestive trait in saint-legend stand out in its full meaning.
In some cases also, owing to a coincidence of name, fictitious associations
have become attached to a real personage. But these cases I believe are
comparatively few. As a general rule it holds good that a historical saint will
be readily associated with miraculous powers, but not with profane and
anti-Christian usages. Where the latter occur it is probable that no evidence
will be forthcoming of the saint’s actual existence during Christian times. If
she represents a person who ever existed at all, such a person must have
lived in a far-distant heathen past, at a time which had nothing in common
with Christian teaching and with Christian tenets.
There is this further peculiarity about the woman pseudo-saint of Germany,
that she is especially the saint of the peasantry; so that we rarely hear more
of her than perhaps her name till centuries after her reputed existence. Early
writers of history and biography have failed to chronicle her doings. Indeed
we do not hear of her at all till we hear of her cult as one of long standing or
of great importance.
It is only when the worship of such saints, who in the eyes of the common
folk are the chief glory of their respective districts, attracts the attention of

the Church, that the legend-writer sets to work to write their legends. He
begins by ascribing to the holder of a venerated name human parentage and
human experiences, he collects and he blends the local traditions associated
with the saint on a would-be historical background, and makes a story
which frequently offers a curious mixture of the Christian and the profane.
Usually he places the saint’s existence in the earliest period of Christianity;
sometimes at a time when Christianity was unknown in the neighbourhood
where she is the object of reverence.
Moreover all these saints are patronesses of women in their times of special
trial. Their cult generally centres round a cave, a fountain of peculiar power,
a tree, or some other site of primitive woman-worship. Frequently they are
connected with some peculiar local custom which supplies the clue to
incidents introduced by the legend-writer. And even when the clue is
wanting, it is sometimes possible to understand one legend by reading it in
the light of another. Obscure as the parallels are in some cases, in others
they are strikingly clear.
The recognised holiness of the woman pseudo-saint is in no way
determined by the limit of bishopric and diocese; she is worshipped within
geographical limits, but within limits which have not been marked out by
the Church. It was mentioned above that separate districts of Germany, or
rather tribes occupying such districts, clung to a belief in protective mother-
goddesses (Gaumütter). Possibly, where the name of a pseudo-saint is found
localised in contiguous districts, this may afford a clue to the migration of
tribes.
The Acta Sanctorum give information concerning a large number of
pseudo-saints, but this information to be read in its true light needs to be
supplemented by further details of local veneration and cult. Such details
are found in older books of devotion, and in modern books on mythology
and folk-lore. Modern religious writers, who treat of these saints, are in the
habit of leaving out or of slurring over all details which suggest profanity.
Compared with older legends, modern accounts of the saints are limp and
colourless, and share the weak sentimentality, which during the last few
centuries has come to pervade the conceptions of Catholic Christianity as
represented in pictorial art.

The names of a number of women whom the people hold in veneration have
escaped the attention of the compilers of the Acta Sanctorum, or else they
have been purposely passed over because their possessors were held
unworthy of the rank of saint. But the stories locally told of them are worth
attention, and the more so because they throw an additional light on the
stories of recognised saints.
The larger number of recognised pseudo-saints are found in the districts
into which Christianity spread as a religion of peace, or in remoter districts
where the power of the Church was less immediately felt. They are found
most often north of the Danube and east of the Rhine, especially in the lake
districts of Bavaria and Switzerland, in the marshy wilds of the Low
Countries, and in the remote forest regions of the Ardennes, the Black
Forest, the Spessart or the Vosges. Where Christianity was established as
the result of political subjection, as for example among the Saxons, the
woman pseudo-saint is hardly found at all. Perhaps the heathenism of the
Saxons differed from the heathenism of other German folk; perhaps, like
the Anglo-Saxons in England, the Saxons were conquerors of the land they
inhabited and by moving out of their old homes had lost their local
associations and their primitive cult. But, however this may be, it is not
where Christianity advanced at the point of the lance, but in the districts
where its spread was due to detached efforts of missionaries, that the
woman pseudo-saint is most frequently met with.
Wandering away into forest wilds, where scattered clearings lay like islets
in an ocean, the missionary sought a retreat remote from the interference of
government, remote also from the interference of the episcopate, where he
could realise his hope of living a worthier life. Naturally his success largely
depended on his securing the goodwill of the people in whose
neighbourhood he settled. He was obliged to adapt himself to their mode of
thought if he would win favour for his faith, and to realise their views if he
wished to modify them in the direction of his own. To bridge over the abyss
which separated his standard of life from theirs, he was bound to defer
whenever he could to their sentiments and to their conceptions of holiness.
How far these holy men ignored, how far they countenanced, the worship of
local divinities, necessarily remains an open question. Rightly or wrongly

popular tradition readily coupled the names of these early Christians with
those of its favourite women-saints.
Thus Willibrord, the Anglo-Saxon missionary who settled abroad in the
eighth century, is said to have taken up and translated relics of the woman-
saint Cunera and to have recognised her claim to veneration; her cult is
localised in various places near Utrecht. The life of Willibrord ( † 739),
written by Alcuin ( † 804), contains no mention of Cunera, for the
information we have concerning Willibrord’s interest in her is to be found
in the account of her life written centuries later[37]. This account offers such
a picturesque medley of chronological impossibilities that the
commentators of the Acta Sanctorum have entirely recast it.
The gist of the legend as told in the beginning of the 14th century is as
follows[38]. Cunera was among the virgin companions of St Ursula, and the
date of her murder, near Cöln, is given as 387, or as 449. Before the murder
Cunera was borne away from Cöln by King Radbod of Friesland, who
covered her with his cloak, an ancient symbolic form of appropriation.
Arrived at Renen he entrusted her with the keys of his kingdom, which
incensed his wedded wife to such an extent that she caused Cunera to be
strangled and the body hidden away. But the site where the saint lay was
miraculously pointed out, and the wicked queen went mad and destroyed
herself. In vain we ask why a king of the Frisians, who persistently clung to
their heathendom, should be interested in a Christian virgin and carry her
off to preside over his household, and in vain we look for the assertion or
for the proof that Cunera was a Christian at all. The Acta Sanctorum reject
the connection between Cunera and St Ursula of Cöln, but the writer Kist,
who considers her to have been a real Christian individual, argues in favour
of it. In the 12th century we find a certain Adelheid swearing to the
rightfulness of her cause on the relics of St Cunera at Renen[39].
Similarly the story goes that Agilfrid, abbot of the monastery of St Bavon in
Flanders, afterwards bishop of Liège (765-787), about the year 754
acquired the relics of the woman-saint Pharaildis and brought them to
Ghent[40]. When the Northmen ravaged Flanders in 846 the bones of
Pharaildis were among those carried away to St Omer by the Christians as
their most valued possession, and in 939 they were brought back to
Ghent[41].

The legend of Pharaildis gives no clue to the Christian interest in her, nor to
the veneration of her, which is localised at Ghent, Hamm, Steenockerzeel,
and Loo. We hear that she was married against her inclination, that she
cured her husband who was a huntsman of a wound, and that after his death
she dwelt in solitude to an advanced age, and that occasionally she wrought
miracles. Further, in popular belief, she crossed the water dryshod, she
chased away geese from the corn, and she struck the ground and the holy
fountain at Bruay welled up for the benefit of the harvesters—incidents
which are not peculiar to her legend. The festival of Pharaildis is kept on
different dates at Ghent, Cambray, Maastricht and Breda. At Ghent it is
associated with a celebrated fair, the occasion for great rejoicings among
the populace. At the church of Steenockerzeel stones of conical shape are
kept which are carried round the altar on her festival[42], in the same way as
stones are kept elsewhere and considered by some writers to be symbols of
an ancient phallic cult. The legend explains the presence of these stones by
telling how the saint one day was surreptitiously giving loaves to the poor,
when her act would have been discovered but that by intercession the
loaves were transformed into stones. This incident, the transformation of
gifts secretly given to the poor, is introduced into the legends of other
women-saints, but only in this case have I found it mentioned that the
transformed food was preserved. We shall have occasion to return to
Pharaildis, whose legend and cult offer nothing to support the view that she
was an early Christian.
There are numerous instances of a like connection between holy missionary
and woman pseudo-saint. A fair example is yielded by Leodgar (St Léger)
bishop of Autun ( † 678), a well-defined historical personality[43], whom
tradition makes into a near relative of Odilia, a saint widely venerated, but
whose reputed foundation of the monastery on the Hohenburg modern
criticism utterly discards[44].
But it is not only Christian missionaries who are associated with these
women-saints. Quite a number of saints have been brought into connection
with the house of the Karlings, and frequently Karl the Great himself
figures in the stories told of them. I do not presume to decide whether the
legendary accounts of these women are pure invention; some historic truth
may be embodied in the stories told of them. But judging by the material at
hand we are justified in disputing the existence of St Ida, who is said to

have been the wife of Pippin of Landen and ancestress of the Karlings on
the sole authority of the life of St Gertrud, her daughter. This work was long
held to be contemporary, but its earliest date is now admitted to be the 11th
century[45]. It is less easy to cast discredit on the existence of the saints
Amalberga, the one a virgin saint, the other a widow, whom hagiologists
find great difficulty in distinguishing. Pharaildis, mentioned above, and the
saints Ermelindis, Reinildis and Gudila, are said to be Amalberga’s
daughters, but together with other saints of Hainault and Brabant they are
very obviously pseudo-saints. The idea of bringing Karl the Great into some
relation with them may have arisen from a twofold desire to justify
traditions concerning them and to magnify the Emperor’s importance.
In this connection it seems worth while to quote the passage in which
Grimm[46] describes the characteristic traits of the German goddess in his
German Mythology, and to consider how these traits are more or less
pronounced in the women we have called pseudo-saints.
‘It seems well,’ he says, in the opening of his chapter on goddesses, ‘to treat
of goddesses collectively as well as individually, since a common
conception underlies them all, which will thus stand out the more clearly.
They are conceived essentially as divine mothers, travelling about and
visiting mortals, from whom mankind learn the ways and arts of
housekeeping and tilth: spinning, weaving, guarding the hearth, sowing and
reaping’ (the italics are his).
The tendency of the goddess to wander from place to place is reflected in
many women pseudo-saints who are represented in their legends as
inhabiting at various periods of their lives different parts of the district in
which they are the object of veneration. Verena of northern Switzerland
dwelt first at Solothurn, where a cave, which was her dwelling-place, is
now transformed into a chapel. Later she took boat to the place where the
Aar, Reuss and Limmat meet, where she dwelt in solitude, and her memory
is preserved at a spot called the cell of Verena (Verenazell). Later still she
went to dwell at Zurzach, a place which was celebrated for a fair, called
Verena’s fair, of which more anon. All these places are on or near the river
Aar, at no inconsiderable distance from each other. The legend, as told by
Stadler, takes them all into account, explaining how Verena came to be
connected with each[47].

Similarly the legend of the saint Odilia[48], referred to above in connection
with the Hohenburg, explains how the saint comes to be worshipped on
both sides of the Rhine, a cruel father having driven her away from home.
On the eastern side of the river there is a hill of St Odilia, Odilienberg,
where there is a fountain which for its healing powers is visited twice a year
and the site of which is guarded by a hermit. At Scherweiler there is also a
site hallowed to her worship, and local tradition explains that she stayed
there as a child; according to another version she was discovered floating in
a wooden chest on the water[49]. Finally she is said to have settled on the
Hohenburg west of the Rhine and to have founded a monastery. The critic
Roth has written an admirable article on Odilia and the monastery of
Hohenburg. He shows that the monastery was ancient and that at first it was
dedicated to Christ and St Peter, though afterwards their names were
supplanted by that of St Odilia[50]. Here, as on the other side of the Rhine,
the folk celebrate her festival by pilgrimages to a fountain which has
miraculous healing power, and by giving reverence to a sacred stone, on
which Odilia is said to have knelt so long in prayer for the soul of her
wicked father, that her knees wore holes in it[51].
We hear that other saints travelled about and stayed now at one place, now
at another. St Notburg visited different parts of the Neckar district[52],
Godeleva of Ghistelles[53] passed some time of her life in the marshy
district between Ostend and Bruges. This Godeleva is addressed in her
litany as the saint of marriage; she was buried, we are told, in a cave, which
was held holy as late as the present century. The pond, into which she was
thrown after death, for which act no reason is given, obtained, and still
retains, miraculous healing powers[54]. Her legend in other respects offers
the usual traits. She is Godeleva in some parts of the country; in others she
is Godeleina, and her life according to Potthast was written in the 11th
century by Drago, a monk of Ghistelles.
It is a curious trait in German saint-legend that the saint is often spoken of
as coming from afar—from across the sea, from Britain, from Ireland, even
from the Orkney Isles. It is thus with Ursula of Cöln, Christiane of
Dendermonde (Termonde), Lucie of Sampigny and many others. The idea
had taken root at a very early date that St Walburg, whose cult is
widespread, was identical with a sister of the missionaries, Wilibald and
Wunebald, who went from England to Germany under the auspices of the

prelate Boniface in the eighth century. We shall return to her further on[55].
It is sufficient here to point out that there is little likeness between the
sober-minded women-missionaries of Boniface’s circle and the woman-
saint who is localised under such different aspects, sometimes as a saint
whose bones exude oil of miraculous power, sometimes as a valkyrie who
anoints warriors for battle, sometimes as a witch who on the first of May
leads forth her train to nightly riot on hill tops[56].
Again the love of home industry, which Grimm claims for mother
goddesses, is reflected in the legends of many saints, to whose real
existence every clue is wanting. This holds good especially of spinning and
of weaving. Lufthildis, whose date and whose very name are uncertain, is
represented as dwelling on a hill-top near a village and marking the limits
of her district by means of her spindle, which is preserved and can be seen
to this day in the chapel of Luftelberg, the hill which is connected with
her[57]. Lucie of Sampigny, to whose shrine women who are sterile make a
pilgrimage in order to sit on the stone consecrated to her[58]; Walburg,
referred to above; Germana, whose cult appears at Bar-sur-Aube[59]; and
one of the numerous localised saints Gertrud[60], are all connected with the
distaff. In the church of Frauenkirchen, which stands near the site of the
celebrated old abbey of Lach, St Genovefa of Brabant, whose legend is
most picturesque and who is in some degree akin to Geneviève of Paris, is
believed to be sitting behind the altar from which the buzz of her spinning-
wheel is audible[61].
Again the protective interest in silk and agriculture, which Grimm claims
for the German goddess, comes out in connection with the pseudo-saint.
The harvest festival, so often associated with the Virgin Mary, is frequently
also associated with the name of a pseudo-saint. Thus we find these saints
represented with ears of corn, as Mary too has been represented[62]. The
emblem of the three ears of corn was probably accepted owing to Roman
influence. Verena of Zurzach, Notburg of Rottenburg, and Walburg, are all
pictured holding a bunch of corn in one hand. Through the intercession of
Walburg full barns are secured, while Notburg or Nuppurg of Rottenburg,
one of the chief saints of Bavaria, to whose shrine many pilgrimages are
made, holds a reaping hook as well as a bunch of corn, and throughout the
Tyrol is looked upon as patron saint of the peasantry[63].

At Meerbeck in Brabant corn is blessed before it is sown under the auspices
of the saint Berlindis, who protects tree planting. She is a saint of many
associations and we shall hear more of her later[64]. In some parts of
Brabant seed sown at the time of the new moon in the month of June is
protected by the saint Alena. We know little of Alena except that her arm
was torn off in expiation of an unknown trespass and is kept as a relic in the
church of Voorst, and that the archduchess Maria Anna of Spain sent for this
relic in 1685 in the hope of securing a son by means of the saint’s
intercession[65]. To the shrine of Lufthildis corn is also brought as an
offering to be distributed among the poor, while St Gertrud in Belgium
protects bean and pea sowing[66].
Further traits in saint worship, which suggest woman’s connection with the
beginnings of settled civilization, are found in the pseudo-saint’s frequent
association with cattle and dairy produce.
Peasants, men and women, may be seen to this day touching in reverence
the udder of the cow which a rudely cut relief in wood represents by the
side of the saint Berlindis at Meerbeck[67]. Gunthild, the patron saint of
Biberbach in Würtemburg[68], is represented holding in her hand a milk-jug,
the contents of which were inexhaustible during her lifetime. The
connection of saints with butter-making is frequent. St Radiane, otherwise
called Radegund, is chiefly worshipped at Wellenburg near Augsburg, and
her intercession secures milk and butter in plenty to her worshippers. She
was torn in pieces by wolves[69].
Judging by her cult and her legends the pseudo-saint practises and protects
in endless ways the early arts of settled agriculture and civilization. She
herds cattle, she guards flocks of sheep, she weaves and she spins, and she
is careful of the dairy. In her representations she is associated with
‘emblems’ which point to these various interests, and we find her holding
corn, a reaping-hook, or a spindle. Domestic animals are pictured by her
side, most frequently sheep, geese, cows and dogs. The cat appears
rarely[70], perhaps because it was associated with the evil side of woman’s
power. The besom too, the ancient symbol of woman’s authority, is rarely, if
ever[71], put into the saint’s hands, perhaps for a similar reason.

One other peculiarity remains to be mentioned, which also has its
counterpart in the witches’ medicinal and curative power. The pseudo-
saint’s relics (after death) exude oil which is used for medicinal purposes.
This peculiarity is noticed of the bones of the saints Walburg[72],
Rolendis[73], and Edigna[74], but it is also noticed in connection with the
relics of historical saints.
But over and above these traits in the character of the pseudo-saint, legend
often points to a heathen custom in connection with her of which we have
definite information. Tacitus tells how the image of the German goddess
Nerthus was carried about on festive occasions in a chariot drawn by cows.
The pseudo-saint either during her lifetime or after her death was often
similarly conveyed. Sometimes the animals put themselves to her chariot of
their own accord, frequently they stopped of their own accord at the
particular spot which the saint wished to be her last resting-place. Legend
tells us of such incidents in connection also with historical saints, both men
and women, and we hear further that the relics of saints sometimes and
quite suddenly became so heavy that it was impossible to move them, a sure
sign that it was safest not to try.
So far the parallels between mother-goddess and woman pseudo-saint recall
the practices of the heathen past, without actually offending against the
tenor of Christianity. But the pseudo-saint has other associations of which
this cannot be said, associations which are utterly perplexing, unless we go
back for their explanation to the ancient tribal usages when the meeting of
the tribe was the occasion for settling matters social and sexual. These
associations introduce us to an aspect of the cult of the saints which brings
primitive usages into an even clearer light, and shows how religious
associations continued independently of a change of religion.

§ 3. Further Peculiarities of this Type of Saint.

The Church, as mentioned above, had put every facility in the way of
transforming heathen festivals into its own festal days. The heathen festival
in many ways carried on the traditions of the tribal festival; the tribal
festival was connected with the cult of tribal goddesses. If we bear in mind

the many points mother-goddess, witch, and woman pseudo-saint have in
common, the association of the pseudo-saint with practices of a profane
character no longer appears wonderful. Both in the turn saint legend takes,
and in the character of festivities associated with the saint’s name, we
discern the survival of ideas which properly belong to differently
constituted family and social arrangements, the true meaning of which is all
but lost.
On looking through the legends of many women-saints, it is surprising how
often we find evil practices and heathen traditions associated with them,
practices and traditions which the legend writer naturally is often at a loss to
explain in a manner acceptable to Christianity. Thus the father of St
Christiane of Dendermonde is said to have set up a temple where girls did
service to Venus[75]; doing service to Venus being the usual way of
describing licentious pursuits.
In the metrical life of Bilihild, patron saint of Würzburg and Mainz, a
description is introduced of the marriage festival as it was celebrated by the
Franks in the Main district about the year 600, as this account would have
it. Dances took place and unions were contracted for the commencing year.
The Christian woman Bilihild was present at the festival, though we are of
course told that she found it little to her taste and determined to abolish
it[76]. The legend of Bilihild has very primitive traits and is wanting in
historical foundation and probability; and it is at least curious that her name
should be coupled with a festival which Christian religion and morality
must have condemned.
Again it is curious to find how often these women-saints die a violent death,
not for conscience sake, nor indeed for any obvious reason at all. Radiane
of Wellenburg, as mentioned above, was torn to pieces by wolves[77];
Wolfsindis of Reisbach, according to one account, was tied to wild oxen
who tore her to pieces, according to another version of her story she was
tied to a horse’s tail[78]. St Regina of Alise, in the bishopric of Autun, is
sometimes represented surrounded by flames, sometimes in a steaming
caldron[79] which recalls the caldron of regeneration of Keltic mythology.
Frequently the saints are said to have been murdered like Cunera of
Renen[80], and St Sura otherwise Soteris or Zuwarda of Dordrecht[81];

sometimes their heads are cut off as in the case of Germana worshipped at
Beaufort in Champagne[82]; sometimes like Godeleva they are strangled,
and sometimes burnt; but Christianity is not the reason assigned for their
painful deaths. For even the legend writer does not go so far as to bring in
martyrdom at a period and in districts where suffering for the Christian faith
is altogether out of the question.
Panzer tells us about a group of three women-saints, to whom we shall
presently return. He says in some churches masses are read for their souls
and prayers offered for their salvation. Though reverenced by the people in
many districts of Germany, they are as often said to have been hostile to
Christianity as favourably disposed towards it[83].
We find immoral practices and violence ascribed to some of the English
women-saints by Capgrave in the 15th century. He says of Inthware or
Iuthware, who perhaps belongs to Brittany, that she was accused of being a
harlot and put to death. Similarly he says of Osman or Oswen that she was
accused of being a witch, but when brought before a bishop she consented
to be baptized[84]. Stanton notifies of Iuthware that her translation was
celebrated at Shirbourne[85]. Winifred too, who is worshipped in Shropshire,
had her head cut off and it rolled right down the hill to a spot where a
fountain sprang up, near St Winifred’s well. The head however was
miraculously replaced, Winifred revived and lived to the end of her days as
a nun[86]. The want of information about these women makes it impossible
to judge how far their existence is purely legendary; certainly their stories
are largely coloured by heathen traditions. The names Iuthware and Oswen
are probably not Germanic; and the fact of Winifred’s living on the confines
of Wales makes it probable that she is a Keltic rather than a Germanic saint.
In connection with the festivals of some women pseudo-saints we find
celebrations of a decidedly uproarious character taking place at a
comparatively recent time. The feast of St Pharaildis, called locally Fru
Verelde, used to be the chief holiday at Ghent, and was the occasion for
much festivity and merrymaking[87]. At Lüttich (Liège) stood a chapel
dedicated to St Balbine, who is said to have been venerated far and wide in
the 14th century. On her day, the first of May, there was a festival called
Babilone at which dancing was kept up till late at night[88]. The festival of
St Godeleva kept at Longuefort maintained even in the 18th century a

character which led to a violent dispute between the populace and the
Church dignitaries, who were determined to put it down[89]. Coincident
with the festival known as the day of St Berlindis, a saint frequently
referred to as a protectress of the peasantry, there is a festival called the
Drunken Vespers, in which as early as the 16th century the archbishop
forbade his clergy to take part[90].
But by far the most striking and the most conclusive instances of the
pseudo-saint’s association with heathen survivals are afforded by St Verena
of Switzerland and St Afra of Augsburg, whose worship and history we
must examine more closely.
Verena’s association with various rites has already been referred to; she is
represented sometimes with ears of corn, sometimes accompanied by a cat,
and sometimes, which is even more suggestive, she is brought into
connection with a brothel. The procession of St Verena’s day from Zurzach
to a chapel dedicated to St Maurice passed an old linden tree which, so the
legend goes, marked the spot where the saint used to dwell. Hard by was a
house for lepers and a house of ill fame, where on the same day the district
bailiff (landvogt) opened the fair. He was obliged by old custom to pass this
tree, at which a loose woman stood awaiting him, and to dance round the
tree with her and give her money[91].
The legend of St Verena written between 1005 and 1032[92] does not
explain these associations. We are told of a woman who came from the east
with the Theban legion, which is generally supposed to have been
massacred in 287. She is said to have made her home now in one district
now in another, and one modern writer goes so far as to suggest that she
was zealous in converting the Allemans to Christianity before the coming of
Irish missionaries.
According to folk-custom in districts between the Aar and the Rhine, girls
who have secured husbands sacrifice their little maiden caps to Verena. At
Zurzach married couples make pilgrimages to the Verenastift in order to
secure offspring. Several dukes of the Allemans and their wives made such
pilgrimages in the 9th and 10th centuries. It would lead too far to enumerate
the many directions in which Verena is associated with heathendom. Her

day, which comes at the harvest festival, was a time of unrestrained license
in Zurzach, a fact on which the Acta Sanctorum cast no doubt.
Rochholz considers Verena to be a tribal mother of heathendom; Simrock in
his mythology considers her to be identical with the goddess Fru Frene, in
whom he sees a kind of German Venus[93]. Grimm tells how the version of
the Tannhäuser saga, current in Switzerland, substitutes the name Frau
Frene for that of Frau Venus[94]. The hero Tannhäuser, according to
mediæval legend, wavers between a baser and a higher interpretation of
love; the acceptance of the name Frene as representative of sensuousness
shows the associations currently preserved in connection with this so-called
saint.
A similar association occurs in Belgium, where a saint Vreken (Sint Vreke),
otherwise Vrouw Vreke, in mediæval legend is the representative of sensual
as opposed to spiritual love. Corémans describes how in the version of the
saga of the faithful Eckhardt (Van het trouwen Eckhout) current in Belgium,
the hero wavers between spiritual love of Our Lady and sensual love of
Vreke. Among the folk Vrouw Vreke is a powerful personage, for the story
goes that the Kabauters, evil spirits who dwell on the Kabauterberg, are in
her service. In the book Reta de Limbourg, which was re-written in the 17th
century, the Kabauterberg becomes a Venusberg, and Vreke is no longer a
great witch (eene grote heks) but a goddess with all the alluring charms of
Venus[95]. Grimm includes a Fru Freke among his German goddesses[96].
She retains her old importance among the folk as a protective saint and
presides over tree-planting[97].
Like the saints Verena and Vreke, St Afra of Augsburg is associated with
licentiousness; Wessely expressly calls her the patron saint of hetairism[98].
Her legend explains the connection in a peculiar manner; as told by Berno,
abbot of Reichenau († 1048), it is most picturesque. We hear how Afra and
her mother came from Cyprus, an island which mediæval, following the
classical writers, associated with the cult of Venus, and how she settled at
Augsburg and kept a house of ill fame with three companions. Here they
entertained certain Church dignitaries (otherwise unknown to history) who
persuaded the women to embrace Christianity and give up their evil
practices. They became virtuous, and when persecutions against Christians
were instituted they all suffered martyrdom; Afra was placed on a small

island and burnt at the stake[99]. The legend writer on the basis of the
previous statement places the existence of these women in the early part of
the fourth century during the reign of Diocletian. Curiously enough the
legend of Afra is led up to by a description of the worship of the heathen
goddess Zisa, a description to which Grimm attaches great importance[100].
This goddess was worshipped at or near Augsburg. Velserus[101], who in the
16th century compiled a chronicle of Augsburg, gives us a mass of
information about traditions connected with her and her worship, as he also
does about St Afra. There is in his mind of course no shadow of a suspicion
of any connection between them. But he informs us that the Zizenberg, or
hill of Zisa, and the Affenwald which he interprets as Afrawald or wood of
Afra, are one and the same place.
Berno also wrote a life of Ulrich (St Udalricus), bishop of Augsburg ( †
973), who boldly defended the town at the time of the invasion of the
Hungarians. In this life the bishop has a miraculous vision of St Afra, who
takes him on a pilgrimage by night and points out the site where he
afterwards founded a monastery, known to later ages as the monastery of St
Ulrich and St Afra. The worship of Afra is referred to by the poet
Fortunatus as early as the sixth century; the story of the saint’s martyrdom
is older than that of her conversion. The historian Rettberg is puzzled why
so much stress should be laid on her evil ways[102]; but the historian
Friedrich, regardless of perplexing associations, sees the beginnings of
convent life for women in Augsburg in the fact of Afra and her companions
dwelling together between their conversion and martyrdom[103].
There are other traits in saint legend which point to the customs and
arrangements of a more primitive period, and tempt the student to fit
together pieces of the past and the present which appear meaningless if
taken separately.
It seems probable that in early times the term mother was applied to a
number of women of a definite group by all the children of the group, and
that the word had not the specialized meaning of one who had actually
borne the children who termed her mother.
The story of a number of children all being born at once by one woman is
possibly due to a confused tradition dating from this period. In local saga,

both in Germany and elsewhere, there are stories in which a woman
suddenly finds herself in the possession of a number of offspring, and often
with direful consequences to herself, because of the anger of her husband.
The same incident has found its way into saint legend. Thus Notburg,
patron saint of Sulz, had at a birth a number of children, variously quoted as
nine, twelve and thirty-six. Stadler says that she is represented at Sulz
holding eight children in her arms, a ninth one lying dead at her feet[104].
Lacking water to christen these children, she produced from the hard rock a
fountain which even to the present day is believed to retain the power to
cure disease.
A similar story is told of Achachildis, popularly known as Atzin, who is
held in veneration at Wendelstein near Schwabach. She bore her husband
five children at once and then took a vow of continence. Her legend has
never been written, but she enjoys a great reputation for holiness, and a
series of pictures represent various incidents in her life[105].
Images of women sheltering children, usually beneath their cloaks, are
frequently found abroad built into the outer wall of the church, the place
where Christian teachers felt justified in placing heathen images[106].
Students of pictorial art will here recall the image of St Ursula at Cöln
sheltering 11,000 virgins under her cloak.
Again there are other emblems in saint worship which cannot be easily
accounted for, such for instance as the holy combs of Verena and Pharaildis,
which remind one of the comb with which the witch Lorelei sat combing
her hair, or, on classic soil, of the comb of the Venus Calvata; or the holy
slippers of St Radiane, which are preserved to this day in the church of
Wellenburg and which, as Stadler informs us, had been re-soled within his
time[107]. Slippers and shoes are ancient symbols of appropriation, and as
such figure in folk-lore and at weddings in many countries to this day. The
golden slipper was likewise a feature at the witches’ festival, in which the
youthful fiddler also figured[108]. Both the golden slipper and the youthful
fiddler form important features in the legend of the saint Ontkommer or
Wilgefortis. The images and legend of this saint are so peculiar that they
claim a detailed account.

It is evident from what has been said that the legends and cult of many
women pseudo-saints have traits in common; indeed the acts ascribed to
different saints are often exactly similar. The stories of Notburg of
Rottenburg, of Radiane of Wellenburg, and of Gunthild of Biberbach, as
Stadler remarks, are precisely alike; yet it is never suggested that these
saints should be treated as one; each of them has her place in the Acta
Sanctorum and is looked upon as distinct from the others.
There is, however, a set of women-saints whose images and legends have
features so distinctive that hagiologists treat of them collectively as one,
though they are held in veneration in districts widely remote from each
other, and under very dissimilar names.
The saint, who is venerated in the Low Countries as Ontkommer or
Wilgefortis, is usually considered identical with the saint Kümmerniss of
Bavaria and the Tyrol; with the saint Livrade, Liberata or Liberatrix
venerated in some districts of France as early as the 9th century when
Usuard, writing in the monastery of St Germain-des-Près, mentions her;
with Gehulff of Mainz; with Hilp of the Hülfensberg at Eichsfelde; and with
others called variously Regenfled, Regenfrith, Eutropia, etc.[109] The name
Mariahilf, which is very common in south Germany, is probably a
combination of the name of the Virgin Mother with that of St Hilp or St
Gehulff.
The legends of this saint, or rather of this assembly of saints, are
characterized by Cuper in the Acta Sanctorum as an endless labyrinth[110].
Whatever origin be ascribed to them, when once we examine them closely
we find explanation impossible on the hypothesis that they relate to a single
Christian woman living during Christian times.
A considerable amount of information on this group of saints has lately
been collected by Sloet, who deals also with their iconography[111]. The
peculiarity of the images of Ontkommer or Kümmerniss consists in this,
that she is represented as crucified, and that the lower part of her face is
covered by a beard, and her body in some instances by long shaggy fur. Her
legend explains the presence of the beard and fur by telling us that it grew
to protect the maiden from the persecutions of a lover or the incestuous love

of her father; such love is frequently mentioned in the legends of women
pseudo-saints.
The fact that Ontkommer or Kümmerniss is represented as crucified might
be explained on the hypothesis that the common folk could not at first grasp
the idea of a god and looked upon Christ as a woman, inventing the legend
of the woman’s persecution and miraculous protection in order to account
for the presence of the beard. But other accessories of the representations of
Ontkommer or Kümmerniss lead us to suppose that her martyrdom, like
that of other saints, has a different origin and that she is heiress to a tribal
goddess of the past[112].
In many of her representations Ontkommer or Kümmerniss is seen hanging
on the cross with only one golden slipper on, but sometimes she wears two
slippers, and a young man is sitting below the cross playing the fiddle.
Legend accounts for the presence of this young man in the following
manner. He came and sat at the foot of the image and was playing on his
fiddle, when the crucified saint suddenly awoke to life, drew off a slipper
and flung it to him. He took it away with him, but he was accused of having
stolen it and condemned to death. His accusers however agreed to his
request to come with him into the presence of the holy image, to which he
appealed. Again the crucified saint awoke to life and drew off her second
slipper and flung it to the fiddler, whose innocence was thereby vindicated
and he was set free. Where shall we go for a clue to this curious and
complicated legend? Grimm tells us that a young fiddler was present at a
festival of the witches, and that he played at the dance in which he was not
allowed to take part. Grimm also tells us that one of the witches on this
occasion wore only one golden slipper[113]. The association of Kümmerniss
with a golden slipper is deep-rooted, especially in Bavaria, for the saying
goes there that ‘She with the golden slipper and with the youthful fiddler is
also a mother of God[114].’
Many years ago Menzel wrote[115]: ‘Much I believe concerning this saint is
derived from heathen conceptions.’ Stories embodying heathen traditions
are preserved in connection with this saint in districts abroad that lie far
apart.

Thus the image of her which is preserved in North Holland is said to have
come floating down the river, like the images of the Virgin referred to
above. At Regensburg in Bavaria an image is preserved which is said to
have been cast into the water at Neufarn. It was carried down by the river
and thrown on the bank, and the bishop fetched it to Regensburg on a car
drawn by oxen. In the Tyrol the image of the saint is sometimes hung in the
chief bed-room of the house in order to secure a fruitful marriage, but often
too it is hung in chapel and cloister in order to protect the dead. Images of
the saint are preserved and venerated in a great number of churches in
Bavaria and the Tyrol, but the ideas popularly associated with them have
raised feelings in the Church against their cult. We hear that a Franciscan
friar in the beginning of this century destroyed one of the images, and that
the bishop of Augsburg in 1833 attempted in one instance to do away with
the image and the veneration of the saint, but refrained from carrying out
his intention, being afraid of the anger of the people[116].
It has been mentioned above that associations of a twofold character survive
in connection with Verena and Vreke, who are to this day popularly
reckoned as saints, but who are introduced in mediæval romance as
representatives of earthly love as contrasted with spiritual. Associations of a
twofold character have also been attached to the term Kümmerniss. For in
the Tyrol Kümmerniss is venerated as a saint, but the word Kümmerniss in
ordinary parlance is applied to immoral women[117].
Other heathen survivals are found attached to the Ontkommer-Kümmerniss
group of saints. At Luzern the festival of the saint was connected with so
much riotous merrymaking and licentiousness that it was forbidden in 1799
and again in 1801. The story is told of the saint under the name Liberata
that she was one of a number of children whom her mother had at a
birth[118].
Sloet, on the authority of the philologist Kern, considers that the various
names by which the saint is known in different districts are appellatives and
have the same underlying meaning of one who is helpful in trouble.
According to him this forms the connecting link between the names
Ontkommer, Kümmerniss, Wilgefortis, Gehulff, Eutropia, etc., of which the
form Ontkommer, philologically speaking, most clearly connotes the saint’s
character, and on this ground is declared to be the original form. The saint is

worshipped at Steenberg in Holland under the name Ontkommer, and Sloet
is of opinion that Holland is the cradle of the worship of the whole group of
saints[119]. But considering what we know of other women-saints it seems
more probable that the saints who have been collected into this group are
the outcome of a period of social evolution, which in various districts led to
the establishment of tribal goddesses, who by a later development assumed
the garb of Christian women-saints.
The cult of women-saints under one more aspect remains to be chronicled.
Numerous traditions are preserved concerning the cult of holy women in
triads, who are locally held in great veneration and variously spoken of as
three sisters, three ladies, three Marys, three nuns, or three women-saints.
The three holy women have a parallel in the three Fates of classic
mythology and in the three Norns of Norse saga, and like them they
probably date from a heathen period. Throughout Germany they frequently
appear in folk-lore and saga, besides being venerated in many instances as
three women-saints of the Church.
In stories now current these three women are conceived sometimes as
sisters protecting the people, sometimes as ladies guarding treasures, and
sometimes as a group of three nuns living together and founding chapels
and oratories, and this too in places where history knows nothing of the
existence of any religious settlement of women.
Panzer has collected a mass of information on the cult of the triad as saints
in southern Germany[120]; Corémans says that the veneration of the Three
Sisters (dry-susters) is widespread in Belgium[121], but the Church has
sanctioned this popular cult in comparatively few instances.
The story is locally current that these three women were favourably
disposed to the people and bequeathed to them what is now communal
property. Simrock considers that this property included sites which were
held sacred through association with a heathen cult[122]. ‘In heathen times,’
he says, ‘a sacred grove was hallowed to the sister fates which after the
establishment of Christianity continued to be the property of the commune.
The remembrance of these helpful women who were the old benefactresses
of the place remained, even their association with holiness continued.’ By

these means in course of time the cult of the three goddesses was
transformed into that of Christian saints.
Besides bequeathing their property to the people it was thought that these
three women-saints protected their agricultural and domestic interests,
especially as affecting women. In Schlehdorf in Lower Bavaria pilgrimages
by night were made to the shrine of the triad to avert the cattle plague; the
shrine stood on a hill which used to be surrounded by water, and at one time
was the site of a celebrated fair and the place chosen for keeping the harvest
festival[123]. At Brusthem in Belgium there were three wells into which
women who sought the aid of these holy women cast three things, linen-
thread, a needle and some corn[124]. Again in Schildturn in Upper Bavaria
an image of the three women-saints is preserved in the church which bears
an inscription to the effect that through the intercession of these saints
offspring are secured and that they are helpful at childbirth[125]. In the same
church a wooden cradle is kept which women who wished to become
mothers used to set rocking. A second cradle which is plated is kept in the
sacristy, and has been substituted for one of real silver[126].
In some districts one of these three saints is credited with special power
over the others either for good or for evil. The story goes that one of the
sisters was coloured black or else black and white[127].
In many places where the triad is worshipped the names of the individual
sisters are lost, while in districts far apart from one another, as the Tyrol,
Elsass, Bavaria, their names have considerable likeness. The forms
generally accepted, but liable to fluctuation, are St Einbeth, St Warbeth and
St Wilbeth[128]. The Church in some instances seems to have hesitated
about accepting these names, it may be from the underlying meaning of the
suffix beth which Grimm interprets as holy site, ara, fanum, but Mannhardt
connects it with the word to pray (beten)[129]. Certainly the heathen element
is strong when we get traditions of the presence of these women at
weddings and at burials, and stories of how they went to war, riding on
horses, and achieved even more than the men[130]. Where their claim to
Christian reverence is admitted by the Church, the stories told about them
have a very different ring.

According to the legend which has been incorporated into the Acta
Sanctorum, St Einbetta, St Verbetta, and St Villbetta were Christian
maidens who undertook the pilgrimage to Rome with St Ursula, with whose
legend they are thus brought into connection. The three sisters stayed
behind at Strasburg and so escaped the massacre of the 11000 virgins[131].
The tendency to group women-saints into triads is very general. Kunigund,
Mechtund and Wibrandis are women-saints who belong to the portion of
Baden in the diocese of Constance[132]. The locus of their cult is in separate
villages, but they are venerated as a triad in connection with a holy well and
lie buried together under an ancient oak[133]. We hear also of pilgrimages
being made to the image of three holy sisters preserved at Auw on the Kyll
in the valley of the Mosel. They are represented as sitting side by side on
the back of an ass(?), one of them having a cloth tied over her eyes. The
three sisters in this case are known as Irmina, Adela and Chlotildis, and it is
said they were the daughters or sisters of King Dagobert[134]. Irmina and
Adela are historical; they founded nunneries in the diocese of Trier.
In another instance the sisters are called Pellmerge, Schwellmerge and
Krischmerge, merg being a popular form of the name Mary which is
preserved in many place-names[135].
I have been able to discover little reference to local veneration of saints in a
triad in England. But there is a story that a swineherd in Mercia had a vision
in a wood of three women who, as he believed, were the three Marys, and
who pointed out to him the spot where he was to found a religious
settlement, which was afterwards known as Evesham.
A curious side-light is thrown on the veneration of the three women-saints
abroad by recalling the images and inscriptions about Mothers and Matrons,
which are preserved on altars fashioned long before the introduction of
Christianity under heathen influence.
These altars have been found in outlying parts of the Roman Empire,
especially in the districts contiguous to the ancient boundary line which
divided Roman territory from Germania Magna. They bear inscriptions in
Latin to the effect that they are dedicated to Mothers and Matrons, and
sometimes it is added that they have been set up at the command of these
divine Mothers themselves. The words imperio ipsarum, ‘by their own

command,’ are added to the formula of dedication, and as it seems that they
never occur on altars set up and dedicated to specified Roman or Gallo-
Roman divinities, they yield an interesting proof of the wide-spread
character of the worship of tribal goddesses[136].
At one time it was supposed that these altars were of Keltic origin, but some
of the tribes mentioned in their inscriptions have been identified with place-
names in Germany. Altars found in outlying parts of the Empire primarily
served for the use of the soldiery, for sacrifice at the altar of the gods was a
needful preliminary to Roman military undertakings. The view has been
advanced that, as the altars dedicated to pagan divinities served for the
devotions of the Roman and Gallo-Roman troops, it is possible that these
other altars dedicated to Mothers served for the devotions of the German
heathen soldiery, who were drafted from districts beyond the Rhine, and at
an early date made part of the Roman legions.
The parallels between the mothers of the stones and the three women-saints
are certainly remarkable.
Where a representation, generally in rude relief, occurs on the altar stones,
the Mothers are represented in a group of three, holding as emblems of their
power fruit, flowers, and the spindle. These recall the emblems both of the
heathen goddess of mythology and of the pseudo-saint. Moreover one of the
Mothers of the altars is invariably distinguished by some peculiarity,
generally by a want of the head-dress or head-gear worn by the two others,
perhaps indicative of her greater importance. This has its parallel in the
peculiar power with which one member of the saint triad is popularly
credited.
The erection of the altars belongs to a time before the introduction of
Christianity; our information about the three women-saints dates back
earlier than the 12th century in a few cases only; it chiefly depends on
stories locally current which have been gleaned within the last hundred
years. If the hypothesis of the mother-age preceding the father-age holds
good, if the divine Mothers imaged on the stones are witnesses to a wide-
spread worship of female deities during the period of established Roman
rule, these tales told of the triad carry us back nearly twenty centuries. The
power ascribed to tribal goddesses in a distant heathen past survived in the

power ascribed to Christian women-saints; the deep-rooted belief in
protective women-divinities enduring with undying persistence in spite of
changes of religion.
In conclusion, a few words may be acceptable on the names of pseudo-
saints, which I believe to be largely epithetic or appellative. Grimm holds
that the names of the German goddesses were originally appellatives. In a
few cases the name of the goddess actually becomes the name of a saint.
Mythology and hagiology both lay claim to a Vrene and a Vreke; but from
the nature of things these cases are rare. The conception of the protective
divinity is ancient; her name in a philological sense is comparatively new.
With few exceptions the names are German; sometimes in contiguous
districts variations of the same name are preserved. The saint Lufthildis is
sometimes Linthildis[137]; Rolendis is sometimes Dollendis[138]; Ida, Itta,
Iduberga, Gisleberga are saints of Brabant and Flanders, whom hagiologists
have taken great trouble to keep separate. In some cases the name of a real
and that of a fictitious person may have become confounded. The names are
all cognate with the word itis, an ancient term applied to the woman who
exercised sacred functions.
The attempt to connect the group Ontkommer-Wilgefortis by the underlying
meaning of the several names has been mentioned. It has also been
mentioned that this saint is sometimes spoken of as a mother of God.
Similarly St Geneviève of Paris is worshipped as Notre-Dame-la-petite, and
again the saint Cunera of Reenen is popularly known as Knertje, which
signifies little lady[139].
On every side the student is tempted to stray from the straightforward road
of fact into the winding paths of speculation. The frequent association
abroad of female deities with hill tops suggests a possible explanation why
the word berg, which means remoteness and height, so often forms part of
the name of the woman pseudo-saint, and of women’s names generally. For
the beginnings of tilth and agriculture are now sought not in the swampy
lowlands, but on the heights where a clearance brought sunlight and
fruitfulness. Hill tops to this day are connected with holy rites. Is it possible
that the word berg, designating hill top, should have become an appellative

for woman because the settlements on the hills were specially connected
with her?
Philology hitherto has been content to trace to a common origin words
cognate in different languages, and on the conceptions attaching to these
words, to build up theories about the state of civilization of various peoples
at a period previous to their dispersion from a common home. But the study
of local beliefs and superstitions in western Europe tends more and more to
prove that usages pointing to a very primitive mode of life and to a very
primitive state of civilization are indissolubly connected with certain sites;
and that the beginnings of what we usually term civilization, far from being
imported, have largely developed on native soil.
Thus, at the very outset of our enquiry into saint-worship and the convent
life of the past, we have found ourselves confronted by a class of women-
saints who must be looked upon as survivals from heathen times, and who
are in no way connected with the beginnings of Christianity and of convent
life; their reputation rests on their connection with some hallowed site of
the heathen period and the persistence of popular faith in them. But the
feeling underlying the attribution of holiness to them, the desire for
localized saints, yields the clue to the ready raising to saintship of those
women who in England, in France, and in Germany, showed appreciation of
the possibilities offered to them by Christianity, and founded religious
settlements. In some cases superstitions of a heathen nature which are of
value to the hagiologist, if not to the historian, cling to these women also,
but fortunately a considerable amount of trustworthy material is extant
about their lives. These women during the earliest period were zealous in
the cause of Christianity, and it is to them that our enquiry now turns.

CHAPTER II.

CONVENTS AMONG THE FRANKS, A.D. 550-
650.

‘Sicut enim apis diversa genera florum
congregabat, unde mella conficiat, sic illa ab
his quos invitabat spirituales studebat carpere
flosculos, unde boni operis fructum tam sibi
quam suis sequacibus exhiberet.’ The nun
Baudonivia on St Radegund (Vita, c. 13).

§ 1. At the Frankish Invasion[140].

The great interest of early monastic life among the Franks lies in the
conversion of this hardy and ferocious people to Christianity just at the
moment of their emergence from a state of barbarism. Fierce, warlike and
progressive, the Franks were brought face to face with cultured Latinity.
The clerical student who claimed direct descent from the Gallo-Roman
rhetorician, and the bishop who was in possession of the municipal
government of the town, found themselves confronted by shaggy-haired,
impetuous men from forest wilds. At the outset an all but immeasurable
distance separated the social and intellectual development of the Gallo-
Roman from that of these strangers. Compared with the cultivated man of
letters and with the veteran, grown grey in imperial service, the German
invader was little more than a savage; nevertheless he succeeded in holding
his own. At first his standards of life and conduct gave way before those of
the Gallo-Romans. The lives of early Frankish princes, as their
contemporary, the historian Gregory of Tours, depicts them, are marked by
ceaseless quarrels and feuds, by numberless instances of murder, perjury
and violence. The bonds of union among them were forcibly relaxed, as
often happens in those periods of history when restraint and responsibility
are broken through by a sudden and overwhelming inrush of new ideas. A
prey to intemperance and greed, the descendants of the great Merovech
dwindled away. But other men of the same race, stronger than they in mind
and less prone to enervating luxury, pressed in from behind. And after the
temporary mental and moral collapse which followed upon the occupation
of Gaul by the Franks, the race rose to new and increased vigour. New
standards of conduct were evolved and new conceptions of excellence
arose, through the mingling of Latin and German elements. For the great

Roman civilization, a subject of wonder and admiration to all ages, was in
many of its developments realized, appropriated, and assimilated by the
converted Germans. Three hundred years after their appearance in Gaul, the
Franks were masters of the cultivated western world; they had grasped the
essentials of a common nationality and had spread abroad a system of
uniform government.
The Franks at first showed a marked deficiency in the virtues which pagan
Rome had established, and to which Christianity had given a widened and
spiritualized meaning. Temperance, habitual self-control and the absorption
of self in the consciousness of a greater, formed no part of this people’s
character. These virtues, together with peaceableness and a certain
simplicity of taste, laid the groundwork of the monasticism which preceded
the invasion. Persons who were vowed to religion were averse to war,
because it disturbed study and industry, and they shrank from luxury of life,
because it interrupted routine by exciting their appetites. An even tenor of
life was the golden mean they set before themselves, and in some degree
they had realized it in Roman Gaul before the barbarian invasion.
The Frank at first felt little tempted in the direction of monastic life. His
fierce and warlike tendencies, love of personal predominance and glory, and
impatience of every kind of restraint, were directly opposed to the uniform
round of devotion and work to which the religious devotee conformed.
The attitude of Frankish men towards monasticism was at best passive; on
the other hand convent life from the first found sympathy among Frankish
women. Princesses of pure German blood and of undisputed German origin
left the royal farms, which were the court residences of the period, and
repaired to the religious houses, to devote themselves to religion and to the
learning of cultured Latinity. Not one of the princes of the royal Frankish
race entered a convent of his own accord, but their wives, widows, and
daughters readily joined houses of religion.
Meekness and devotion, self-denial and subservience are not the most
prominent features in the character of these women. The wives and
daughters of men to whom Macaulay attributes all vices and no virtues, are
of a temper which largely savours of the world. What distinguishes them is
quick determination and clear-sighted appreciation of the possibilities

opened out to them by the religious life. Fortunately the information which
we have concerning them is not confined to the works of interested
eulogists. Accounts of women whom posterity estimated as saints lay stress
on those sides of their character which are in accord with virtues inculcated
by the Church. But we have other accounts besides these about women who
had taken the vows of religion, but whose behaviour called forth violent
denunciations from their contemporaries. And over and above these,
passages in profane literature are extant which curiously illustrate the
worldly tone and temper of many women who had adopted religion as a
profession.
These women were driven to resort to convents chiefly as the result of their
contact with a great civilization, which threw open unknown and tempting
possibilities to men, but raised many difficulties in the way of women.
The resources of the districts acquired by the Franks were immeasurably
greater than those of the lands they had left. Wealth and intemperance
readily join hands. The plurality of recognised and unrecognised wives in
which the Frankish princes indulged resulted in great family difficulties.
The royal farms and the ancient cities, where these petty kings resided,
were the scenes of continual broils and squabbles in which royal wives and
widows took the leading parts. From the chequered existence which this
state of things implies, convent life alone afforded a permanent refuge.
Sometimes a princess left home from a sense of the indignities she was
made to suffer; sometimes a reverse of fortune caused her to accept,
willingly or unwillingly, the dignified retirement of the cloister.
During the centuries preceding the Frankish conquest the development of
religious and monastic life in Gaul had been considerable, for the Church
had practically appropriated what was left of the Roman system of
organization, and since this system had been chiefly municipal, the
municipal bodies were largely composed of bishops and clerks.
The monastic life of men in Gaul had a number of independent centres in
the western provinces, due to the enthusiastic zeal of St Martin of Tours (†
400), to whom reference has been made.
In the beginning of the 6th century a settlement of nuns was founded in the
south, where monasteries already existed, perhaps as the result of direct

contact with the east. A rule of life was drafted for this convent shortly after
its foundation.
Caesarius, bishop of Arles (501-573), had persuaded his sister Caesaria to
leave Marseilles, where she dwelt in a convent associated with the name of
Cassian. His plan was that she should join him at Arles, and preside over
the women who had gathered there to live and work under his guidance.
Caesarius now marked out a scheme of life for his sister and those women
whom she was prepared to direct. He arranged it, as he says himself,
according to the teachings of the fathers of the Church and, after repeated
modifications, he embodied it in a set of rules, which have come down to
us[141]. Great clearness and directness, a high moral tone, and much sensible
advice are contained in these precepts of Caesarius. ‘Since the Lord,’ he
says, addressing himself to the women, ‘has willed to inspire us and help us
to found a monastery for you, in order that you may abide in this monastery,
we have culled spiritual and holy injunctions for you from the ancient
fathers; with God’s help may you be sheltered, and dwelling in the cells of
your monastery, seeking in earnest prayer the presence of the Son of God,
may you say in faith, “we have found him whom we sought.” Thus may you
be of the number of holy virgins devoted to God, who wait with tapers
alight and a calm conscience, calling upon the Lord.—Since you are aware
that I have worked towards establishing this monastery for you, let me be
one of you through the intercession of your prayer.’
Caesarius goes on to stipulate that those who join the community, whether
they be maidens or widows, shall enter the house once for all and renounce
all claims to outside property. Several paragraphs of the rule are devoted to
settling questions of property, a proof of its importance in the mind of
Caesarius. There were to be in the house only those who of their own
accord accepted the routine and were prepared to live on terms of strictest
equality without property or servants of their own.
Children under the age of six or seven were not to be received at all, ‘nor
shall daughters of noble parentage or lowly-born girls be taken in readily to
be brought up and educated.’
This latter injunction shows how the religious at this period wished to keep
the advantages to be derived from artistic and intellectual training in their

own community. They had no desire for the spread of education, which
forms so characteristic a feature of the religious establishments of a later
date.
After their safe housing the instruction of the nuns at Arles was the most
important matter dealt with in the ‘rule.’ Considerable time and thought
were devoted to the practice of chants and to choir-singing, for the art of
music was considered especially fitted to celebrate God. In an appendix to
the rule of Caesarius the system of singing is described as similar to that
adopted in the cœnobite settlement at Lerins[142]. Apparently following
Keltic usage, the chant was taken up in turn by relays of the professed, who
kept it up night and day all the year round in perpetual praise of the
Divinity. At this period melody and pitch were the subjects of close study
and much discussion. The great debt owed by the art of music to the
enthusiasm of these early singers is often overlooked.
The women who joined the community at Arles also learned reading and
writing (‘omnes litteras discant’). These arts were practised in classes, while
domestic occupations, such as cooking, were performed in turns. Weaving,
probably that of church hangings, was among the arts practised, and the
women also spun wool and wove it into material with which they made
garments for their own use.
There are further injunctions about tending the infirm, and stern advice
about the hatefulness of quarrels. Intercourse with the outside world is
restricted, but is not altogether cut off.
‘Dinners and entertainments,’ says the rule, ‘shall not be provided for
churchmen, laymen and friends, but women from other religious houses
may be received and entertained.’
In the year 506 Caesarius, the author of this rule, was present at the synod
of Agde at which it was decreed that no nun however good in character
should receive the veil, that is be permanently bound by a vow, before her
fortieth year[143]. This decree, taken together with the rule, proves the sober
and serious spirit of these early settlements and the purpose which their
founder set before him.

The teaching of Caesarius generally reflects the spirit of cautious reserve
characteristic of the rule instituted by the great St Benedict of Nursia for the
monks he had assembled together on Monte Casino in Central Italy. His
efforts like those of Caesarius were directed to the creation of conditions
favourable to the devoutly disposed, not to the leavening of the outside
world by the spread of Christian doctrine.
It was part of the plan of Caesarius to secure independence to the
communities he had founded; for in his capacity as bishop he addressed a
letter to Pope Hormisda († 523) in which he asked the Pope’s protection for
his monasteries, one of which was for men and one for women, against
possible interference from outside. He also begged that the Pope would
confirm the grants of property which had already been made to these
establishments. In his reply to this letter the Pope declared that the power of
the bishop in regard to these settlements should be limited to visitation[144].
It must be borne in mind that Arles and the southern parts of Gaul were
overrun by the Goths, who inclined to Arianism and opposed the Church of
Rome. Fear of this heresy induced the prelates of the Church to favour
Frankish rule. After the alliance of the Frankish kings with the Church the
religious establishments in the land remained undisturbed, and numerous
new monasteries were founded.
It is evident from what we know of the nuns at Arles, and of other bands of
women whom the Church took under her protection, that they readily
accepted life on the conditions proffered and were content to be controlled
and protected by men. It is only when the untamed German element with its
craving for self-assertion came in, that difficulties between the bishops and
heads of nunneries arose, that women of barbarian origin like Radegund,
Chrodield, and others, appealed to the authority of ruling princes against the
bishop, and asserted an independence not always in accordance with the
usual conceptions of Christian virtue and tolerance.

§ 2. St Radegund and the Nunnery at Poitiers.

Certain settlements for women in northern France claim to have existed
from a very early period, chiefly on the ground of their association with
Geneviève, patron saint of Paris, and with Chrothild (Clothilde, † 545), wife
of the first Christian king of the Franks. The legend of St Geneviève must
be received with caution[145]; while bands of women certainly dwelt at Paris
and elsewhere previously to the Frankish invasion, under the protection of
the Church, it is doubtful whether they owed their existence to Geneviève.
A fictitious glamour of sanctity has been cast by legendary lore around the
name and the doings of Queen Chrothild, because her union with King
Clovis, advocated by the Gallo-Roman Church party, led to his conversion
to Christianity[146]. In the pages of Gregory’s history the real Chrothild
stands out imperious, revengeful and unscrupulous. It is quite credible that
she did service for a time as deaconess (diacona) at the church of Tours, and
that she founded a religious house for women at the royal farm Les Andelys
near Rouen, but we can hardly believe that the life she lived there was that
of a devout nun.
Radegund of Poitiers and Ingetrud of Tours are the first Frankish women
who are known to have founded and ruled over nunneries in France. Their
activity belongs to the latter half of the 6th century, which is a date
somewhat later than that of the official acceptance of Christianity, and one
at which the overlordship of the Franks was already well established
throughout France. The settlements they founded lay in close proximity to
cities which were strongholds of Church government. Poitiers had become
an important religious centre through the influence of St Hilary, and Tours,
to which the shrine of St Martin attracted many travellers, was of such
importance that it has been called the centre of religion and culture in
France at this period.
The historian Gregory, afterwards bishop of Tours, to whom we are largely
indebted for our knowledge of this period, was personally acquainted with
the women at Tours and at Poitiers. He probably owed his appointment to
the bishopric of Tours in 573 to the favour he had found with
Radegund[147]. He has treated of her in his history and has written an
account of her burial at which he officiated[148], whilst a chapter of his book
on the Glory of Martyrs praises the fragment of the Holy Cross[149], which

had been sent to Radegund from Constantinople and from which the
nunnery at Poitiers took its name.
Besides this information two drafts of the life of Radegund are extant, the
one written by her devoted friend and admirer the Latin poet Fortunatus,
afterwards bishop of Poitiers, the other by the nun Baudonivia, Radegund’s
pupil and an inmate of her nunnery[150]. Fortunatus has moreover celebrated
his intercourse with Radegund in a number of verses, which throw great
light on their interesting personal relations[151].
A letter is also extant written by Radegund herself and preserved by
Gregory in which she addresses a number of bishops on the objects of her
nunnery. She begs the prelates of the Church to protect her institution after
her death and, if need be, assist those who are carrying on life there in her
spirit against hindrance from without and opposition from within. The letter
is in the usual wordy style of the Latin of that day.
‘Freed from the claims of a worldly life, with divine help and holy grace, I,’
she says, ‘have willingly chosen the life of religion at the direction of
Christ; turning my thoughts and powers towards helping others, the Lord
assisting me that my good intentions towards them may be turned to their
weal. With the assistance of gifts granted me by the noble lord and king
Clothacar, I have founded a monastery (monasterium) for maidens
(puellae); after founding it I made it a grant of all that royal liberality had
bestowed on me; moreover to the band assembled by me with Christ’s help,
I have given the rule according to which the holy Caesaria lived, and which
the holy president (antistes) Caesarius of Arles wisely compiled from the
teachings of the holy fathers. With the consent of the noble bishop of this
district and others, and at the desire of our congregation, I have accepted as
abbess my sister, dame Agnes, whom from youth upwards I have loved and
educated as a daughter; and next to God’s will I have conformed to her
authority. I myself, together with my sisters, have followed the apostolic
example and have granted away by charter all our worldly possessions, in
fearful remembrance of Ananias and Sapphira, retaining nought of our own.
But since the events and duration of human life are uncertain, since also the
world is drawing to its close (mundo in finem currente), many serving their
own rather than the divine will, I myself, impelled by the love of God,

submit to you this letter, which contains my request, begging you to carry it
out in the name of Christ[152].’
Radegund was one of an unconquered German race. Her father was
Hermafried, leader of the Thüringians, her mother a grandniece of the great
Gothic king, Theodoric. She was captured as a child together with her
brother in the forest wilds of Thüringen during one of the raids made into
that district by the Frankish kings Theuderic (Thierry) of Metz, and
Clothacar (Clothair) of Soissons. Clothacar appropriated the children as part
of his share of the booty and sent Radegund to a ‘villa’ in the
neighbourhood of Aties, in what became later the province of Picardie,
where she was brought up and educated. ‘Besides occupations usual to
those of her sex,’ her biographer says, ‘she had a knowledge of letters’
(litteris est erudita). From Aties she vainly tried to make her escape, and at
the age of about twelve was taken to the royal farm near Soissons and there
married to Clothacar[153]. In the list of King Clothacar’s seven recognised
wives Radegund stands fifth[154].
From the first Radegund was averse to this union. She was wedded to an
earthly bridegroom but not therefore divided from the heavenly one[155].
Her behaviour towards her husband as described by her biographers can
hardly be called becoming to her station as queen. She was so devoted to
charitable work, we are told, that she often kept the king waiting at meals, a
source of great annoyance to him, and under some pretext she frequently
left him at night. If a man of learning came to the court she would devote
herself to him, entirely neglecting her duty to the king[156]. Quarrels
between the couple were frequent, and the king declared that he was
married to a nun rather than to a queen[157]. The murder of her younger
brother finally turned the balance of the queen’s feelings against the king.
With fearless determination she broke down all barriers. She was not
lacking in personal courage, and had once calmly confronted a popular
uproar caused by her having set fire to a sacred grove[158]. Now, regardless
of consequences, she left the court and went to Noyon, where she sought
the protection of Bishop Medardus († 545), who was influential among the
many powerful prelates of his day[159]. But the bishop hesitated, his
position was evidently not so assured that he could, by acceding to the
queen’s request, risk drawing on himself the king’s anger[160]. However
Radegund’s stern admonition prevailed: ‘If you refuse to consecrate me,’

she cried, ‘a lamb will be lost to the flock[161].’ Medardus so far consented
as to consecrate her a deaconess, a term applied at the time to those who,
without belonging to any special order, were under the protection of the
Church.
In the oratory of St Jumer Radegund now offered up the embroidered
clothes and jewelry she was wearing, her robe (indumentum), her precious
stones (gemma), and her girdle weighty with gold. Both her biographers[162]
lay stress on this act of self-denial, which was the more noteworthy as love
of gorgeous apparel and jewelry was characteristic of early Frankish
royalty. Kings and queens were content to live in rural dwellings which
were little more than barns; life in cities was altogether uncongenial to
them, but they made up for this by a display of sumptuous clothes as a mark
of their rank. Already during her life with the king Radegund is described as
longing for a hair-cloth garment as a sign of unworldliness. She now
definitely adopted the raiment of a nun, a dress made of undyed wool.
She subsequently wandered westwards from Noyon and came into the
district between Tours and Poitiers, where she settled for some time at a
‘villa’ her husband had given her called Sais[163]. She entered into friendly
relations with the recluse Jean of Chînon (Johannes Monasteriensis[164]), a
native of Brittany, who with many other recluses like himself enjoyed the
reputation of great holiness. Jean of Chînon is represented as strengthening
Radegund in her resolution to devote herself to religion, and it is probable
that he helped her with practical advice.
Radegund now devoted herself to the relief of distress of every kind, her
practical turn of mind leading her to offer help in physical as well as in
mental cases. Her biographer tells us how—like a new Martha, with a love
of active life—she shrank from no disease, not even from leprosy[165].
When she saw how many men and women sought her relief the wish to
provide permanently for them arose. She owned property outside Poitiers
which she devoted to founding a settlement for women; in all probability
she also had a house for men near it[166]. Various references to the
settlement show that it extended over a considerable area. Like other
country residences or ‘villae,’ it was surrounded by walls and had the look
of a fortress, although situated in a peaceful district. As many as two

hundred nuns lived here at the time of Radegund’s death[167]. When the
house was ready to receive its inmates, they entered it in a procession
starting from Poitiers. We hear that by this time the doings of Radegund
‘had so far increased her reputation that crowds collected on the roofs to see
them pass.’
King Clothacar, however, did not calmly submit to being deserted by his
wife; he determined to go to Poitiers with his son to find her and to take her
back. But the queen, firm in her resolve, declared she would sooner die than
return to her husband. She notified this resolution to Bishop Germanus of
Paris, who besought the king not to go to Poitiers. His entreaties were
successful. Clothacar left his wife unmolested, and seems to have come to
some kind of agreement with her. In her letter to the bishops, Radegund
speaks of him as the noble lord, King Clothacar, not as her husband.
Radegund did not herself preside over the women in her nunnery. With their
consent the youthful Agnes, the pupil of Radegund, but by no means her
intellectual equal, was appointed abbess. Difficulties very soon occurred
between Radegund and the bishop of Poitiers, who was probably jealous of
her attracting religious women from himself. Radegund is said to have gone
to Arles in order to learn about the life of the women gathered together
there. Against the accuracy of this statement it is urged[168] that a written
copy of the rule, together with an eloquent exhortation to religious
perfection and virtue, was forwarded from Arles by the Abbess Caesaria (†
c. 560), the second of that name.
The rule was established in Poitiers in 559. In the previous year King
Clothacar, Radegund’s husband, through the death of his brothers and their
sons, had become sole king of France[169]. His monarchy thus included the
whole of what is now called France, the contiguous districts of Burgundy
and Thüringen, and the lands which had been taken from the Goths in Italy
and Spain. This great kingdom remained united for a few years only. In 561
Clothacar died and his realm was divided by his four sons, with whose
reigns a tempestuous period begins in the history of the Franks. During
more than forty years the rivalry and jealousy of the monarchs, aggravated
by the mutual hatred of the queens Brunihild and Fredegund, overwhelmed
the country with plots, counterplots, and unceasing warfare.

An eloquent appeal to the kings was called forth from the historian Gregory
by the contemplation of this state of things. It is contained in the preface to
the fifth book of his history. Calling upon them to desist from the
complications of civil war, he thus addresses them:
‘What are you bent on? What do you ask for? Have you not all in plenty?
There is luxury in your homes; in your storehouses wine, corn, and oil
abound; gold and silver are heaped up in your treasuries. One thing only
you lack; while you have not peace, you have not the grace of God. Why
must the one snatch things from the other? Why must the one covet the
other’s goods?’
Living at Poitiers Radegund was close to the scene of these turmoils. The
cities of Tours and Poitiers had fallen to the share of Charibert. When he
died in 562 his kingdom was divided between his three brothers by cities
rather than by districts. Tours and Poitiers fell to Sigebert of Rheims, who
was comparatively peace-loving among these brothers. But his brother
Chilperic of Soissons, dissatisfied with his own share, invaded Touraine and
Poitou and forced Poitiers to submit to him. He was subsequently made to
give way to Sigebert, but this did not bring their feuds to an end. In 575
Sigebert was raised on the shield and proclaimed king of Neustria (the
western part of France), but on being lifted down from the shield he was
forthwith assassinated. New complications resulted and new factions were
formed. In the interest of her son, Brunihild, the powerful widow of
Sigebert, pursued with inveterate hatred Chilperic and his wife, the
renowned Fredegund, for she looked upon Fredegund as the assassin of
Sigebert her husband and of Galesuith her sister.
Radegund had close relations with these impetuous, headstrong and
combative persons. King Sigebert was throughout well disposed towards
her.
‘In order to show his love and affection for her,’ says Gregory[170], ‘he sent
a deputation of ecclesiastics to the Emperor Justinus II and his wife Sophia
at Constantinople.’ The Franks entertained friendly relations with the
imperial court, and the surviving members of Radegund’s family had found
a refuge there. In due course gifts were sent to Radegund,—a fragment of
the Holy Cross set in gold and jewels, together with other relics of apostles

and martyrs. These relics arrived at Tours some time between 566 and
573[171]. It was Radegund’s wish that they should be fetched from Tours to
her nunnery by a procession headed by the bishop of Poitiers. But Bishop
Maroveus, who was always ready to thwart the queen, forthwith left for his
country seat when he heard of her request[172]. Radegund, much incensed,
applied in her difficulty to King Sigebert, and Eufronius, bishop of Tours,
was ordered to conduct the translation.
Radegund’s adoption of the religious profession in no way diminished her
intercourse with the outside world or the influence she had had as queen.
We find her described as living on terms of friendship with Queen Brunihild
‘whom she loved dearly.’ Even Queen Fredegund, Brunihild’s rival and
enemy, seems to have had some kind of intimacy with her. Fortunatus in
one of his poems suggests that Fredegund had begged Radegund to offer
prayers for the prosperity of her husband Chilperic.
It seems that Radegund’s word was generally esteemed, for in a family feud
when a certain Gundovald claimed to be the son of Clothacar and aspired to
the succession, we find him coupling the name of Radegund with that of
Ingetrud in asseveration of his statements.
‘If you would have the truth of what I declare proven,’ Gundovald
exclaimed, ‘go and enquire of Radegund of Poitiers and of Ingetrud of
Tours; they will tell you that what I maintain is the truth[173].’
In an age of endless entanglements, Radegund evidently did her best to
mediate between contending parties. ‘She was always favourable to peace
and interested in the weal of the realm whatever changes befell,’ writes the
nun Baudonivia[174]. ‘She esteemed the kings and prayed for their welfare,
and taught us nuns always to pray for their safety. If she heard that they had
fallen out she felt troubled: and she appealed in writing, sometimes to one,
sometimes to another, in order that they should not fight and war together,
but keep peaceful, so that the country might rest securely. Similarly she
exhorted the leaders to help the great princes with sensible advice, in order
that the common people and the lands under their rule might prosper.’
What is here said of her peace-loving disposition is corroborated by traits in
her character mentioned by Gregory and Fortunatus. The friendly
intercourse between Radegund and Fortunatus necessitates a few remarks

on the life and doings of this latter-day Roman poet before he came to
Poitiers and entered the Church.
For years Fortunatus had lived the life of a fashionable man of letters at
Ravenna, but about the year 568 the occupation of that city by the
Langobards forced him to leave Italy. He wandered north from court to
court, from city to city, staying sometimes with a barbarian prince,
sometimes with a Church-prelate, who, one and the other, were equally
ready to entertain the cultivated southerner. In return for the hospitality so
liberally bestowed on him he celebrated his personal relations to his
benefactors in complimentary verses. He has good wishes for prelates on
the occasion of their appointment, flattering words for kings, and pleasant
greetings for friends. In some of his poems he gives interesting descriptions
of the districts through which he has travelled, his account of a part of the
Rhine valley being specially graphic[175]. He glorifies the saints of the
Church in terms formerly used for celebrating classic divinities, and
addresses Bishop Medardus of Noyon as the possessor of Olympus[176]. He
even brings in Venus to celebrate a royal wedding, and lets her utter praises
of the queen Brunihild[177].
Besides these poetical writings Fortunatus has left prose accounts of several
of his contemporaries. An easy-going man of pleasant disposition, he
combined in a curious way the traditions of cultured Latinity with the
theological bent peculiar to the Christian literature of the day. His poems,
though somewhat wanting in ideas, show a ready power of versification and
a great facility in putting things politely and pleasantly. He wrote some
hymns for church celebration which became widely known. The one
beginning ‘Pange, lingua, gloriosi’ was adopted into the Roman Liturgy for
the adoration of the Cross on Good Friday, and it was repeatedly modified
and re-written during the Middle Ages. Another hymn written by him is the
celebrated ‘Vexilla regis prodeunt,’ the words of which are comparatively
poor, but the tune, the authorship of which is unknown, has secured it
world-wide fame[178].
The relic of the Holy Cross kept at Poitiers may have inspired Fortunatus
with the idea of composing these hymns; in a flattering epistle, written
obviously at Radegund’s request, he thanks Justinus and Sophia of
Constantinople for the splendour of their gift to her[179].

Fortunatus had come to Tours on a pilgrimage to the shrine of St Martin, to
whose intercession he attributed the restoration of his eyesight. Passing
through Poitiers he made the acquaintance of Radegund, who at once
acquired a great influence over him.
‘Radegund wished me to stay, so I stayed,’ he writes from Poitiers to some
friends[180], and he enlarges on the superiority, intellectual and otherwise, of
the queen, whose plain clothing and simple mode of life greatly impressed
him. Naming Eustachia, Fabiola, Melania, and all the other holy women he
can think of, he describes how she surpasses them all. ‘She exemplifies
whatever is praiseworthy in them,’ he says; ‘I come across deeds in her such
as I only read about before. Her spirit is clothed with flesh that has been
overcome, and which while yet abiding in her body holds all things cheap
as dross. Dwelling on earth, she has entered heaven, and freed from the
shackles of sense, seeks companionship in the realms above. All pious
teaching is food to her; whether taught by Gregory or Basil, by bold
Athanasius or gentle Hilary (two who were companions in the light of one
cause); whether thundered by Ambrose or flashed forth by Jerome; whether
poured forth by Augustine in unceasing flow, by gentle Sedulius or subtle
Orosius. It is as though the rule of Caesarius had been written for her. She
feeds herself with food such as this and refuses to take meat unless her
mind be first satisfied. I will not say more of what by God’s witness is
manifest. Let everyone who can send her poems by religious writers; they
will be esteemed as great gifts though the books be small. For he who gives
holy writings to her may hold himself as giving to the accepted temples
(templa) of God.’
Judging from this passage, Nisard, the modern editor of Fortunatus, thinks
it probable that Radegund was acquainted with Greek as well as with
Latin[181], a statement which one cannot endorse.
The queen was much interested in the poet’s writings. ‘For many years,’ he
writes in one poem, ‘I have been here composing verses at your order;
accept these in which I address you in the terms you merit[182].’
Radegund too wrote verses under Fortunatus’ guidance. ‘You have sent me
great verses on small tablets,’ he writes. ‘You succeed in giving back honey
to dead wax; on festal days you prepare grand entertainments, but I hunger

more for your words than for your food. The little poems you send are full
of pleasing earnestness; you charm our thoughts by these words[183].’
Among the poems of Fortunatus are found two which modern criticism no
longer hesitates in attributing to Radegund. They are epistles in verse
written in the form of elegies, and were sent by the queen to some of her
relatives at Constantinople. Judging by internal evidence a third poem,
telling the story of Galesuith, Queen Brunihild’s sister, who was murdered
shortly after her marriage to King Chilperic, was composed by her also;
though Nisard claims for her not the form of the poem but only its
inspiration[184]. ‘The cry,’ he says, ‘which sounds through these lines, is the
cry of a woman. Not of a German woman only, who has in her the
expression of tender and fiery passion, but a suggestion of the strength of a
woman of all countries and for all time.’ The lament in this poem is intoned
by several women in turn. Whoever may have composed it, the depth of
feeling which it displays is certainly most remarkable.
One of these poems written by Radegund is addressed to her cousin
Hermalafred, who had fled from Thüringen when Radegund was captured,
and who had afterwards taken service in the imperial army of Justinian[185].
Hermalafred was endeared to Radegund by the recollections of her
childhood, and in vivid remembrance of events which had made her a
captive she begins her letter[186] in the following strain:
‘Sad is condition of war! Jealous is fate of human things! How proud
kingdoms are shattered by a sudden fall! Those long-prosperous heights
(culmina) lie fallen, destroyed by fire in the great onset. Flickering tongues
of flame lapped round the dwelling which before rose in royal splendour.
Grey ashes cover the glittering roof which rose on high shining with
burnished metal. Its rulers are captive in the enemy’s power, its chosen
bands have fallen to lowly estate. The crowd of comely servants all
dwelling together were smitten to the dust in one day; the brilliant circle,
the multitude of powerful dependents, no grave contains them, they lack the
honours of death. More brilliant than the fire shone the gold of her hair, that
of my father’s sister, who lay felled to the ground, white as milk. Alas, for
the corpses unburied that cover the battle-field, a whole people collected
together in one burial place. Not Troy alone bewails her destruction, the
land of Thüringen has experienced a like carnage. Here a matron in fetters

is dragged away by her streaming hair, unable to bid a sad farewell to her
household gods. The captive is not allowed to press his lips to the threshold,
nor turn his face towards what he will never more behold. Bare feet in their
tread trample in the blood of a husband, the loving sister passes over her
brother’s corpse. The child still hangs on its mother’s lips though snatched
from her embrace; in funeral wail no tear is shed. Less sad is the fate of the
child who loses its life, the gasping mother has lost even the power of tears.
Barbarian though I am, I could not surpass the weeping though my tears
flowed for ever. Each had his sorrow, I had it all, my private grief was also
the public grief. Fate was kind to those whom the enemy cut down; I alone
survive to weep over the many. But not only do I sorrow for my dead
relatives, those too I deplore whom life has preserved. Often my tear-
stained face is at variance with my eyes; my murmurs are silenced, but my
grief is astir. I look and long for the winds to bring me a message, from
none of them comes there a sign. Hard fate has snatched from my embrace
the kinsman by whose loving presence I once was cheered. Ah, though so
far away, does not my solicitude pursue thee? has the bitterness of
misfortune taken away thy sweet love? Recall what from thy earliest age
upwards, O Hermalafred, I, Radegund, was ever to thee. How much thou
didst love me when I was but an infant; O son of my father’s brother, O
most beloved among those of my kin! Thou didst supply for me the place of
my dead father, of my esteemed mother, of a sister and of a brother. Held by
thy gentle hand, hanging on thy sweet kisses, as a child I was soothed by
thy tender speech. Scarce a time there was when the hour did not bring thee,
now ages go by and I hear not a word from thee! I wrestle with the wild
anguish that is hidden in my bosom; oh, that I could call thee back, friend,
whenever or wherever it might be. If father, or mother, or royal office has
hitherto held thee, though thou didst hasten now to me, thy coming is late.
Perhaps ’tis a sign of fate that I shall soon miss thee altogether, dearest, for
unrequited affection cannot long continue. I used to be anxious when one
house did not shelter us; when thou wast absent, I thought thee gone for
ever. Now the east holds thee as the west holds me; the ocean’s waters
restrain me, and thou art kept away from me by the sea reddened by the
beams of the sun (unda rubri). The earth’s expanse stretches between those
who are dear to each other, a world divides those whom no distance
separated before.’

She goes on to speculate where her cousin may be, and she says if she were
not held by her monastery she would go to him; storm and wind and the
thought of shipwreck would be nothing to her. The fear of incriminating
her, she says, was the cause of the death of her murdered brother. Would
that she had died instead of him! She beseeches Hermalafred to send news
of himself and of his sisters, and ends her letter with these words: ‘May
Christ grant my prayer, may this letter reach those beloved ones, so that a
letter indited with sweet messages may come to me in return! May the
sufferings wrought by languishing hope be alleviated by the swift advent of
sure tidings!’
This poem expresses great and lasting affection for her race. But her
relatives were a source of continued grief to the queen. She received no
reply to her letter to Hermalafred, and later she heard of his death. She
received this news from his nephew Artachis, who sent her at the same time
a present of silk, and Radegund then wrote another letter[187] which is
addressed to Artachis and is even sadder in tone. In it she deplores the death
of Hermalafred, and asks the boy Artachis to let her have frequent news of
himself sent to her monastery.
It is pleasant to turn from the sad side of Radegund’s life which these
poems exhibit to her friendly intercourse with Fortunatus, which was no
doubt a source of great comfort to her during the last years of her life. With
the exception of short intervals for journeys, the Latin poet lived entirely at
Poitiers, where he adopted the religious profession, and dwelt in constant
communication with Radegund and the abbess Agnes, in whose society he
learned to forget the land of his birth. The numerous poems and verses
which he has addressed to these ladies throw a strong light on his attitude
towards them and their great affection for him.
Radegund was wont to decorate the altar of her church with a profusion of
flowers[188]. Again and again the poet sends her flowers, accompanying his
gift with a few lines. With a basket of violets he sends the following[189]:
‘If the time of year had given me white lilies, or had offered me roses laden
with perfume, I had culled them as usual in the open or in the ground of my
small garden, and had sent them, small gifts to great ladies. But since I am
short of the first and wanting in the second, he who offers violets must in

love be held to bring roses. Among the odorous herbs which I send, these
purple violets have a nobleness of their own. They shine tinted with purple
which is regal, and unite in their petals both perfume and beauty. What they
represent may you both exemplify, that by association a transient gift may
gain lasting worth.’
The interchange of gifts between the poet and the ladies was mutual, the
nuns of Ste Croix lacked not the good things of this world and were
generous in giving. Fortunatus thanks them for gifts of milk, prunes, eggs,
and tempting dishes[190]. On one occasion they send him a meal of several
courses, vegetables and meat, almost too much for one servant to carry, and
he describes his greedy (gulosus) enjoyment of it in graphic terms[191]. Are
we to take the lines literally which tell us that when they entertained him at
dinner the table was scarcely visible for the roses with which it was strewn,
and that the foliage and flowers spread about made the room into a bower
of greenery[192]?
Sometimes a fit of indigestion was the result of the too liberal enjoyment of
what his friends so freely provided[193]. The poet was evidently fond of the
pleasures of the table, and accentuates the material rather than the spiritual
side of things. Once addressing Agnes he tells her that she shines in the
blending of two things, she provides refreshment for the poet’s mind and
excellent food for his body[194].
But the 6th century poet is generally somewhat plain-spoken on delicate
topics. In a poem addressed to Radegund and Agnes he openly defends
himself against the imputation that the tone of his relations to them is other
than is signified by the terms mother and sister by which he is wont to
address them[195]. Still these platonic relations do not preclude the use of
expressions which border on the amorous, for he tells them that they each
possess one half of him[196], and he calls Radegund the light of his eyes[197].
‘My dear mother, my sweet sister,’ he writes, ‘what shall I say, left alone in
the absence of the love of my heart[198]?...’ And again[199], ‘May a good
night enfold my mother and my sister; this brings them the good wishes of a
son and a brother. May the choir of angels visit your hearts and hold sweet
converse with your thoughts. The time of night forces me to be brief in my
greetings; I am sending only six lines of verse for you both!’

The vocabulary used to denote the different kinds of human affection
contains, no doubt, many terms common to all, and if the poems of
Fortunatus sometimes suggest the lover, it must be remembered that as
poems of friendship they are among the earliest of their kind. They are
throughout elegant, graceful, and characterized by a playful tenderness
which a translator must despair of rendering.
Radegund died in the year 587, and her death was a terrible loss to the
inmates of her settlement. Gregory, bishop of Tours, who officiated at the
burial, gives a detailed description of it, telling how some two hundred
women crowded round the bier, bewailing her death in such words as
these[200]:
‘To whom, mother, hast thou left us orphans? To whom then shall we turn
in our distress? We left our parents, our relatives and our homes, and we
followed thee. What have we before us now, but tears unceasing, and grief
that never can end? Verily, this monastery is to us more than the greatness
of village and city.... The earth is now darkened to us, this place has been
straitened since we no longer behold thy countenance. Woe unto us who are
left by our holy mother! Happy those who left this world whilst thou wast
still alive...!’
The nun Baudonivia says that she cannot speak of the death of Radegund
without sobs choking her. Her account was written some time after
Radegund’s death during the rule of the abbess Didimia to whom it is
dedicated; Didimia probably succeeded Leubover, who witnessed the
serious outbreak of the nuns at Poitiers. This outbreak throws an interesting
light on the temper of professed religious women at this period, and
illustrates how needful it was that a religious establishment should be ruled
by a woman of character and determination at a time when the monastic
system was only in its infancy.

§ 3. The Revolt of the Nuns at Poitiers[201]. Convent Life in the
North.

The revolt of the nuns at Poitiers, which happened within a few years of the
death of Radegund, shows more than anything else the imperious and the
unbridled passions that were to be found at this period in a nunnery.
Evidently the adoption of the religious profession did not deter women from
openly rebelling against the authority of the ministers of the Church, and
from carrying out their purpose by force of arms. The outbreak at Poitiers,
of which Gregory has given a description, shows what proud, vindictive,
and unrelenting characters the Frankish convent of the 6th century
harboured.
Already during Radegund’s lifetime difficulties had arisen. King Chilperic
had placed his daughter Basina in the nunnery, and after a time he asked
that she should leave to be married. Radegund refused and her authority
prevailed, but we shall find this Basina taking an active part in the rebellion.
Other incidents show how difficult it was for Radegund even to uphold
discipline. A nun escaped through a window by aid of a rope and, taking
refuge in the basilica of St Hilary, made accusations which Gregory, who
was summoned to enquire into the matter, declared to be unfounded. The
fugitive repented and was permitted to return to the nunnery; she was
hoisted up by means of ropes so that she might enter by the way she had
gone out. She asked to be confined in a cell apart from the community, and
there she remained in seclusion till the news of the rebellion encouraged her
to again break loose.
Agnes the abbess appointed by Radegund died in 589. The convent chose a
certain Leubover to succeed her, but this appointment roused the ire of
Chrodield, another inmate of the nunnery.
Chrodield held herself to be the daughter of King Charibert, and relying on
her near connection with royalty persuaded forty nuns to take an oath that
they would help her to remove the hated Leubover and would appoint her,
Chrodield, as abbess in her stead. Led by Chrodield who had been joined by
her cousin Basina, the daughter of Chilperic mentioned above, the whole
party left the nunnery. ‘I am going to my royal relatives,’ Chrodield said, ‘to
inform them of the contumely we have experienced. Not as daughters of
kings are we treated but as though we were lowly born[202].’

Leaving Poitiers the women came to Tours where Chrodield applied for
assistance to the bishop and historian Gregory. In vain he admonished her,
promising to speak to Bishop Maroveus of Poitiers in her behalf, and urging
her to abide by his decision, as the penalty might be excommunication.
The feeling of indignation in the women must have been strong, since
nothing he could say dissuaded them from their purpose. ‘Nothing shall
prevent us from appealing to the kings,’ said Chrodield, ‘to them we are
nearly related.’
The women had come on foot from Poitiers to Tours, regardless of
hardships. They had had no food and arrived at a time of year when the
roads were deep in mud. Gregory at last persuaded them to postpone their
departure for the court till the summer.
Then Chrodield, leaving the nuns under the care of Basina, continued her
journey to her uncle, King Guntchram of Orléans, who at the time was
residing at Chalôns-sur-Saône. She was well received by him and came
back to Tours there to await the convocation of bishops who were to
enquire into the rights of her case. But she found on her return that many of
her followers had disbanded, and some had married. The arrival too of the
bishops was delayed, so that she felt it expedient to return with her
followers to Poitiers where they took possession of the basilica of St Hilary.
They now prepared for open hostility. ‘We are queens,’ they said, ‘and we
shall not return to the monastery unless the abbess is deposed.’
At this juncture they were joined by other dissatisfied spirits, ‘murderers,
adulterers, law-breakers and other wrong-doers,’ as Gregory puts it[203]. The
nun too who had previously escaped and been taken back, now broke loose
from her cell and returned to the basilica of Hilary.
The bishop of Bordeaux and his suffragan bishops of Angoulême,
Perigueux, and Poitiers, now assembled by order of the king (Guntchram),
and called upon the women to come into the monastery, and on their refusal
the prelates entered the basilica of St Hilary in a body urging them to obey.
The women refused, and the ban of excommunication was pronounced,
upon which they and their followers attacked the prelates. In great fear the
bishops and clergy made off helter-skelter, not even pausing to bid each

other farewell. One deacon was so terrified that in his eagerness to get away
he did not even ride down to the ford, but plunged with his horse straight
into the river.
King Childebert ( † 596), the son and successor of King Sigebert, now
ordered Count Macco to put an end to the rebellion by force of arms, while
Gondegisel, bishop of Bordeaux, sent a circular letter to his brethren,
describing the indignity to which he had been exposed. Chrodield’s chance
of success was evidently dwindling, when she determined to carry her point
by a bold assault, the account of which may fitly stand in the words of
Gregory[204].
‘The vexations,’ he says, ‘which sown by the devil had sprung up in the
monastery at Poitiers, daily increased in troublesomeness. For Chrodield,
having collected about her, as mentioned above, a band of murderers,
wrong-doers, law-breakers, and vagrants of all kinds, dwelt in open revolt
and ordered her followers to break into the nunnery at night and forcibly to
bear off the abbess. But the abbess, on hearing the noise of their approach,
asked to be carried in front of the shrine of the Holy Cross, for she was
suffering from a gouty foot, and thought that the Holy Cross would serve
her as a protection in danger. The armed bands rushed in, ran about the
monastery by the light of a torch in search of the abbess, and entering the
oratory found her extended on the ground in front of the shrine of the Holy
Cross. Then one of them, more audacious than the rest, while about to
commit the impious deed of cutting her down with his sword, was stabbed
by another, through the intercession I believe of Divine Providence. He fell
in his own blood and did not carry out the intention he had impiously
formed. Meanwhile the prioress Justina, together with other sisters, spread
the altar-cover, which lay before the cross, over the abbess, and
extinguished the altar candles. But those who rushed in with bared swords
and lances tore her clothes, almost lacerated the hands of the nuns, and
carried off the prioress whom they mistook for the abbess in the darkness,
and, with her cloak dragged off and her hair coming down, they would have
given her into custody at the basilica of St Hilary. But as they drew near the
church, and the sky grew somewhat lighter, they saw she was not the abbess
and told her to go back to the monastery. Coming back themselves they
secured the real abbess, dragged her away, and placed her in custody near
the basilica of St Hilary in a place where Basina was living, and placed a

watch over her by the door that no one should come to her rescue. Then in
the dark of night they returned to the monastery and not being able to find a
light, set fire to a barrel which they took from the larder and which had
been painted with tar and was now dry. By the light of the bonfire they
kindled, they plundered the monastery of all its contents, leaving nothing
but what they could not carry off. This happened seven days before Easter.’
The bishop of Poitiers made one more attempt to interfere. He sent to
Chrodield and asked her to set the abbess free on pain of his refusing to
celebrate the Easter festival. ‘If you do not release her,’ he said, ‘I shall
bring her help with the assembled citizens.’ But Chrodield emboldened by
her success said to her followers: ‘If anyone dare come to her rescue, slay
her.’
She seems now to have been in possession of the monastery; still we find
defection among her party. Basina, who throughout had shown a
changeable disposition, repented and went to the imprisoned Leubover, who
received her with open arms. The bishops, mindful of the treatment they
had received, still refused to assemble in Poitiers while the state of affairs
continued. But Count Macco with his armed bands made an attack on the
women and their followers, causing ‘some to be beaten down, others struck
down by spears, and those who made most strenuous opposition to be cut
down by the sword.’
Chrodield came forth from the nunnery holding on high the relic of the
Cross; ‘Do not, I charge you, use force of arms against me,’ she cried, ‘I am
a queen, daughter to one king and cousin to another. Do not attack me, a
time may come when I will take my revenge.’ But no one took any notice of
her. Her followers were dragged from the monastery and severely chastised.
The bishops assembled and instituted a long enquiry into the grievances of
Chrodield, and the accusations brought against Leubover by her. They seem
to have been unfounded or insignificant. Leubover justified herself and
returned to the monastery. Chrodield and Basina left Poitiers and went to
the court of King Childebert.
At the next Church convocation the king tendered a request that these
women should be freed from the ban of excommunication. Basina asked
forgiveness and was allowed to return to the monastery. But the proud

Chrodield declared that she would not set foot there while the abbess
Leubover remained in authority. She maintained her independence and went
to live in a ‘villa’ which the king had granted her, and from that time she
passes from the stage of history.
The revolt of the nuns at Poitiers, which for two years defied the efforts of
churchmen and laymen, is the more noteworthy in that it does not stand
alone. Within a year we find a similar outbreak threatening the nunnery at
Tours where a certain Berthegund, similarly disappointed of becoming
abbess, collected malefactors and others about her and resorted to violent
measures. The circumstances, which are also described by Gregory, differ in
some respects from those of the insurrection at Ste Croix[205].
Ingetrud, the mother of Berthegund, had founded a nunnery at Tours close
to the church of St Martin, and she urged her daughter, who was married, to
come and live with her. When Berthegund did so, her husband appealed to
Gregory, who threatened her with excommunication if she persisted in her
resolve. She returned to her husband, but subsequently left him again and
sent for advice to her brother who was bishop of Bordeaux. He decreed that
she need not live with her husband if she preferred convent life. But when
this bishop of Bordeaux died, his sister Berthegund and her mother Ingetrud
quarrelled as to the inheritance of his property, and Ingetrud, much incensed
against her daughter, determined at least to keep from Berthegund her own
possessions at the nunnery and succession to her position there. She
therefore appointed a niece of hers to succeed her as abbess after her death.
When she died the convent of nuns looked upon this appointment as an
infringement of their rights, but Gregory persuaded them to keep quiet and
abide by the decision of their late abbess. Berthegund however would not
agree to it. Against the advice of the bishop she appealed to the authority of
King Childebert, who admitted her claim to the property. ‘Furnished with
his letter she came to the monastery and carried off all the moveable
property, leaving nothing but its bare walls,’ Gregory says. Afterwards she
settled at Poitiers, where she spoke evil of her cousin the abbess of Tours,
and altogether ‘she did so much evil it were difficult to tell of it all.’
From the consideration of these events in central France we turn to the
religious foundations for women in the northern districts. With the
beginning of the 7th century a change which directly influenced convent

life becomes apparent in the relations between the Frankish rulers and the
representatives of Christianity. Influential posts at court were more and
more frequently occupied by prelates of the Church, and kings and queens
acted more directly as patrons of churches and monasteries. Hitherto the
centres of religious influence had been in southern and central France,
where the Gallo-Frankish population and influence predominated, and
where monasteries flourished close to cities which had been strongholds of
the Roman system of administration. New religious settlements now grew
up north of the rivers Seine and Marne, where the pure Frankish element
prevailed and where Christianity regained its foothold owing to the
patronage of ruling princes.
Whatever had survived of Latin culture and civilisation in these districts
had disappeared before the influence of the heathen invaders; the men
whose work it was to re-evangelise these districts found few traces of
Christianity. Vedast (St Vaast, † 540), who was sent by bishop Remigius (St
Rémy) of Rheims ( † 532) into the marshy districts of Flanders, found no
Christians at Arras about the year 500, and only the ruins of one ancient
church, which he rebuilt[206]. The author of the life of Vedast gives the
ravages made in these districts by the Huns as the reason for the
disappearance of Latin culture and of Christianity. But the author of the life
of Eleutherius, bishop of Tournai († 531), holds that the Christians had fled
from these districts to escape from the inroads of the heathen Franks[207].
It was chiefly by the foundation of monasteries in these districts that
Christianity gained ground during the 7th century. ‘Through the
establishment of monasteries,’ says Gérard[208], ‘the new social order
gained a foothold in the old Salic lands.’ Among the names of those who
took an active part in this movement stand the following: Wandregisil (St
Vandrille, † 665) founder of the abbey of Fontenelle; Waneng ( † c. 688)
founder of Fécamp; Filibert († 684) founder of Jumièges; Eligius bishop of
Noyon († 658) and Audoenus (St Ouen, † 683) archbishop of Rouen. These
men were in direct contact with the court and were much patronised by the
ruling princes, especially by the holy queen Balthild. Early and reliable
accounts concerning most of them are extant[209].
With regard to political events the 7th century is the most obscure period of
Frankish history, for the history of Gregory of Tours comes to an end in

591. Feuds and quarrels as violent as those he depicts continued, and
important constitutional changes took place as their result. The vast
dominions brought under Frankish rule showed signs of definitely
crystallising into Austrasia which included the purely Frankish districts of
the north, and Burgundy and Neustria where Gallo-Frankish elements were
prevalent.
The latter half of the life of the famous Queen Brunihild[210] takes its
colouring from the rivalry between these kingdoms; during fifty years she
was one of the chief actors in the drama of Frankish history. At one time she
ruled conjointly with her son Childebert, and then as regent for her
grandsons, over whom she domineered greatly. In the year 613, when she
was over eighty years old, she was put to a cruel death by the nobles of
Austrasia.
The judgments passed on this queen are curiously contradictory. Pope
Gregory († 604) writes to her praising her great zeal in the cause of religion,
and thanks her for the protection she has afforded to Augustine on his
passage through France, which he considers a means to the conversion of
England[211]. On the other hand the author of the life of St Columban[212],
whom she expelled from Burgundy, calls her a very Jezebel[213]; and the
author of the life of Desiderius, who was murdered in 608, goes so far as to
accuse her of incestuous practices because of her marriage with her
husband’s nephew[214]. Indirect evidence is in favour of the conclusion that
Queen Brunihild disliked monasticism; she was by birth of course a
princess of the Gothic dynasty of Spain who had accepted Christianity in its
Arian form.
During the reign of Brunihild’s nephew Clothacar II († 628), under whose
rule the different provinces were for a time united, a comprehensive and
most interesting edict was issued, which affords an insight into the efforts
made to give stability to the relations between princes and the
representatives of religion. In this edict, under heading 18, we are told that
‘no maidens, holy widows or religious persons who are vowed to God,
whether they stay at home or live in monasteries, shall be enticed away, or
appropriated, or taken in marriage by making use of a special royal permit
(praeceptum). And if anyone surreptitiously gets hold of a permit, it shall
have no force. And should anyone by violent or other means carry off any

such woman and take her to wife, let him be put to death. And if he be
married in church and the woman who is appropriated, or who is on the
point of being appropriated, seems to be a consenting party, they shall be
separated, sent into exile, and their possessions given to their natural
heirs[215].’
From these injunctions it can be gathered that the re-adjustment of social
and moral relations was still in progress; women who were vowed to a
religious life did not necessarily dwell in a religious settlement, and even if
they did so they were not necessarily safe from being captured and thrown
into subjection. Clothacar II had three wives at the same time and
concubines innumerable; plurality of wives was indeed a prerogative of
these Frankish kings.
Monastic life in northern France at this period was also in process of
development. It has been mentioned how Radegund adopted the rule of life
framed and put into writing by Caesarius at Arles. The rule
contemporaneously instituted by Benedict at Nursia in central Italy spread
further and further northwards, and was advocated by prelates of the
Romish Church. It served as the model on which to reform the life of
existing settlements[216].
During the first few centuries religious houses and communities had been
founded here and there independently of each other, the mode of life and
the routine observed depending in each case directly on the founder. Many
and great were the attempts made by the advocates of convent life to
formulate the type of an ideal existence outside the pale of social duties and
family relations, in which piety, work and benevolence should be blended in
just proportions. The questions how far the prelates of the Church should
claim authority over the monastery, and what the respective positions of
abbot or abbess and bishop should be, led to much discussion.
During the period under consideration the rules drafted by different leaders
of monastic thought were not looked upon as mutually exclusive. We are
told in the life of Filibert ( † 684), written by a contemporary[217], that he
made selections from ‘the graces of St Basil, the rule of Macarius, the
decrees of Benedict and the holy institutions of Columban.’ Eligius, bishop
of Noyon, says in a charter which he drafted for the monastery founded by

him at Solemny that the inmates of the settlement shall follow the rules of
St Benedict and of St Columban[218].
Towards the close of the 6th century Columban came from Ireland into
France and northern Italy and founded a number of religious settlements.
What rule of life the inmates of these houses followed is not quite clear,
probably that drafted by Columban. The convents in Elsass, Switzerland
and Germany, which considered that they owed their foundation to Irish
monks, were numerous and later became obnoxious to the Church in many
ways. For in after years, when the feud arose between the Romish and the
Irish Churches and the latter insisted on her independence, the houses
founded by Irishmen also claimed freedom and remained separate from
those which accepted the rule of St Benedict.
The property granted to religious foundations in northern France went on
increasing throughout the 7th century. The amount of land settled on
churches and monasteries by princes of the Merovech dynasty was so great
that on Roth’s computation two-thirds of the soil of France was at one time
in the hands of the representatives of religion[219]. Under the will of
Dagobert, who first became king of Austrasia in 628 and afterwards of the
whole of France, large tracts were given away. Through the gifts of this
king the abbey of St Denis became the richest in France, and his great
liberality on the one hand towards the Church, on the other towards the
poor and pilgrims, is emphasized by his biographer. His son Chlodwig II,
king of Neustria and Burgundy, followed in his footsteps. He was a prince
of feeble intellect and his reign is remarkable for the power increasingly
usurped by the house-mayor, who grasped more and more at the substance
of royal authority while dispensing with its show.
Chlodwig II was married to Balthild, who is esteemed a saint on the
strength of the monastery she founded and of the gifts she made to the
Church. There are two accounts of her works; the second is probably a re-
written amplification of the first, which was drafted within a short period of
her death[220]. As these accounts were written from the religious standpoint,
they give scant information on the political activity and influence of the
queen, which were considerable. They dwell chiefly on her gifts, and
concern the latter part of her life when she was in constant communication
with her nunnery.

Balthild was of Anglo-Saxon origin, and her personality and activity form
the connecting link between the women of France and England. It is
supposed that she was descended from one of the noble families of Wessex,
and she favoured all those religious settlements which were in direct
connection with princesses of the Anglo-Saxon race.
She had been captured on the north coast of France and had been brought to
Paris as a slave by the house-mayor Erchinoald, who would have married
her, but she escaped and hid herself. Her beauty and attractions are
described as remarkable, and she found favour in the eyes of King
Chlodwig II who made her his wife. The excesses of this king were so great
that he became imbecile. Balthild with Erchinoald’s help governed the
kingdom during the remainder of her husband’s life and after his death in
the interest of her little sons. From a political point of view she is described
as ‘administering the affairs of the kingdom masculine wise and with great
strength of mind.’ She was especially energetic in opposing slavery and
forbade the sale of Christians in any part of France. No doubt this was due
to her own sad experience. She also abolished the poll-tax, which had been
instituted by the Romans. The Frankish kings had carried it on and
depended on it for part of their income. Its abolition is referred to as a most
important and beneficial change[221].
During the lifetime of Chlodwig and for some years after his death the rule
of Balthild seems to have been comparatively peaceful. The house-mayor
Erchinoald died in 658 and was succeeded by Ebruin, a man whose
unbounded personal ambition again plunged the realm into endless quarrels.
In his own interest Ebruin advocated the appointment of a separate king to
the province Austrasia, and the second of Balthild’s little sons was sent
there with the house-mayor Wulfoald. But the rivalry between the two
kingdoms soon added another dramatic chapter to the pages of Frankish
history. At one time we find Ebruin ruling supreme and condemning his
rival Leodgar, bishop of Autun, to seclusion in the monastery of Luxeuil.
An insurrection broke out and Ebruin himself was tonsured and cast into
Luxeuil. But his chief antagonist Leodgar was murdered. Ebruin was then
set free and again became house-mayor to one of the shadow kings, rois
fainéants, the unworthy successors of the great Merovech. His career
throughout reflected the tumultuous temper of the age; he was finally
assassinated in the year 680.

Queen Balthild had retired from political life long before this. She left the
court in consequence of an insurrection in Paris which led to the
assassination of Bishop Sigoberrand, and went to live at a palace near the
convent of Chelles, which she had founded and which she frequently
visited. In the account of her life we read of her doing many pious
deeds[222]. ‘A fond mother, she loved the nuns like her own daughters and
obeyed as her mother the holy abbess whom she had herself appointed; and
in every respect she did her duty not like a mistress but like a faithful
servant. Also with the humility of a strong mind she served as an example;
she did service herself as cook to the nuns, she looked after cleanliness,—
and, what can I say more,—the purest of pearls, with her own hands she
removed filth’s impurities....’
At various times of her life Balthild had been in friendly intercourse with
many of the chief prelates and religious dignitaries of the day. She had
taken a special interest in Eligius, bishop of Noyon, who was a Frank by
birth and the friend and adviser of King Dagobert.
We hear how Eligius took a special interest in monastic life; how at Paris he
collected together three hundred women, some of whom were slaves, others
of noble origin; how he placed them under the guidance of one Aurea; and
how at Noyon also he gathered together many women[223].
On receiving the news that Eligius was dying, Balthild hurried with her
sons to Noyon, but they came too late to see him. So great was her love for
him, that she would have borne away his body to Chelles, her favourite
settlement, but her wish was miraculously frustrated. The writer of the life
of Eligius tells that the holy man’s body became so heavy that it was
impossible to move it.
When Eligius appointed Aurea as president of his convent at Paris she was
living in a settlement at Pavilly which had been founded by Filibert, an
ecclesiastic also associated with Queen Balthild. On one occasion she sent
him as an offering her royal girdle, which is described as a mass of gold and
jewels[224]. It was on land granted to him by Balthild and her sons that
Filibert founded Jumièges, where he collected together as many as nine
hundred monks. At his foundation at Pavilly over three hundred women
lived together under the abbess Ansterbert[225].

It is recorded that Ansterbert and her mother Framehild were among the
women of northern France who came under the influence of Irish teachers.
The same is said of Fara († 657)[226], the reputed founder of a house at Brie,
which was known as Faremoutiers, another settlement indebted to Queen
Balthild’s munificence. Similarly Agilbert and Theodohild[227] ( † c. 660)
are supposed to have been taught by Irish teachers who had collected
women about them at Jouarre on the Marne. This house at Jouarre attained a
high standard of excellence in regard to education, for we are informed that
Balthild summoned Berthild[228] from here, a woman renowned for her
learning, and appointed her abbess over the house at Chelles.
Yet another ecclesiastic must be mentioned in connection with Balthild, viz.
Waneng, a Frank by birth. He was counsellor for some time to the queen
who gave the cantle of Normandy, the so-called Pays de Caux, into his
charge. He again founded a settlement for religious women at Fécamp
which was presided over by Hildemarque.
The foundation and growth of so many religious settlements within so short
a period and situated in a comparatively small district shows that the taste
for monastic life was rapidly developing among the Franks.
‘At this period in the provinces of Gaul,’ says a contemporary writer, ‘large
communities of monks and of virgins were formed, not only in cultivated
districts, in villages, cities and strongholds, but also in uncultivated
solitudes, for the purpose of living together according to the rule of the holy
fathers Benedict and Columban[229].’
This statement is taken from the life of Salaberg, a well written composition
which conveys the impression of truthfulness. Salaberg had brought up her
daughter Anstrud for the religious life. Her husband had joined the
monastery at Luxeuil and she and other women were about to settle near it
when the rumour of impending warfare drove them north towards Laon
where they dwelt on the Mons Clavatus. This event belongs to the period of
Queen Balthild’s regency. It was while Anstrud was abbess at Laon that the
settlement was attacked and barely escaped destruction in one of the wars
waged by the house-mayor Ebruin. This event is described in a
contemporary life of Anstrud[230].

It is interesting to find a connection growing up at this period between the
religious houses of northern France and the women of Anglo-Saxon
England. We learn from the reliable information supplied by Bede that
Englishwomen frequently went abroad and sometimes settled entirely in
Frankish convents. We shall return to this subject later in connection with
the princesses of Kent and East Anglia, some of whom went to France and
there became abbesses. The house at Brie was ruled successively by
Saethrith (St Syre), and Aethelburg (St Aubierge), daughters of kings of
East Anglia, and Earcongotha, a daughter of the king of Kent. About the
same time Hereswith, a princess of Northumbria, came to reside at
Chelles[231].
We do not know how far the immigration of these women was due to
Balthild’s connection with the land of her origin, nor do we hear whether
she found solace in the society of her countrywomen during the last years of
her life. Her death is conjectured to have taken place in 680.
With it closes the period which has given the relatively largest number of
women-saints to France, for all the women who by founding nunneries
worked in the interests of religion have a place in the assembly of the saints.
They were held as benefactors in the districts which witnessed their efforts,
and the day of their death was inscribed in the local calendar. They have
never been officially canonised, but they all figure in the Roman
Martyrology, and the accounts which tell of their doings have been
incorporated in the Acts of the Saints.

CHAPTER III.

CONVENTS AMONG THE ANGLO-SAXONS,
A.D. 630-730.
‘Ecce catervim glomerant ad bella phalanges
Justitiae comites et virtutum agmina sancta.’
Ealdhelm, De laude Virginum.

§ 1. Early Houses in Kent.

The early history of the convent life of women in Anglo-Saxon England is
chiefly an account of foundations. Information on the establishment of
religious settlements founded and presided over by women is plentiful, but
well-nigh a century went by before women who had adopted religion as a
profession gave any insight into their lives and characters through writings
of their own. The women who founded monasteries in Anglo-Saxon
England have generally been raised to the rank of saint.
‘In the large number of convents as well as in the names of female saints
among the Anglo-Saxons,’ says Lappenberg[232], ‘we may recognise the
same spirit which attracted the notice of the Roman army among the ancient
Germans, and was manifested in the esteem and honour of women
generally, and in the special influence exercised by the priestess.’
A great proportion of the women who founded religious houses were
members of ruling families. From the first it was usual for a princess to
receive a grant of land from her husband on the occasion of her marriage,
and this land together with what she inherited from her father she could
dispose of at will. She often devoted this property to founding a religious
house where she established her daughters, and to which she retired either
during her husband’s lifetime or after his death. The great honour paid by

Christianity to the celibate life and the wide field of action opened to a
princess in a religious house were strong inducements to the sisters and
daughters of kings to take the veil.
We have trustworthy information about many of the Anglo-Saxon women
who founded and presided over religious settlements and whom posterity
reverenced as saints; for their work has been described by writers who
either knew them, or gained their information from those who did. But there
are other women whose names only are mentioned in charters, or
correspondence, or in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Historians however
welcome such references as chronological evidence and as proofs of these
women’s real existence; without them they would have nothing to rely upon
but accounts dating from a later period and often consisting of little more
than a series of incidents strung together in order to explain the miracles
with which the saints’ relics were locally credited. There is a certain
similarity between these later accounts and those we have of pseudo-saints,
but they differ from those of an earlier date, for the writers of the 8th and
9th centuries were not actuated like those of a later period by the desire to
give a miraculous rendering of fact. Bede ( † 735) stands pre-eminent
among the earlier writers, and our admiration for him increases as we
discover his immense superiority to other early historians.
Most of the women who were honoured as saints in England belong to the
first hundred years after the acceptance of Christianity in these islands. A
few other women have been revered as saints who lived in the 10th century
and came under the influence of the monastic revival which is associated
with the name of Dunstan ( † 988). But no woman living during Anglo-
Norman times has been thus honoured, for the desire to raise women to
saintship was essentially Anglo-Saxon and was strongest in the times which
immediately followed the acceptance of Christianity.
It was more than two hundred years after the Anglo-Saxons first set foot on
British shores that they accepted Christianity. The struggles between them
and the inhabitants of the island had ended in the recognised supremacy of
the invaders, and bands of heathen Germans, settling at first near the shore,
for the sake of the open country, had gradually made their way up the
fruitful valleys and into adjoining districts till they covered the land with a
network of settlements. After the restlessness of invasion and warfare the

Anglo-Saxons settled down to domestic life and agriculture, for compared
with the British they were eminently tillers of the soil. Under their régime
the cities built by the Romans and the British fastnesses alike fell into
decay. The Anglo-Saxons dwelt in villages, and the British either lived there
in subservience to them or else retired into districts of their own which were
difficult of access.
The re-introduction of Christianity into these islands is associated with the
name of Pope Gregory. Zealous and resolute in his efforts to strengthen the
papal power by sending forth missionaries who were devoted to him, he
watched his opportunity to gain a foothold for the faith in Kent.
Tradition connects the first step in this direction with the name of a
Frankish princess, and Bede in his Church History tells how the marriage of
Berhta, daughter of King Charibert of Paris (561-567), to King Aethelberht
of Kent (586-616) brought an ecclesiastic to Canterbury who took
possession of the ancient British church of St Martin: this event was
speedily followed by the arrival of other ecclesiastics from Rome, who
travelled across France under the leadership of Augustine.
At the time of Augustine’s arrival the position of Kent was threatened by
the growing supremacy of Northumbria. Through the activity both of
Aethelfrith ( † 617) and of Eadwin his successor, the land extending from
the Humber to the Firth of Forth had been united under one rule;
Northumbria was taking the lead among the petty kingdoms which had been
formed in different parts of the island. The king of Kent strengthened his
independent position by accepting the faith which had proved propitious to
the Franks and by entering into alliance with his neighbours across the
Channel; and it was no doubt with a view to encouraging peaceful relations
with the north that Aethelburg the daughter of Aethelberht and Berhta was
given in marriage to King Eadwin of Northumbria during the reign of her
brother Eadbald (616-640).
Again the marriage of a Christian princess was made an occasion for
extending the faith; an ecclesiastic as usual followed in her train. Paulinus,
the Roman chaplain who came north with Aethelburg, after various
incidents picturesquely set forth by Bede, overcame King Eadwin’s
reluctance to embrace Christianity and prevailed upon him to be baptized at

York with other members of his household on Easter day in the year 627.
The event was followed by an influx of Christians into that city, for British
Christianity had receded before the heathen Angles, but it still had
strongholds in the north and was on the alert to regain lost ground. The city
of York, during Roman rule, had been of great importance in affairs of
administration. The Roman Eboracum nearly died out to arise anew as
Anglian Eoforwic. King Eadwin recognised Paulinus as bishop and a stone
church was begun on part of the ground now occupied by the Minster[233].
Bede loves to dwell on the story of this conversion, which was endeared to
all devout churchmen by many associations. Eanflaed, the child of Eadwin
and Aethelburg, whose baptism was its immediate cause, was afterwards a
staunch supporter of Roman versus British Church tendencies. She was the
patron of Wilfrith, in his time the most zealous advocate of the supremacy
of Rome.
Among the members of Eadwin’s household who were baptized on the
same Easter day in 627 was Hild, a girl of fourteen, who afterwards became
abbess of Whitby. She was grand-niece to Eadwin through her father
Hereric, who had been treacherously made away with; her mother
Beorhtswith and her sister Hereswith were among the early converts to
Christianity. Hereswith afterwards married a king of the Angles, and at a
later period was living in the Frankish settlement of Chelles (Cala), where
her sister Hild at one time thought of joining her. Nothing is known of the
life of Hild between the ages of fourteen and thirty-four, but evidently she
had not dwelt in obscure retirement, for the Scottish prelate Aidan in 647,
knowing that she was living in the midlands, begged her to return to the
north. It is a noteworthy circumstance if, in an age when marriage was the
rule, she remained single without taking the veil, but she may have been
associated with some religious settlement[234].
It was only a few years after the acceptance of Christianity at York that the
days of King Eadwin’s reign, ‘when a woman with her babe might walk
scatheless from sea to sea,’ came to an abrupt close. Eadwin was slain in
633 at the battle of Hatfield, a victim to the jealousy of the British king
Caedwalla, who combined with the heathen king Penda of Mercia against
him. Queen Aethelburg with her children and Paulinus fled from York to the

coast and went by sea to Kent, where they were welcomed by her brother
King Eadbald and by Archbishop Honorius.
At the beginning of his reign Eadbald of Kent had been in conflict with the
Church owing to his marriage with his father’s relict, a heathen wife whom
Aethelberht had taken to himself after the death of Berhta. It is
characteristic of the position held at first by Christian prelates in England
that they depended entirely on the ruling prince for their position. Paulinus
fled from York at the death of Eadwin, and Eadbald’s adherence to heathen
customs temporarily drove the Kentish prelate abroad. The king of Kent
had, however, found it well to repudiate his heathen wife and to take a
Christian princess of the Franks in her stead. This act restored him to the
goodwill of his prelate, who returned to English shores.
Eadbald had settled a piece of land at Folkestone on his daughter Eanswith,
and there about the year 630 she founded what is held to be the first
religious settlement for women in Anglo-Saxon England[235]. The fact of
this foundation is undisputed, but all we know of Eanswith’s life is in the
account given of her by Capgrave, an Augustinian monk who lived in the
15th century[236]. He tells us how she went to live at Folkestone and how a
king of Northumbria wished to marry her, but as the king was a heathen,
she made their union conditional on his prevailing upon his gods to
manifest their power by miraculously lengthening a beam. In this he failed
and consequently departed. There follows a description how Eanswith made
a stream to flow ‘againste the hylle,’ from Smelton, a mile distant from
Folkestone, possibly by means of a well-levelled water conduit. Capgrave
also describes how she enforced the payment of tithes.
Eanswith’s settlement was in existence at the close of the century, when it
was destroyed or deserted during the viking invasion. A charter of King
Athelstane dated 927 gives the land where ‘stood the monastery and abbey
of holy virgins and where also St Eanswith lies buried’ to Christ Church,
Canterbury, the house having been destroyed by the ‘Pagans[237].’ Capgrave
says that its site was swallowed by the sea, perhaps in one of the landslips
common to the coast; the holy woman’s relics were then transferred to the
church of St Peter. A church at Folkestone is dedicated conjointly to St
Mary and St Eanswith, and a church at Brensett in Kent is dedicated solely
to her[238].

Queen Aethelburg coming from the north also settled in Kent at a place
called Liming[239]. Bede knows nothing of her after her departure from the
north, and we have to depend on Canterbury traditions for information
concerning her and the religious house she founded. Gocelin, a monk of
Flanders who came into Kent in the 11th century, describes Queen
Aethelburg as ‘building and upraising this temple at Liming, and obtaining
the first name there and a remarkable burial-place in the north porch against
the south wall of the church covered with an arch[240].’ Modern research has
shown that the buildings at Liming were so arranged as to contain a convent
of monks as well as of nuns. The church is of Roman masonry and may
have been built out of the fragments of a villa, such as the Anglo-Saxons
frequently adapted to purposes of their own, or it may have been a Roman
basilica restored.
Queen Aethelburg, foundress of Liming, is not usually reckoned a saint; she
has no day[241] and collections of saints’ lives generally omit her. The
identity of name between her and Aethelburg († c. 676), abbess of Barking
at a somewhat later date, has caused some confusion between them[242].
Gocelin mentions that both Queen Aethelburg and ‘St Eadburga’ were
buried at Liming[243]. A well lying to the east of the church at Liming is to
this day called St Ethelburga’s well, and she is commonly held to be
identical with Queen Aethelburg[244].
At a somewhat later date another religious settlement for women was
founded at Sheppey in Kent by Queen Sexburg, the wife of Earconberht of
Kent (640-664), the successor of Eadbald. We know little of the
circumstances of the foundation[245]. Sexburg was a princess of East Anglia,
where Christianity had been accepted owing to the influence of King
Eadwin of Northumbria[246] and where direct relations with France had
been established.
‘For at that time,’ says Bede, writing of these districts[247], ‘there being not
yet many monasteries built in the region of the Angles, many were wont, for
the sake of the monastic mode of life, to go from Britain to the monasteries
of the Franks and of Gaul; they also sent their daughters to the same to be
instructed and to be wedded to the heavenly spouse, chiefly in the
monasteries of Brie (Faremoutiers), Chelles, and Andelys.’

Two princesses of Anglia, Saethrith and Aethelburg, who were sisters or
half-sisters to Sexburg, remained abroad and became in succession abbesses
of Brie as mentioned above. Sexburg’s daughter Earcongotha also went
there, and was promoted to the rank of abbess. Both Bede and the Anglo-
Saxon Chronicle speak in praise of her. For her other daughter Eormenhild,
who was married to Wulfhere, king of Mercia, Queen Sexburg of Kent
founded the house at Sheppey; she herself went to live at Ely in her sister
Aethelthrith’s convent.
The statement of Bede that women at this time went abroad for their
education is borne out by the traditional records of Mildthrith, first abbess
of a religious settlement in Thanet which rose to considerable
importance[248]. A huge mass of legend supplements the few historical facts
we know of Mildthrith, whose influence, judging from the numerous
references to her and her widespread cult, was greater than that of any other
English woman-saint. Several days in the Calendar are consecrated to her,
and the site where her relics had been deposited was made a subject of
controversy in the 11th century. As late as 1882 we find that some of her
relics were brought from Deventer in Holland to Thanet, and that Pope Leo
XIII granted a plenary indulgence on the occasion[249]. Churches in
London, Oxford, Canterbury and other places are dedicated to St
Mildred[250], and Capgrave, William of Malmesbury and others give details
of her story, which runs as follows:
Her mother Eormenburg, sometimes called Domneva, was married to
Merewald, prince of Hacanos, a district in Herefordshire. King Ecgberht
(664-673) of Kent gave her some land in Thanet as a blood-fine for the
murder of her two young brothers, and on it she founded a monastery. She
asked for as much land as her tame deer could run over in one course, and
received over ten thousand acres of the best land in Kent[251].
Besides Mildthrith Eormenburg had two daughters, Mildburg and Mildgith,
and a boy, the holy child Merwin, who was translated to heaven in his
youth. Mildburg presided over a religious house at Wenlock in Shropshire,
and her legend contains picturesque traits but little trustworthy
information[252]. We know even less of the other daughter Mildgith. It is
doubtful whether she lived in Kent or in the north, but she is considered a
saint[253]. An ancient record says that ‘St Mildgith lies in Northumbria

where her miraculous powers were often exhibited and still are,’ but it does
not point out at what place[254].
According to her legend, Mildthrith, by far the best known of the sisters,
was sent abroad to Chelles for her education, where the abbess Wilcoma
wished her to marry her kinsman, and on the girl’s refusal cast her into a
burning furnace from which she came forth unharmed. The girl sent her
mother a psalter she had written together with a lock of her hair. She made
her escape and arrived in England, landing at Ebbsfleet. ‘As she descended
from the ship to the land and set her feet on a certain square stone the print
of her feet remained on it, most life-like, she not thinking anything; God so
accomplishing the glory of his handmaid. And more than that; the dust that
was scrapen off thence being drunk did cure sundry diseases[255].’ It appears
that a stone to which a superstitious reverence was attached was walled into
the Church of St Mildred in Thanet.
Other incidents told of her influence are not without their humorous side.
One day a bell-ringer, forgetful of his duties, had dropped asleep, when
Mildthrith appeared to him and gave him a blow on the ear, saying,
‘Understand, fellow, that this is an oratory to pray in, not a dormitory to
sleep in,’ and so vanished.
Thus writes the author of her legend. The fact remains that Mildthrith was
presiding over a settlement in Kent towards the close of the 7th century. For
in a charter of privileges granted between 696 and 716 by King Wihtred and
Queen Werburg to the churches and monasteries of Kent granting them
security against interference, her name is among those of the five lady
abbesses who place their signatures to the document.[256] These names
stand after those of the archbishop of Canterbury and the bishop of
Rochester and are as follows; ‘Mildritha, Aetheldritha, Aette, Wilnotha and
Hereswytha.’ The settlements mentioned in the body of the charter[257] as
being subject to them are Upminstre (or Minstre) in Thanet, afterwards
known as St Mildred’s, Southminstre, a colony of Minstre, Folkestone,
Liming and Sheppey, the foundation of which has been described.
Thus at the close of the 7th century there existed in the province of Kent
alone five religious settlements governed by abbesses who added this title
to their signatures, or who, judging from the place given to them, ranked in

dignity below the bishops but above the presbyters (presbyteri), whose
names follow theirs in the list. From the wording of the charter we see that
men who accepted the tonsure and women who received the veil were at
this time classed together. Those who set their signatures to the charter
agreed that neither abbot nor abbess should be appointed without the
consent of a prelate.
The charter is the more valuable as it establishes the existence of the
Kentish convents and their connection with each other at a period when we
have only fragmentary information about the religious houses in the south.
We must turn to the north for fuller information as to the foundation and
growth of religious settlements presided over by women during the early
Christian period.

§ 2. The Monastery at Whitby[258].

A temporary collapse of the Christian faith had followed the death of King
Eadwin of Northumbria, but the restoration of King Oswald, who was not
so strong as his predecessor in administrative power but whose religious
fervour was greater, had given it a new impulse and a new direction.
Oswald had passed some time of his life in Iona or Hii, the great Scottish
religious settlement and the stronghold of British Christianity in the
Hebrides. Here he had made friends with the ecclesiastic Aidan, who
became his staunch supporter. Soon after his accession Oswald summoned a
monk from Iona ‘to minister the word of the faith to himself and to his
people,’ and when it was found that the monk made no progress, Aidan was
moved to go among the Angles himself. In preference to York he chose the
island Lindisfarne for his headquarters, but he spent much of his time with
Oswald, helping him to set the practice and teaching of religion on a firmer
footing.
It was during this part of Aidan’s career that he consecrated Heiu[259],
according to Bede ‘the first woman who took the vow and the habit of a nun
in the province of Northumbria.’ Heiu presided over a congregation of
women at Hartlepool in Durham, from which she removed to Calcaria of

the Romans, which is perhaps identical with Healaugh near Tadcaster,
where apparently Heiu’s name is retained. Further details of her career are
wanting.
Aidan’s labours were interrupted for a time. Again the fierce and impetuous
King Penda of Mercia invaded Northumbria, and again the Christian Angles
fled before the midland heathens. King Oswald fell in battle (642) and
Aidan retired to his rocky island, from which he watched the fires kindled
all over the country first by the raids of Penda, and afterwards by civil strife
between the two provinces of Northumbria, Deira and Bernicia. This arose
through the rival claims to the throne of Oswiu, Oswald’s brother, and
Oswin, who was King Eadwin’s relative.
An understanding was at length effected between them by which Oswiu
accepted Bernicia, while Oswin took possession of Deira, and Aidan, who
found a patron in Oswin, returned to his work.
He now persuaded Hild[260], who was waiting in Anglia for an opportunity
to cross over to France, where she purposed joining her sister, to give up
this plan and to return to the north to share in the work in which he was
engaged. Hild came and settled down to a monastic life with a few
companions on the river Wear. A year later, when Heiu retired to Calcaria,
Hild became abbess at Hartlepool. She settled there only a few years before
the close of Aidan’s career. He died in 651 shortly after his patron Oswin,
whose murder remains the great stain on the life of his rival Oswiu.
A 12th century monk, an inmate of the monastery of St Beeves in
Cumberland, has written a life of St Bega, the patron saint of his monastery,
whom he identifies on the one hand with the abbess Heiu, consecrated by
Aidan, and on the other with Begu, a nun who had a vision of Hild’s death
at the monastery of Hackness in the year 680. His narrative is further
embellished with local traditions about a woman Bega, who came from
Ireland and received as a gift from the Lady Egermont the extensive parish
and promontory of St Beeves, which to this day bear her name[261].
There has been much speculation concerning this holy woman Bega, but it
is probable that the writer of her life combined myths which seem to be
Keltic with accounts of two historical persons whom Bede keeps quite
distinct. There is no reason to doubt Bede’s statements in this matter or in

others concerning affairs in the north, for he expressly affirms that he ‘was
able to gain information not from one author only but from the faithful
assertion of innumerable witnesses who were in a position to know and
remember these things; besides those things,’ he adds, ‘which I could
ascertain myself.’ He passed his whole life studying and writing in the
monasteries of SS. Peter and Paul, two settlements spoken of as one, near
the mouth of the river Wear, close to where Hild had first settled. He went
there during the lifetime of Bennet Biscop ( † 690), the contemporary of
Hild and a shining representative of the culture the Anglo-Saxons attained
in the 7th century.
Hild settled at Hartlepool about the year 647. Eight years later Oswiu
finally routed the army of Penda, whose attacks had been for so many years
like a battering ram to the greatness of Northumbria. And in fulfilment of a
vow he had made that the Christian religion should profit if God granted
him victory, he gave Hild the charge of his daughter Aelflaed ‘who had
scarcely completed the age of one year, to be consecrated to God in
perpetual virginity, besides bestowing on the Church twelve estates.’
Extensive property came with the child into the care of Hild, perhaps
including the site of Streaneshalch[262], which is better known as Whitby, a
name given to it at a later date by the Danes. Bede says that Hild here
undertook to construct and arrange a monastery.
Bede thus expresses himself on the subject of Hild’s life and influence
during the term of over thirty years which she spent first as abbess of
Hartlepool and then as abbess of Whitby[263]:
‘Moreover, Hild, the handmaid of Christ, having been appointed to govern
that monastery (at Hartlepool), presently took care to order it in the regular
way of life, in all respects, according as she could gain information from
learned men. For Bishop Aidan, also, and all the religious men who knew
her, were wont to visit her constantly, to love her devotedly, and to instruct
her diligently, on account of her innate wisdom, and her delight in the
service of God.
‘When, then, she had presided over this monastery for some years, being
very intent on establishing the regular discipline, according as she could
learn it from learned men, it happened that she undertook also to construct

and arrange a monastery in the place which is called Streanshalch; and this
work being enjoined on her, she was not remiss in accomplishing it. For she
established this also in the same discipline of regular life in which she
established the former monastery; and, indeed, taught there also the strict
observance of justice, piety, and chastity, and of the other virtues, but
mostly of peace and charity, so that, after the example of the primitive
Church, there was therein no one rich, no one poor; all things were common
to all, since nothing seemed to be the private property of any one.
Moreover, her prudence was so great that not only did ordinary persons, but
even sometimes kings and princes, seek and receive counsel of her in their
necessities. She made those who were under her direction give so much
time to the reading of the Divine Scriptures, and exercise themselves so
much in works of righteousness, that very many, it appeared, could readily
be found there, who could worthily enter upon the ecclesiastical grade, that
is the service of the altar.’
In point of fact five men who had studied in Hild’s monastery were
promoted to the episcopate. Foremost among them is John, bishop of
Hexham (687-705) and afterwards of York († 721), the famous St John of
Beverley, a canonised saint of the Church, of whose doings Bede has left an
account. In this[264] we hear of the existence of another monastery for
women at Watton (Vetadun) not far from Whitby, where Bishop John went
to visit the abbess Heriburg, who was living there with her ‘daughter in the
flesh,’ Cwenburg, whom she designed to make abbess in her stead. We hear
no more about Watton till centuries later, but Bede’s remark is interesting as
showing how natural he felt it to be that the rule of a settlement should pass
from mother to daughter.
Cwenburg was suffering from a swollen arm which John tells us was very
serious, ‘since she had been bled on the fourth day of the moon,’ ‘when
both the light of the moon and the tide of the ocean were on their increase.
And what can I do for the girl if she is at death’s door?’ he exclaims.
However his combined prayers and remedies, which were so often
efficacious, helped to restore her.
Aetla, another of Hild’s scholarly disciples, held the see of Dorchester,
though perhaps only temporarily during the absence of Aegilberht. A third,
Bosa, was archbishop of York between 678 and 686; Bede speaks of him as

a monk of Whitby, a man of great holiness and humility. Oftfor, another of
Hild’s monks, went from Whitby to Canterbury, to study ‘a more perfect’
system of discipline under Archbishop Theodore († 690), and subsequently
became bishop of Worcester.
The career of these men shows that the system of discipline and education
under Hild at Whitby compared favourably with that of other settlements.
At the outset she had followed the usages of the Scottish Church, with
which she was familiar through her intercourse with Aidan, but when the
claims for an independent British Church were defeated at Whitby, she
accepted the change and adopted the Roman usage.
The antagonism which had existed from the first appearance of Augustine
in England between Roman Christianity and British Christianity as upheld
by the Scottish and Welsh clergy took the form of open disagreement in
Northumbria. On one side was the craving for ritual, for refinement and for
union with Rome; on the other insistence by the Scottish clergy on their
right to independence.
Aidan had been succeeded at Lindisfarne by Finnan, owing to whose
influence discussion was checked for the time being. But after his death
(661) the latent antagonism came to a head over the practical difficulty due
to the different dates at which King Oswiu and Queen Eanflaed kept Easter.
Thus the way was cleared for the Whitby synod (664), a ‘gathering of all
orders of the Church system,’ at which the respective claims of Roman and
of British Christianity were discussed.
The British interest was represented among others by Colman, Finnan’s
successor at Lindisfarne, who temporarily held the see at York, and by
Aegilberht, bishop of Dorchester. The opposite side was taken by the
protégé of Queen Eanflaed, Wilfrith, abbot of Ripon, whose ardour in the
cause of Rome had been greatly augmented by going abroad with Bennet
Biscop about the year 653. Besides these and other prelates, King Oswiu
and his son and co-regent Ealhfrith were present at the synod. The abbess
Hild was also there, but she took no part in the discussion.
The questions raised were not of doctrine but of practice. The computation
of Easter, the form of the tonsure, matters not of belief but of apparently
trivial externals, were the points round which the discussion turned. Owing

chiefly to Wilfrith’s influence the decision was in favour of Rome, and a
strong rebuff was given for a time to the claim for an independent British
Church in the north.
The choice of Whitby as the site of the synod marks the importance which
this settlement had attained within ten years of its foundation. Those who
have stood on the height of the cliff overlooking the North Sea and have let
their gaze wander over the winding river course and the strand below can
realize the lordly situation of the settlement which occupies such a
distinguished place among the great houses and nurseries of culture at
Hexham, Wearmouth, Jarrow, Ripon and York.
The property which the monastery held in overlordship extended along the
coast for many miles, and the settlement itself consisted of a large group of
buildings; for there are references to the dwellings for the men, for the
women, and to an outlying house for the sick. These dwellings were
gathered round the ancient British Church of St Peter, which was situated
under the shelter of the brow of the cliff where King Eadwin lay buried, and
which continued to be the burial-place of the Northumbrian kings. Isolated
chapels and churches with separate bands of religious votaries belonging to
them lay in other parts of the monastic property, and were subject to the
abbess of Whitby. We hear of a minor monastery at Easington (Osingadun)
[265] during the rule of Aelflaed, Hild’s successor, and at Hackness
(Hacanos) on the limit of the monastic property, thirteen miles south of
Whitby, a monastery of some importance had been founded by Hild[266].
Bands of men and of women dwelt here under the government of Frigith,
and it was here that the nun Begu had a vision of Hild on the night of her
death, when she saw her borne aloft by attendant angels[267].
The name of Hild and the monastery at Whitby are further endeared to
posterity through their connection with Caedmon, the most celebrated of the
vernacular poets of Northumbria and the reputed author of the Anglo-Saxon
metrical paraphrases of the Old Testament[268]. It was his great reputation as
a singer that made Hild seek Caedmon and persuade him to join her
community. Here the practice of reading Holy Scripture made him familiar
with the stories of Hebrew literature in their grand and simple setting, and
he drank of the waters of that well to which so many centuries of creative
and representative art have gone for inspiration.

Caedmon’s power of song had been noticed outside the monastery.
‘And all concluded that a celestial gift had been granted him by the Lord.
And they interpreted to him a certain passage of sacred history or doctrine,
and ordered him to turn it if he could into poetical rhythm. And he, having
undertaken it, departed, and returning in the morning brought back what he
was ordered to do, composed in most excellent verse. Whereupon presently
the abbess, embracing heartily the grace of God in the man, directed him to
leave the secular habit, and to take the monastic vow; and having together
with all her people received him into the monastery associated him with the
company of the brethren, and ordered him to be instructed in the whole
course of sacred history. And he converted into most sweet song whatever
he could learn from hearing, by thinking it over by himself, and, as though a
clean animal, by ruminating; and by making it resound more sweetly, made
his teachers in turn his hearers[269].’
These passages are curious as showing that a singer of national strains was
persuaded to adapt his art to the purposes of religion. The development of
Church music is usually held to have been distinct from that of folk-music,
but in exceptional cases such as this, there seems to have been a relation
between the two.
Excavations recently made on several of the sites of ancient northern
monasteries have laid bare curious and interesting remains which add
touches of reality to what is known about the houses of the north during this
early period[270]. In a field called Cross Close at Hartlepool near Durham
skeletons of men and women were found, and a number of monumental
stones of peculiar shape, some with runic inscriptions of women’s names.
Some of these names are among those of the abbesses inscribed in the so-
called ‘Book of Life of Durham,’ a manuscript written in gold and silver
lettering in the early part of the 9th century[271]. Again, an ancient
tombstone of peculiar design was found at Healaugh; and at Hackness
several memorial crosses are preserved, one of which bears the inscription
of the name Aethelburg, who no doubt is the abbess of that name with
whom Aelflaed, Hild’s successor at Whitby, in 705 travelled to the death-
bed of King Ealdfrith[272].

Finally on the Whitby coast on the south side of the abbey a huge kitchen-
midden was discovered. A short slope here leads to the edge of the cliff, and
excavations on this slope and at its foot, which was once washed by the
tide, have revealed the facts that the denizens of the original monastery
were wont to throw the refuse of their kitchen over the cliff, and that the
lighter material remained on the upper ledges, the heavier rolling to the
bottom.
Among the lighter deposits were found bones of birds, oyster, whelk and
periwinkle shells, and two combs, one of which bears a runic inscription.
Among the heavier deposits were bones of oxen, a few of sheep, and a large
number of the bones and tusks of wild swine, besides several iron pot-hooks
and other implements; a bone spindle and a divided ink-horn are among the
objects specified. An inscribed leaden bulla found among the refuse is
declared by experts to be earlier than the 8th century; it is therefore proof
that these remains were deposited during the earlier period of the existence
of Hild’s monastery, possibly during her lifetime.
Hild died after an illness of several years on November 17, 680. Would that
there were more data whereby to estimate her personality! The few traits of
her character that have been preserved, her eagerness to acquire knowledge,
her success in imparting it to others, her recognition of the need of unity in
the Church, the interest she took in one who could repeat the stories of the
new faith in strains which made them intelligible to the people, are
indicative of a strong personality and of an understanding which
appreciated the needs of her time.
Various myths, of which Bede knows nothing, have been attached to her
name in course of time. According to a popular legend she transformed the
snakes of the district into the ammonites familiar to visitors to those parts.
And it is said that at certain times of the day her form can be seen flitting
across the abbey ruins[273].
At her death the rule of the settlement passed to Aelflaed, the princess who
had been given into her care as a child. After King Oswiu’s death in 670
Queen Eanflaed joined her daughter in the monastery. The princess and
abbess Aelflaed proved herself worthy of the influence under which she had
grown up, and we shall find her among the persons of importance who took

up a decided attitude in regard to the disturbances which broke out through
the action of Bishop Wilfrith. The beginnings of these difficulties belong to
the lifetime of Hild: we do not know that she took any interest in the matter,
but judging from indirect evidence we should say that she shared in the
feeling which condemned the prelate’s anti-national and ultra-Roman
tendencies.

§ 3. Ely and the influence of Bishop Wilfrith.

The further history of the monastery of Whitby and the history of the
foundation of Ely are closely connected with the prelate Wilfrith, and for
this reason his actions and attitude claim our attention. In him we recognise
a direct advocate of the principle that a queen could if she chose leave her
husband and retire to a religious settlement, and that such a course would
secure her the favour of the Church.
It has been said of him that he was the most important man in Northumbria
for forty years after the Whitby synod[274]. He owed his education to Queen
Eanflaed, whose attention he had attracted when quite a youth, and who had
sent him into Kent to complete his education; there he imbibed strong
Roman sympathies. He lived for some years in France and Italy in the
society of Bennet Biscop, and he was already held in high esteem at the
time of the Whitby synod, which he attended in the character of abbot of the
monastery at Ripon, a house he had founded with the help of Ealhfrith.
When Colman and his adherents beat a rapid retreat to the north in
consequence of the decision of the synod, Wilfrith became bishop of York,
an appointment which meant ecclesiastical supremacy over the whole vast
province of Northumbria. His intellectual brilliancy gained him many
admirers, but an innate restlessness of disposition and a wilful
determination to support the power of Rome to the national detriment
launched him into repeated difficulties with temporal and spiritual rulers.
He was at the height of prosperity and popularity when Ecgfrith succeeded
Oswiu in 670 after the death of Ealhfrith. Wilfrith had hitherto been on
good terms with Ecgfrith, but a breach in their relations soon occurred,

partly owing to the conduct of Ecgfrith’s wife, Aethelthrith, whom Wilfrith
supported against the king.
Aethelthrith, known to a later age as Etheldred or Awdrey, was the daughter
of King Anna of the East Angles (635-645), whose province, including the
present shires of Norfolk and Suffolk, was removed from direct intercourse
with others by the almost impassable reaches of the fens. Anglia has not left
any annals of her own, and we have to depend for the names and dates of
her kings on the slight information which other provinces have preserved.
Written legends generally consider Anna as the father also of Sexburg, the
foundress of Sheppey, and of Aethelburg and Saethrith, two princesses who
had settled in France, as well as of Wihtburg, a woman-saint of whom very
little is known, and who was associated with a religious foundation at East
Dereham in Norfolk[275]. We further learn from legend that King Anna was
married to Hereswith, sister of Hild of Whitby, and Aethelthrith is spoken of
as niece to the great abbess Hild. But this connection is discredited by a
statement in Bede which suggests that Hild’s sister Hereswith was married
not to King Anna but to his successor King Aethelhere (654-664). It is
difficult to decide to which of the kings of the East Angles Hereswith was
married, but Anna was certainly not her husband[276].
The princess Aethelthrith at the time of her marriage with the king of
Northumbria was the widow of Tunberht prince of the South-Gyrvi, or fen-
country men. Anglia stood at this time in a relation of dependence to
Northumbria, and in 664, four years before the Whitby synod, Aethelthrith a
woman of over thirty was married to Ecgfrith a boy of fifteen, the heir-
apparent to the throne of Northumbria. The marriage was no doubt arranged
for political reasons.
The consequences which followed render these facts worthy of notice. For
Aethelthrith on her arrival in the north at once conceived a great admiration
for the prelate Wilfrith, while she treated her husband with contumely. She
bestowed on Wilfrith the extensive property at Hexham which she had
received from her husband, and on which Wilfrith built the church which
was spoken of in his days as the most wonderful building on this side of the
Alps[277]. Judging from what Wilfrith himself told him about the queen’s

attitude Bede says ‘the king knew that she loved no man more than
Wilfrith.’
The events that followed bear out this statement, for after living about ten
years with the king, Aethelthrith left him and repaired to the monastery of
Coldingham (Coludesburg) in Berwickshire, which had been founded and
was ruled over by Aebbe, sister, or perhaps half-sister, of the kings Oswald
and Oswiu[278]. King Ecgfrith may or may not have agreed to this step.
Eddi, the friend and biographer of Wilfrith, maintains a judicious silence on
the relations of the king and queen, while Bede represents[279] that
Aethelthrith had always had an aversion to the married state and describes
how he had been told by Wilfrith himself that Ecgfrith promised much land
and money to the prelate if he persuaded the queen to allow him conjugal
rights.
At Coldingham Wilfrith gave Aethelthrith the veil; this act involved her
breaking all marital ties. But she cannot have deemed her position secure,
for she presently left Coldingham, which was within her husband’s territory,
and went to Ely, the island in the fens which her first husband Tunberht had
bestowed on her.
Under the date 673 stand in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle these words: ‘And
Aetheldryth began the monastery at Ely.’ It was situated on a hill prominent
above the flatness of the surrounding fen-land, which at that time consisted
of a wilderness of marsh and water. Men and women readily flocked thither
to live under the guidance of the queen. We hear that she received material
aid from her cousin King Ealdwulf of Anglia, that Hunna acted as her
chaplain, and that Bishop Wilfrith stayed with her on his passage from
Northumbria to Rome. Thomas of Ely (fl. c. 1174) has embellished the
account of Aethelthrith’s flight and journey south by introducing into the
story various picturesque incidents, which Bede does not mention. She,
with her companions Sewenna and Sewara[280], was saved from her
pursuers by water rising round a rock on which they had taken refuge, and
she was sheltered by an ash-tree which grew in one night out of her
pilgrim’s staff and which can still be seen at a place called
Etheldredstowe[281]. As Aethelthrith of Ely is a favourite saint of English
legend it is interesting to find water and the tree miraculously associated
with her.

Shortly after Aethelthrith’s departure Ecgfrith summoned Theodore,
archbishop of Canterbury, to the north to divide the diocese of York into
three separate districts. Wilfrith resented these proceedings as an
infringement of his rights, but as he was unable to influence the king he
determined to seek the intervention of the Pope and set out for Rome. His
absence extended over several years.
It was at this time, Bede tells us, that Aethelthrith ‘having built a monastery
at Ely began both by example and by admonition of heavenly life to be a
virgin mother of very many virgins[282].’ The particulars he gives of her life
show that she had renounced the splendours which constituted so essential a
feature of royalty and had willingly devoted herself to humility and self-
denial. She wore no linen, only wool, rarely used a warm bath, save on the
eve of great festivals, and assisted at the washing of others. When she fell ill
of a tumour in her throat, she told the physician Cynefrith, who lanced it,
that she looked upon it as a chastisement for her love of wearing necklaces
in her youth. And on her death-bed she desired to be buried in a wooden
coffin in the nun’s ordinary cemetery.
The fame of Aethelthrith spread rapidly. She was looked upon as a virgin,
and her name with the epithet virgin was inscribed at an early date in both
the Anglo-Saxon and Roman Calendars, and to this day it is to be found in
the Book of Common Prayer. Later writers of her legend say that she lived
with Ecgfrith ‘not as a wyfe but as a lady,’ and add as a fitting pendant to
this story that she maintained similar relations with her first husband
Tunberht[283]. She died in the year 679, having presided over her monastery
only six or seven years, but during that time it had gained marked
importance. Many women had come to live there with her, and among them
her sister Sexburg, widow of the king of Kent, who had founded the
monastery at Sheppey and now succeeded Aethelthrith as abbess of Ely.
The chief event of Sexburg’s rule at Ely was the exhumation of the bones of
Aethelthrith in 695, which were transferred to a stone coffin of antique
workmanship which had been opportunely, or miraculously as
contemporaries thought, discovered at the old Roman colony of
Grantchester near Cambridge[284]. This translation took place on the 17th of
October, a day on which the relics were again transferred in 1106, and
which is the date of the important fair of Ely[285].

In a supplement to the History of Ely by Bentham, Essex gives an account
of the ruins of the conventual church begun by Aethelthrith[286]. Judging
from his investigations the church consisted of two parts, the nave and the
choir, the windows of the nave outside being ornamented with pillars and
arches, and the choir being arched with stone. Traces were still left of the
apartments of the abbess from which she could enter the church in a private
manner, and of a building opposite of equal dimensions which served as a
dormitory for the nuns. At a little distance the remains of another large
building were discovered, one room of which, near the entrance to the
settlement, was a parlour for the reception of strangers, and the apartment
over it a dormitory for the men.
We know little more than the name of the next abbess of Ely. She was
Sexburg’s daughter Eormenhild, wife of King Wulfhere of Mercia, who had
hitherto dwelt in the monastery of Sheppey. Eormenhild in her turn was
succeeded by her daughter, the celebrated St Werburg of Chester, who was
never married. Various stories are preserved about Werburg’s influence, but
without reference to her work at Ely. We are indebted to Gocelin for the
oldest account of her[287]. He tells us that her uncle King Aethelraed of
Mercia entrusted her with the care of all the monasteries in his kingdom,
that she had founded religious houses at Trentham and at Hanbury, besides
turning a palace at Wedon-le-Street into a monastery[288]. He speaks of her
as a person of great cheerfulness and benevolence, and of a peaceful and
happy disposition. Several accounts of her are extant in manuscripts of
different dates, and as late as the 15th century her life was made the subject
of a most graceful metrical epic by the poet Henri Bradshaw († 1513)[289].
We are told that Werburg died at Trentham and that the society of that place
wished to keep her body, but the nuns of Hanbury carried it off by force and
enshrined it at Hanbury where the day of her deposition was kept[290].
During the viking invasion in 875 the body for the sake of safety was
conveyed to Chester, of which town St Werburg then became patron saint.
This incident gave rise at a later date to the story that the saint had founded
the monastery and the chief church at Chester on land given to her by her
father. Livien mentions that nine churches in England are dedicated to St
Werburg, who appears to have been a person of considerable
importance[291].

Once more we must return to the north and to the work of Bishop Wilfrith,
as he came into contact with various other religious women. When he
returned to England after an absence of several years Aethelthrith was dead,
but King Ecgfrith’s hatred of him had not abated. Insulted in his person and
nation he caused Wilfrith to be thrown into prison, offering to give him
back part of his bishopric and other gifts if he would submit to royal
authority and disclaim the genuineness of the document brought from
Rome[292]. Queen Eormenburg, whom Ecgfrith had taken to wife in place of
Aethelthrith, further embittered the king against the unlucky prelate. She
appropriated the reliquary Wilfrith had brought from Rome and wore it as
an ornament. For nine months the prelate was kept imprisoned, and the
story how he regained his liberty brings us back to Aebbe, abbess at
Coldingham, who had formerly sheltered Aethelthrith[293].
According to the account of Eddi, Wilfrith’s biographer, the king and queen
of Northumbria were staying at Coldingham when the queen was suddenly
taken ill. ‘At night she was seized like the wife of Pilate by a devil, and
worn out by many ills, hardly expected to see the day alive.’ The abbess
Aebbe went to King Ecgfrith and represented to him that the reason of this
seizure was their treatment of Wilfrith.
‘And now, my son,’ she said, ‘do according to the bidding of your mother;
loosen his bonds and send back to him by a trusty messenger the holy relics
which the queen took from him and like the ark of God carried about with
her to her harm. It were best you should have him as your bishop, but if you
refuse, set him free and let him go with his followers from your kingdom
wherever he list. Then by my faith you will live and your queen will not
die; but if you refuse by God’s witness you will not remain unpunished.’
Aebbe carried her point and Wilfrith was set free. He went into Mercia
which was at war with Northumbria, but he was not suffered to stay there,
for Queen Ostrith, the sister of King Ecgfrith, shared her brother’s hatred of
him. Forced to fly from Mercia he went into Wessex, but King Centwin’s
wife prevented him from staying there. It is curious to note the hatred with
which these married women pursued him while lady abbesses were his
friends. At last he found protection among the south Saxons, who fifteen
years before had nearly killed him, but their king Aethelwalch († 686) had
lately been converted to Christianity and gave him a friendly reception.

Wilfrith is represented as joining his civilizing influences to those of the
Irish monks who had settled on the coast. An interesting episode of his
sojourn here was his intercourse with Caedwalla, afterwards king of Wessex
(685-688), who at the time was living as an outlaw in the forests of
Sussex[294].
We get further glimpses of Aebbe and the settlement at Coldingham. She
entertained a great admiration for the holy man Cuthberht († 687), one of
the most attractive figures among the evangelizing prelates of the north, of
whom Bede has left an account.
Cuthberht was brought both by birth and education under Scottish
influences. He was prior at Melrose before the Whitby synod, but after it
came to Lindisfarne where his gentleness of temper and sweetness of
disposition won over many to accept Roman usages. Overcome by the
longing for solitude and contemplation which was so characteristic of many
early Christian prelates, he dwelt as a recluse on the desert island of Farne
from 676 to 685. There are many accounts of his life and of his
wanderings[295].
At the time when Cuthberht’s fame was spreading, Aebbe of Coldingham
‘sent to this man of God, begging him to come and condescend to edify
both herself and the inmates of her monastery by the grace of his
exhortation. Cuthberht accordingly went thither and tarrying for some days
he expounded the ways of justice to all; these he not only preached, but to
the same extent he practised[296].’
It is recorded that during his stay at Coldingham Cuthberht went at night to
pray on the deserted beach, and the seals came out of the water and
clustered around him.
The first instance mentioned by Bede of a lapse of monastic discipline was
at Coldingham where disorders occurred during Aebbe’s rule[297]. An Irish
monk who was on a visit to the monastery had a vision of its destruction by
fire, and when questioned about it by the abbess interpreted it as an
impending retribution for the tenor of life of those assembled there.
‘For even the dwellings,’ he said, ‘which were built for praying and reading
are now converted into places of revelling, drinking, conversation and other

forbidden doings; the virgins who are vowed to God, laying aside all
respect for their profession, whenever they have leisure spend all their time
in weaving fine garments with which they adorn themselves like brides, to
the detriment of their condition, and to secure the friendship of men
outside.’
Through Aebbe’s efforts things somewhat improved, but after her death, the
date of which is uncertain, the monastery really was destroyed by fire[298].
The story is told that Cuthberht at Lindisfarne forbade women to cross the
threshold of his conventual church on account of the life of the nuns at
Coldingham[299], but another version of his doings considers that his
attitude was due to an episode with a Scottish king’s daughter which turned
him against the sex[300].
Cuthberht was also the friend of Aelflaed, abbess of Whitby, who
entertained unbounded reverence for him. On one occasion[301] she had
fallen ill and, as she herself told the monk Herefrid, suffered so from cramp
that she could hardly creep along. ‘I would,’ she said, ‘I had something
belonging to my dear Cuthberht, for I believe and trust in the Lord that I
should soon be restored to health.’
In compliance with her wish the holy man sent her a linen girdle, which she
wore for a time and which entirely cured her. Later a nun by the help of the
same girdle was relieved of a headache, but after that the girdle of
miraculous power miraculously disappeared. The reason given for this
disappearance illustrates naïvely enough how divine power was considered
to be justified in making itself manifest with a reservation. ‘If this girdle
had remained present,’ Bede argues, ‘the sick would always flock to it; and
whilst some one of these might not be worthy to be healed, its efficacy to
cure might have been denied, whereas their own unworthiness was perhaps
to blame. Therefore, as was said above, Heaven so dealt its benevolence,
that, after the faith of believers had been confirmed, then immediately the
opportunity for detraction was entirely withdrawn from the malice of the
unrighteous.’
Contemporary witnesses bear testimony to the wisdom and prudence of the
abbess Aelflaed of Whitby, for Bede says in the life of Cuthberht that ‘she
increased the lustre of her royal lineage with the higher nobility of a more

exalted virginity’; whilst Eddi speaks of her as ‘the most virtuous virgin
who is actually a king’s daughter,’ and in another passage characterizes her
as ‘ever the comforter and best counsellor of the whole province.’
We find her in Cuthberht’s society on more than one occasion. Once he met
her at the monastery of ‘Osingadune’ (Easington) where he went to dedicate
the church, and while sitting by her at table he had a prophetic vision of the
death of one of her servants[302].
The abbess Aelflaed directly appealed to this prophetic insight of
Cuthberht’s when troubled in her mind about her brother King Ecgfrith,
whose expedition against the Picts filled her with apprehension[303]. In the
words of Bede: ‘At another time, the same most reverend virgin and mother
of Christ’s virgins, Aelflaed, sent to the man of God, adjuring him in the
name of the Lord that she might be allowed to see him, to converse on some
pressing affairs. Cuthberht accordingly went on board ship, accompanied by
some of the brethren, and came to the island which from its situation
opposite to the river Coquet receives its name, and is celebrated for its
community of monks; there it was that the aforesaid abbess had requested
him to meet her. When she was satisfied with his replies to her many
enquiries, on a sudden, while he was yet speaking, she fell at his feet and
adjured him by the sacred and venerable Name of the Heavenly King and
His angels, to tell her how long Ecgfrith, her brother, should live and rule
over the kingdom of the Angles; “For I know,” she said, “that you abound
in the spirit of prophecy, and that you can tell me this, if you will.” But he,
trembling at her adjuration, and yet not wishing openly to reveal the secret
which she asked for, replied, “It is marvellous that you, a woman wise and
well-instructed in the Holy Scriptures, should speak of the term of human
life as if it were long, seeing that the Psalmist says, ‘Our years shall be
considered as a spider[304],’ and that Solomon warns us that, ‘If a man live
many years and have rejoiced in them all, he must remember the darksome
time and the many days, which, when they shall come, the things passed
shall be accused of vanity[305].’ How much more then ought he, to whom
only one year of life remains, to be considered as having lived a short time,
when death shall stand at his gates?”
‘The abbess, on hearing this, lamented the dreadful prophecy with floods of
tears, and having wiped her face, with feminine boldness she adjured him

by the majesty of the sovereignty of God to tell her who would be the heir
of the kingdom, since Ecgfrith had neither sons nor brothers. Cuthberht was
silent for a short time, then he replied, “Say not that he is without heirs, for
he shall have a successor whom you may embrace with sisterly affection as
you do Ecgfrith himself.” But she continued: “Tell me, I beseech you,
where he is now.” And he said, “You see this mighty and wide ocean, how it
abounds with many islands. It is easy for God from one of these to provide
a ruler for the kingdom of the Angles.” Then she understood that he spoke
of Ealdfrith (Aldfrid) who was said to be the son of Ecgfrith’s father, and
who at that time lived in exile, in the islands of the Scots, for the sake of
studying letters.’
This meeting, if we credit the historian, took place in 684, and Aelflaed’s
forebodings were realized. Ecgfrith lost his life, and part of his kingdom
was taken by the Picts. In consequence of his defeat the settlement
Whithern, set up as a religious outpost in the territory south of the Firth of
Forth, was destroyed. Trumwin who had been entrusted with it was forced
to fly. He and his friends sought refuge at Whitby where he remained and
had much intercourse with Cuthberht and Aelflaed. Bede says that the
abbess found ‘great assistance in governing and also comfort for her own
life’ in Trumwin[306].
Northumbria had now passed the zenith of her greatness as a political
power, for the territory in the north which was lost through Ecgfrith’s defeat
was not regained, while in the south the province of Mercia began to shake
off the Northumbrian yoke. King Ecgfrith had been succeeded by his half-
brother Ealdfrith († 705) and owing to his attitude Wilfrith’s exile came to
an end. Theodore, archbishop of Canterbury, wrote a letter in his behalf to
Ealdfrith and also one to Aelflaed of Whitby begging her to be at peace with
him[307]. The prelate left Sussex for the north, where he remained for five
years in undisturbed possession of his see[308]. But again the old quarrels
revived, and Wilfrith in consequence of a council assembled by order of
Ealdfrith at Eastrefield was robbed of his episcopal dignity and reduced to
his abbacy at Ripon. He again insisted that the king and bishops should
submit to the Pope, and at the age of well-nigh seventy he undertook
another journey to Rome. But it was in vain he sent envoys to the king on
his return. Ealdfrith was determined not to relent, but afterwards
approaching death intimidated him. Feeling his end draw nigh he sent for

Aelflaed of Whitby, who with the abbess Aethelburg (probably of
Hackness) came to where he lay ill at Driffield in the East Riding. Aelflaed
received the king’s dying words, and at a council of prelates subsequently
assembled on the river Nidd bore testimony that he had spoken in favour of
making peace. Wilfrith regained part of his influence but remained in
retirement at his monastery.
Aelflaed outlived him and her friend Cuthberht who died in 687. It is
probable that she assisted at the translation of Cuthberht’s body in 698, for
in the inventory of the church at Durham one of the linen cloths or outer
envelopes of his body, which was taken from it in 1104, is described as ‘a
linen cloth of double texture which had enveloped the body of St Cuthbert
in his grave; Elfled the abbess had wrapped him up in it[309].’
Aelflaed is the last abbess of Whitby known by name. Her death is
supposed to have taken place in 713. Her monastery, like so many houses in
the north, which had grown to prosperity with the rising power of
Northumbria, sank into insignificance with the decadence of that power.
This decline was partly due to political reasons, but the dislike which the
later kings of Northumbria felt towards monasteries may have had
something to do with it. For as we shall see later on the example Queen
Aethelthrith had set was probably followed by two other Northumbrian
queens, Cyneburg, the wife of Ealhfrith, and Cuthburg, wife of Ealdfrith (†
705), who returned to their own countries and there founded monasteries.

§ 4. Houses in Mercia and in the South.

From the north we turn to Mercia and Wessex, the central and south-
western provinces of England. Mercia had clung longest to her heathen
beliefs, for Christianity was not accepted there till after the defeat of Penda
in 655 when Northumbria gained supremacy. Penda, king of Mercia,
remained faithful to his gods to the end himself, but his children adopted
the new faith. His son Peada had already been baptized in Northumbria by
Finnan who sent four ecclesiastics back with him to evangelise the
Midlands, and Wulfhere (c. 658-675) Peada’s brother and successor was
married to the Christian princess Eormenhild of Kent, for whom Queen

Sexburg had made the religious foundation at Sheppey. Peada had founded
a religious settlement at Burh or Medehampstead which is better known as
Peterborough, a name bestowed on it after its restoration in 970. The charter
of the foundation of Burh is dated 664, and besides the signatures of
Wulfhere and other princes and thanes it bears those of Wulfhere’s sisters
Cyneburg and Cyneswith[310].
Cyneburg and Cyneswith were esteemed as saints on the strength of their
religious foundations at Castor, a village some miles distant from
Peterborough; the name Cyneburg is held by the local historian to survive in
the appellations of Lady Connyburrow Walk and Coneygreve Close[311].
Cyneburg had been married to Ealhfrith, who was for some time co-regent
of Northumbria, but little is known of him after his presence at the synod of
Whitby in 664. The charter of the Medehampstead foundation above
referred to establishes beyond a doubt that Cyneburg had left her husband to
found and preside over her monastery; for she is designated as ‘formerly a
queen who had resigned her sway to preside over a monastery of
maidens[312].’ Her legend, which is not older than John of Tinmouth[313],
enlarges on this fact, and like Aethelthrith of Ely, Cyneburg together with
her sister Cyneswith has found a place in the Calendar as a virgin saint[314].
The legend which tells of Cyneburh and Cyneswith also refers to St Tibba
or Tilba, their kinswoman, who dwelt at Ryhall not far from Castor. The
same day was kept in commemoration of all these three saints at
Peterborough, to which place their bodies were transferred at an early date.
For the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (972) says of Aelfsi, abbot of Peterborough:
‘And he took up St Kyneburg and St Kyneswith who lay at Castor, and St
Tibba who lay at Ryhall, and brought them to Burh, and offered them all to
St Peter in one day.’ Camden[315] speaks of Tibba as a ‘saint of inferior
order, who was worshipped as another Diana by fowlers, a patroness of
hawking,’ and adds information which shows that she was popularly
connected with heathen survivals.
Mercia was the birthplace of many picturesque legends about the
conversion of members of the ruling family and about their religious
foundations. When once Christianity was accepted the activity which kings,
queens and prelates displayed in its favour was great, but the historical
information we have about them is meagre.

Thus Repton (Repandune) in Derbyshire, a monastery for women, had
gained considerable importance when the noble youth Guthlac repaired
thither in 694 to devote himself to learning under the abbess Aelfthrith[316].
Nothing is known about the beginnings of the house, and if the abbess
Aelfthrith founded it she has not on this account been accepted as a saint
like the founders of other houses. This omission may however be due to the
difficulties which arose between Aelfthrith and the prelates of Mercia. We
do not know their nature, but in 705 a council of Mercian clergy assembled
to consider the re-admission of Aelfthrith to Church privileges[317]. A letter
is also extant from Bishop Waldhere of London to Archbishop Brihtwald of
Canterbury in which he mentions that a reconciliation has taken place[318].
The noble youth Guthlac who came to study at Repton afterwards became
famous, and many accounts of his life have been written[319]. The earliest
version, drafted by his friend Felix, supplies some interesting details of the
life at Repton and the studies there[320].
We are told that Guthlac’s progress was wonderful. ‘When he had been
there two years he had learnt the psalms, the canticles, the hymns and
prayers after the ecclesiastical order,’ but he met with disapproval in the
monastery by refusing to drink wine. The accounts which he read of the
solitary life of the older monks filled him with a longing for solitude, and he
left Repton and wandered about till he found the place of his heart’s desire
at Crowland in the fen country, where he determined to settle. He had
received the tonsure at Repton and returned there on a visit before finally
settling at Crowland. He did not break his connection with Repton, for we
hear that the abbess Ecgburh who succeeded Aelfthrith sent him as a gift a
coffin made of wood and lead, together with a linen winding-sheet, and
asked who should be warden of the place after him, as though she regarded
Crowland as a dependency of Repton[321].
The abbess Ecgburg was the daughter of King Ealdwulf of East Anglia (†
714)[322], and an eloquent letter which is quoted later in my account of
Boniface’s correspondents was probably written by her[323].
In connection with Guthlac’s solitary life we hear of a woman Pega, who
had also chosen a retreat in the fen country, at a place afterwards known as
Peykirk, which is now situated on a peninsula formed by the uplands of

Northamptonshire and connected with the mound on which Guthlac dwelt
by a ridge of gravel, but which at that time formed an island[324]. One
version of Guthlac’s life tells how ‘he had a sister called Pega whom he
would not see in this life, to the intent that they might the rather meet in the
life to come’; and another manuscript life says that the Evil One appeared to
the saint in the form of Pega. Mr W. de Birch Gray who has reprinted these
accounts notices that the tone in which Florence of Worcester speaks of
Pega suggests that to him at least she appeared more famous than
Guthlac[325].
Different accounts of Guthlac agree that at his death his companions at once
departed to fetch Pega. In the celebrated series of drawings of the 12th
century, which set forth the story of St Guthlac, the holy woman Pega is
depicted twice[326]. In one picture she steps into the boat, in which the
companion of Guthlac has come to fetch her, and in the other she is
represented as supporting the saint, who is enveloped in his shroud.
The connection between Guthlac and Pega is at least curious, and the
authority she at once assumed is noteworthy. ‘For three days’ space with
sacred hymns of praise she commended the holy man to God,’ says the
Anglo-Saxon prose version of his life[327]. And further, ‘After his death
when he had been buried twelve months God put it into the heart of the
servant of the Lord that she should remove the brother’s body to another
tomb. She assembled thither many of the servants of God and mass-priests,
and others of the ecclesiastical order.... She wound the holy corpse, with
praises of Christ’s honour, in the other sheet which Ecgbriht the anchoress
formerly sent him when alive for that same service.’
The Acts of the Saints give an account of St Pega or Pegia and tell us that
she went to Rome where she died[328]. Her reputation for holiness, as far as
it is preserved, is based chiefly on her connection with Guthlac, but these
accounts leave room for much that must necessarily remain conjecture.
Other women-saints who were reputed to have lived about this period, and
who were brought into connection with the rulers of Mercia, claim a
passing attention, although their legends written at a much later date supply
the only information we have about them. Thus there is St Osith[329] of
Colchester, whose legend written in the 13th century is full of hopeless

anachronisms. The house of Augustinian canons at Chich[330] in the 12th
century was dedicated conjointly to the saints Peter and Paul and to the
woman-saint Osith; a canon of this house, Albericus Veerus, probably wrote
her legend. Perhaps St Osith of Aylesbury is identical with her[331].
Our information is equally untrustworthy concerning St Frideswith, patron
saint of Oxford, for it dates no further back than the 12th century[332]. The
chief interest in her legend is that its author establishes a connection
between incidents in the life of Frideswith, and the dread which the kings of
England had of entering Oxford; a dread which as early as 1264 is referred
to as an ‘old superstition[333].’
All these women are credited in their legends with founding monasteries
and gaining local influence, and excepting in the case of St Tibba, I have
come across no coupling of their names with profane cults. Other women-
saints who may perhaps be classed with them, though little survives except
their names, are St Osburg of Coventry[334], St Modwen of Strenhall in
Staffordshire and Burton-on-Trent[335], and St Everhild of Everingham in
Yorkshire[336].
Other names which occur in local calendars will be found in the Menology
of Stanton, who has compiled a very complete list of men- and women-
saints in England and Wales from a number of local calendars.
In contrast to the uncertainty which hangs about the settlements under
woman’s rule in the Midlands and around their founders, two houses
founded in the south of England during the 7th century stand out in clear
prominence. Barking in Essex, and Wimbourne in Dorsetshire, attained a
considerable degree of culture, and the information which has been
preserved concerning them is ample and trustworthy.
Bede has devoted several chapters of his history to stories connected with
Barking[337]. It owed its foundation to Earconwald sometime bishop of
London (675-693) who, after founding a settlement at Chertsey in Surrey
under the rule of an abbot, in 666 made a home for his sister Aethelburg at
Barking[338] where ‘he established her excellently in the regular discipline.’
Aethelburg appears to have been an energetic person, and has been raised to
the rank of saint[339]. Her settlement included men as well as women, and
young children seem to have been entrusted to her care for their education.

Bede says that ‘having taken the rule of the monastery she showed herself
worthy of her brother the bishop in all respects, both by living rightly
herself, and by the pious and prudent course she took to rule those who
were subject to her; this was proved by celestial miracles.’
A number of these miracles are described by him with considerable power.
Between 664 and 684, a great pestilence, the earliest on record in Christian
times, visited England and carried off many of the inmates of Barking. First
a boy of three years fell ill and in dying called by name the nun Eadgith,
who presently died. Another nun called Torctgith[340] also had a vision of
impending death. ‘One night at the beginning of dawn, having gone forth
from the chamber in which she abode, she saw plainly as it were a human
body, which was brighter than the sun, carried up on high, wrapped in fine
linen, and lifted apparently from the house in which the sisters were usually
placed to die. And when she looked more intently to see by what means the
apparition of a glorious body which she beheld was raised on high, she saw
that it was lifted up into the upper regions as it were by cords brighter than
gold, until being introduced into the opening heavens it could no longer be
seen by her.’
This imagery foretold the death of Abbess Aethelburg, who was carried off
by the pestilence. She was succeeded at Barking by Hildelith, whom
Boniface refers to as a very estimable person and who has also found a
place among the saints[341]. Capgrave speaks of her having been educated in
France, whence she came to Barking at the desire of Bishop Earconwald to
help in establishing the foreign system of discipline.
It was for the abbess Hildelith and her companions at Barking that the
scholar Ealdhelm († 709) wrote his great treatise on Virginity, a long and
elaborate composition which sets before these women the beauties of the
virgin life with a mass of illustration taken from religious and classical
literature. From the point of view of women’s religious life, it is worth
while to describe this treatise at some length, for it shows what a high
degree of culture had been attained at Barking towards the close of the
seventh century.
Ealdhelm, born of noble parentage about the year 640, is the representative
in southern England of the classical revival which was about this time

engrafted on Christian teaching. He studied first at Malmesbury under the
learned Scot Maidulf and then at Canterbury where Archbishop Theodore
and Abbot Hadrian were attracting many students, and where he perfected
his Latin and musical studies and acquired in some measure the rare and
much esteemed knowledge of Greek. ‘A wonder of erudition in liberal as
well as in ecclesiastical writings,’ Bede calls him[342]. From Canterbury he
returned to Malmesbury, which owing to his influence attained a fame
which it kept till the Middle Ages. In 705 when Wessex was divided into
two bishoprics, Ealdhelm was made bishop of the see of Sherbourne.
The interest Ealdhelm took in women was so great that posterity pictured
him as continually in their society[343]. Besides his great treatise, passages
in his other works bear witness to this interest. In a letter addressed to
Sigegith[344], he gave advice about the baptism of a nun who had been
received into her community while still a heathen; to another nun whose
name is not mentioned he sent a letter together with several poems[345]. He
composed verses in praise of a church which Bugga, a daughter of King
Centwin (670-685), had built[346]. And besides the prose treatise on
virginity addressed to the sisterhood of Barking, he wrote a long poem in
heroic hexameters on the same subject called the ‘Praise of Virgins’; it has a
preface addressed to the abbess Maxima, and is followed by a poem on the
‘Eight chief Sins,’ likewise intended for the perusal of nuns[347].
Ealdhelm opens his prose work on virginity[348] with thanks to the women
of Barking for the writings they have sent to him. Hildelith, Justina,
Cuthburg, Osburg, Ealdgith, Scholastica, Hidburg, Burngith, Eulalia and
Tecla are addressed by name. He praises them as gymnosophists, as
scholars and as fighters in the arena of discipline (c. 2). Like unto bees, he
says (c. 4), they collect everywhere material for study.
Sometimes, he says, you study the Prophets, sometimes the Books of the
Law, ‘now skilfully tracking the fourfold wording of the gospel story,
expounded in the mystic commentaries of the Catholic fathers, and
spiritually bared to the kernel, and disposed fitly according to the four-
square pattern of ecclesiastical usage, namely according to the letter,
allegory, tropology and anagogy[349]; now carefully searching into the
writers of history and into the collections of chronographers, who have
handed down the changing events of the past in wording that impresses the

mind. Sometimes you carefully examine the rules of grammarians, the laws
of accentuation measured by tone and time, fixed in poetic feet by marks of
punctuation, that is divided into parts of verse consisting of two and a half
and three and a half feet, and changed in endless varieties of metre.’
Ealdhelm then enlarges on the beauties of the virgin’s life, and dwells
especially on the charms of peaceful companionship which it secures. Again
in their dwelling and working together the women are likened to bees.
The charms of the virgin’s life are then set forth in language redundant of
imagery, verbose and grandiloquent in the extreme. We are told of the
temptations which those who have adopted a religious life must guard
against (c. 11). There are eight sins as to which they are especially warned;
the chief of these is pride. Women are then directed as to the books they
should make a special subject of study, and are recommended to peruse the
works of Cassian (who in the 5th century wrote the ‘Duties of Monastic
Life’) and the ‘Moralities’ of Gregory the Great (which contain reflections
suggested by the book of Job), and they are advised to study the Psalms to
avoid unhappiness (c. 14). With the love of contrast peculiar to early
writers, Ealdhelm shows how the women who serve God and those who do
not are different in their bearing and outward appearance, and enlarges on
the relative value of different estates (c. 17): virginity is of gold, chastity is
of silver; marriage (jugalitas) is of brass; and again: virginity is wealth,
chastity is sufficiency, marriage is poverty, etc.
He then displays the wide range of his learning by adducing many writers in
support of his views (c. 20-40), in passages which are elaborate and
instructive but wearisome through their reiterations. He enumerates all the
women famous for their religious lives. The Virgin Mary comes first and
she is followed by many women-saints of Italy and the East, on whom there
is in some cases much, in others little, comment. In this list we in vain look
for the names of religious women living on this side of the Alps. Helen the
mother of Constantine (c. 48) is referred to, but her British origin is not
mentioned and the idea of it had probably not arisen in Ealdhelm’s time.
The writer again turns to those who are devoted to religion, and in passages
which are full of interest as a study of the times complains of the personal
appearance of the clergy and of those women who have chosen religion as a

profession. These passages are among the most instructive in regard to
women and clearly show how completely life in a nunnery at the beginning
of the 8th century differed from what it was later on.
‘It shames me,’ he says, ‘to speak of the bold impudence of conceit and the
fine insolence of stupidity which are found both among nuns
(sanctimoniales) who abide under the rule of a settlement, and among the
men of the Church who live as clergy under the rule of the Pontiff. These
act contrary to canonical decrees and to the rule of regular life, for with
many-coloured vestments[350] and with elegant adornments the body is set
off and the external form decked out limb by limb. The appearance of the
other sex agrees with it; a vest of fine linen of a violet colour is worn, above
it a scarlet tunic with a hood, sleeves striped with silk and trimmed with red
fur; the locks on the forehead and the temples are curled with a crisping
iron, the dark head-veil is given up for white and coloured head-dresses
which, with bows of ribbon sewn on, reach down to the ground; the nails,
like those of a falcon or sparrow-hawk, are pared to resemble talons’.... This
state of things Ealdhelm strongly condemns. But he adds the remark that he
is addressing no one in particular, evidently to avoid any umbrage his
women friends might take at these remarks. His reference to luxurious
clothing does not stand alone. The description Bede gives of the women at
Coldingham has been quoted, and Boniface in a letter[351] to Cuthberht of
Canterbury speaks of ‘the adornment of clothes, trimmed with wide edging
of purple,’ which, he says, is deteriorating the young men in the
monasteries, and foretells the coming of Antichrist. Sumptuous clothes as
vestments during religious service remained in use, but in all other respects
they were condemned as prejudicial to the welfare of those who were
vowed to religion.
Ealdhelm’s work on virginity closes with an affectionate greeting to his
women friends in which he addresses them finally as ‘Flowers of the
Church, sisters of monastic life, scholarly pupils, pearls of Christ, jewels of
Paradise, and sharers of the eternal home.’
His work was greatly prized and widely read both by his own and by later
generations. It is extant in several copies of the 8th century[352], and
maintained its reputation throughout the Middle Ages. William of
Malmesbury ( † 1141) in his account of Ealdhelm specifies the work on

virginity as one ‘than which nothing can be more pleasing[353].’ It still held
its own when printing was introduced, for it was published at Deventer in
Holland in 1512, and has since been reprinted for devotional purposes[354].
Among those on whom the book made a profound impression was
Cuthburg, sister of King Ina of Wessex (688-725). She was at one time an
inmate of the Barking settlement and was probably one of those to whom
the work was addressed.
Cuthburg was held as a saint for founding a settlement at Wimbourne in
Dorset[355], where the cult of her sister Cwenburg was associated with hers.
Cuthburg as mentioned above was said to have left her husband Ealdfrith of
Northumbria († 705) from religious motives. Her being held in veneration
as a virgin saint may be due to her name being coupled with that of a virgin
sister[356]. Missals printed at Rouen in 1515, and at Paris in 1519 and 1529,
have an office prescribed for Cuthburg as a virgin[357]. The statement that
she was the mother of Osred, afterwards king of Northumbria (706-717), is
perhaps unfounded.
There is no doubt as to Ealdhelm’s friendly relations both with Cuthburg
and her husband. He dedicated his enigmas to Ealdfrith under the title
‘Adcircius[358],’ and in a letter dated 705 he declares that liberty of election
is granted to all congregations under his government including that called
‘Wimburnia,’ over which Cuthburg, the king’s sister, presides[359]. A
manuscript of the 14th century, preserved in the nunnery of Romsey,
contains a collection of saints’ lives, and gives a full account of a
conversation Cuthburg had with her husband previous to their
separation[360]. It further relates how she placed the basilica of her
settlement under the protection of the Mother of God, and was herself
buried in it. She died some time between 720 and 730, probably nearer the
earlier date, for several abbesses are said to have ruled between her and
Tetta. The name of Tetta has been brought into connection with a place
named Tetbury, but we know nothing definite concerning a monastery
there[361]. As abbess of Wimbourne she was the teacher of Lioba, called
also Leobgith, who went abroad at the desire of Boniface as we shall see
further on.

In the life of Lioba we get a description of the settlement of
Wimbourne[362], which may be somewhat coloured to show the result of
Tetta’s strict and beneficent rule, but which deserves attention as yielding a
fair example of the arrangements which in the eyes of its author appeared
desirable for a monastery of women. The author, Rudolf of Fulda, was a
monk who wrote between 800 and 850, and who compiled his work from
notices which Magno ( † c. 838) had collected from women pupils of
Lioba[363].
‘There were two settlements at Wimbourne, formerly erected by the kings
of the country, surrounded by strong and lofty walls and endowed with
ample revenues. Of these one was designed for men, the other for women;
but neither, for such was the rule of their foundation, was ever entered by
any member of the other sex. No woman had permission to come among
the congregation of the men, no man to enter into the dwellings of the
women, with the exception of the priests who entered to celebrate mass and
withdrew at once when service was over. If a woman, desirous of quitting
the world, asked to be admitted to the sisterhood (collegium), she joined it
on condition that she should not leave it unless a reasonable cause or a
special occasion took her out with the leave of the abbess. The abbess
herself, when she gave orders in affairs of the settlement or tendered advice,
spoke through a window and there gave her decision....’
Wimbourne stands last in the list of well authenticated monastic
foundations made by women during the early Anglo-Saxon period; of such
foundations more than twenty have been mentioned in the course of this
chapter. Others no doubt existed at this time, but we only hear of them at a
later date. We find among them some of the centres most influential in
enabling the Anglo-Saxons to attain a high degree of culture within a
hundred years of their conversion to Christianity.

CHAPTER IV.

ANGLO-SAXON NUNS IN CONNECTION WITH
BONIFACE.
‘Et ut dicitur, quid dulcius est, quam habeas
illum, cum quo omnia possis loqui ut tecum?’
Eangith to Boniface.

§ 1. The Women corresponding with Boniface.

In the course of the 6th and 7th centuries a number of men left England and
settled abroad among the heathen Germans, partly from a wish to gain new
converts to the faith, partly because a change of affairs at home made them
long for a different field of labour. Through the influx of the heathen Anglo-
Saxons, the British Christians had been deprived of their influence, and
when Christianity was restored it was under the auspices of princes who
were favourably inclined towards Rome. Men who objected to the Roman
sway sought independence among the heathens abroad in preference to
dependence on strangers at home, and it is owing to their efforts that
Christianity was introduced into the valleys leading up from the Rhine, into
the lake districts of Bavaria, and into Switzerland.
A century later the Church had so far extended the limits of her power that
it was felt desirable at Rome that these Christian settlers should be brought
into subjection. For the tenets which they held and the traditions which had
been handed down to them differed in many ways from what Rome could
countenance. They were liberal in tolerating heathen practices, and ignorant
of matters of ritual and creed which were insisted on in the Church of
Rome. The bishops, who were self-appointed, were won over by the
promise of recognising the title to which they laid claim, but the difficulty
remained of weaning them from their objectionable practices. Efforts were

accordingly made to reconvert the converted districts and to bring some
amount of pressure to bear on the clergy.
The representative of this movement in South Germany was Boniface,
otherwise called Wynfred, on whom posterity has bestowed the title Apostle
of Germany, in recognition of his services in the twofold character of
missionary and reformer. He was a native of Wessex, and his mission
abroad has an interest in connection with our subject because of the friendly
relations he entertained with many inmates of women’s houses in England,
and because he invited women as well as men to leave England and assist
him in the work which he had undertaken.
Boniface had grown up as an inmate of the settlement of Nutshalling near
Winchester and first went abroad in 716, but proceeded no further than
Utrecht. Conjecture has been busy over the difficulties which took him
away, and the disappointments which brought him back. Utrecht was an old
Roman colony which had been captured from the Franks by Adgisl, king of
the Frisians, who gave a friendly reception there to Bishop Wilfrith in 678.
But King Radbod, his successor, was hostile to the Franks and to
Christianity, and it was only in deference to the powerful Frankish house-
mayor Pippin that he countenanced the settling of Willibrord, a pupil of
Wilfrith, with eleven companions in 692. However, owing to Radbod’s
enmity the position of these monks was such that they were obliged to
leave, and it is possible that Boniface when he went to Utrecht was
disappointed in not finding them there.
Two years later Boniface went on a pilgrimage to Rome, where the idea of
bringing his energies to assist in the extension of Papal influence originated.
The Pope furnished him with a letter[364] in which he is directed to reclaim
the faithless, and armed with this he travelled in the districts of the Main.
But as soon as the news of the death of Radbod the Frisian († 719) reached
him he went to Utrecht, where Willibrord had returned. We do not know
what afterwards prompted him to resume his work in Germany, but perhaps
the proposal of Willibrord that he should settle with him altogether
awakened Boniface to the fact that he was not working for the Pope as he
proposed. His reception at Rome, where he again went in 722, and the
declaration of faith he handed in, are in favour of this view. But Gregory II
who was aware of the abilities of Boniface forgave him, and on the strength

of his declaration provided him with further letters. One of these was
addressed to the Christians of Germany, to the representative clergy and to
the Thüringians, and another to the house-mayor, Karl Martel, who had
succeeded Pippin; both letters commanded that the authority of Boniface
was to be everywhere recognised.
From this time for a period of over thirty years Boniface devoted his
energies to extending, organizing and systematizing the power of Rome in
Germany. His character appears in different lights varying with the
standpoint from which he is regarded. Judging from his letters he is
alternately swayed by doggedness of purpose, want of confidence in
himself, dependence on friends, and jealous insistence on his own authority.
He has a curious way of representing himself as persecuted when in fact he
is the persecutor, but his power of rousing enthusiasm for his work and for
his personality is enormous.
His biographer Wilibald describes this power as already peculiar to him
during his stay at Nutshalling, where many men sought him to profit by his
knowledge, ‘while those who on account of their fragile sex could not do
so, and those who were not allowed to stay away from their settlements,
moved by the spirit of divine love, sought eagerly for an account of
him[365]....’
The interest Boniface had aroused at home accompanied him on his travels.
He remained in friendly communication with many persons in England, to
whom he wrote and who wrote to him. Among the friends and
correspondents whose letters are preserved are churchmen, princes,
abbesses, clerics of various degrees, and nuns. From the point of view of
this book the letters addressed to women are of special interest, since they
bring us into personal contact so to speak with the abbesses and inmates of
English convents, and we hear for the first time what they personally have
to tell us of themselves.
Among Boniface’s early friends and correspondents was Eadburg[366],
abbess of the monastery in Thanet. She was a woman of great abilities,
zealous in the pursuit of knowledge, and her influence secured several royal
charters for her settlement. She had probably succeeded Mildthrith, but at
what date is not known. Her letters to Boniface unfortunately have not been

preserved, but the letters he wrote to her are full of interesting matter. The
earliest of these was written between 718 and 719; in it Boniface does not
yet address her as abbess[367].
In this letter Boniface in compliance with a wish Eadburg had expressed,
describes a vision of the future life which a monk living at Mildburg’s
monastery at Wenlock had seen during a state of suspended animation.
Boniface had first heard of this vision from the abbess Hildelith of Barking,
and he writes a graphic and eloquent account of it, parts of which are put
into the mouth of the monk himself. The account gives curious glimpses of
that imagery of the future life which early Christians dwelt upon and
elaborated more and more. Nuns at this time as well as later took a special
interest in the subject.
First the monk is carried aloft through flames which enwrap the world. He
sees many souls for the possession of which angels and devils are fighting.
Impersonations of his sins confront and accost him, but his virtues arise also
and enter into conflict with the sins. The virtues are supported by angels and
the fight ends to the monk’s advantage. He also sees fiery waters flowing
towards hell: and souls like black birds which hover over waters from
whence proceed the wails of the damned. He sees Paradise, and a river of
pitch over which a bridge leads to Jerusalem, and souls are trying to cross
it. Among others suffering torments he catches sight of King Ceolred of
Mercia. At last the angels cast the monk down from the height and he re-
awakens to life.
Such descriptions of a future life multiply as one nears the Middle Ages. By
the side of the one which Boniface sent to Eadburg should be read another
by him, a fragmentary one, which supplements it[368]. The sufferers in hell
mentioned in this are Cuthburg, Ceolla and Wiala (of whom nothing is
known), an unnamed abbot and Aethelbald, king of Mercia († 756).
The description of the after life given by Boniface agrees in various ways
with one contained in the works of Bede. According to this account there
was a man in Northumbria named Drycthelm, who died, came to life again,
and described what he had seen of the world to come.
The other letters which Boniface addressed to Eadburg are of later date and
were written when he had settled abroad and was devoting his energies to

converting the Hessians and Thüringians. At this time he asked her to send
him through the priest Eoban the letters of the apostle Peter, which she was
to write for him in gold characters. ‘Often,’ he says, ‘gifts of books and
vestments, the proofs of your affection, have been to me a consolation in
misfortune. So I pray that you will continue as you have begun, and write
for me in gold characters the epistles of my master, the holy apostle Peter,
to the honour and reverence of holy writ before mortal eyes while I am
preaching, and because I desire always to have before me the words of him
who led me on my mission....’ He ends his letter by again hoping that she
will accede to his request so ‘that her words may shine in gold to the glory
of the Father in heaven[369].’
The art of writing in gold on parchment was unknown to Scottish artists and
had been introduced into England from Italy. Bishop Wilfrith owned the
four gospels ‘written in purest gold on purple-coloured parchment,’ and a
few of the purple gospels with gold writing of this period have been
preserved. The fact that women practised the art is evident from the letter of
Boniface. Eadburg must have had a reputation for writing, for Lul, one of
Boniface’s companions, sent her among other gifts a silver style (graphium
argenteum) such as was used at the time for writing on wax tablets[370].
Boniface received frequent gifts from friends in England. Eoban, who
carried his letter asking Eadburg for the Epistles of St Peter, was the bearer
of a letter to an Abbot Duddo in which Boniface reminding him of their old
friendship asked for a copy of the Epistles of St Paul[371]. Again Boniface
wrote asking Abbot Huetberht of Wearmouth for the minor works
(opuscula) of Bede[372], and Lul, who was with him, wrote to Dealwin to
forward the minor works of Ealdhelm, bishop of Sherbourne, those in verse
and those in prose[373].
Judging from the correspondence the effective work of Boniface resulted in
the execution of only a small part of his great schemes. His original plan
was repeatedly modified. There is extant a letter from the Pope which
shows that he hoped for the conversion of the heathen Saxons and
Thüringians[374], and the idea was so far embraced by Boniface that he
wrote a letter to the bishops, priests, abbots and abbesses in England asking
them to pray that the Saxons might accept the faith of Christ[375]. But the
plan for their conversion was eventually abandoned.

At this period belief in the efficacy of prayer was unbounded, and praying
for the living was as much part of the work of the professed as praying for
the dead. Settlements apparently combined for the purpose of mutually
supporting each other by prayer. A letter is extant in the correspondence of
Boniface in which the abbot of Glastonbury, several abbesses and other
abbots agree to pray at certain hours for each other’s settlements[376].
In his times of trouble and tribulation Boniface wrote to all his friends
asking for prayers. ‘We were troubled on every side,’ he wrote to the abbess
Eadburg, quoting Scripture[377], ‘without were fightings, within were fears.’
She was to pray for him that the pagans might be snatched from their
idolatrous customs and unbelievers brought back to the Catholic mother
Church.
Eadburg had liberally responded to his request for gifts. ‘Beloved sister,’ he
wrote[378], ‘with gifts of holy books you have comforted the exile in
Germany with spiritual light! For in this dark remoteness among German
peoples man must come to the distress of death had he not the word of God
as a lamp unto his feet and as a light unto his paths[379]. Fully trusting in
your love I beseech that you pray for me, for I am shaken by my
shortcomings, that take hold of me as though I were tossed by a tempest on
a dangerous sea.’ This consciousness of his shortcomings was not wholly
due to the failure of his plans, for Boniface at one period of his life was
much troubled by questions of theology. The simile of being tempest-tossed
is often used by him. In a letter addressed to an unnamed nun he describes
his position in language similar to that in which he addresses Eadburg. This
nun also is urged to pray for him in a letter full of biblical quotations[380].
Among the letters to Boniface there are several from nuns and abbesses
asking for his advice. Political difficulties and the changed attitude of the
ruling princes of Northumbria and Mercia towards convents brought such
hardships to those who had adopted the religious profession that many of
them wished to leave their homes, and availed themselves of the possibility
of doing so which was afforded by the plan of going on pilgrimage to
Rome.
The wish to behold the Eternal City had given a new direction to the love of
wandering, so strong a trait in human nature. The motives for visiting Rome

have been different in different periods of history. To the convert in the 8th
and 9th centuries Rome appeared as the fountain-head of Christianity, the
residence of Christ’s representative on earth, and the storehouse of famous
deeds and priceless relics. Architectural remains dating from the period of
Roman rule were numerous throughout Europe and helped to fill the
imagination of those dwelling north of the Alps with wonder at the possible
sights and treasures which a visit to Rome itself might disclose. Prelates and
monks undertook the journey to establish personal relations with the Pope
and to acquire books and relics for their settlements, but the taste for
travelling spread, and laymen and wayfarers of all kinds joined the bands of
religious pilgrims. Even kings and queens, with a sudden change of feeling
which the Church magnified into a portentous conversion, renounced the
splendour of their surroundings and donned the pilgrim’s garb in the hope
of beholding the Eternal City in its glory.
Among the letters which are preserved in the correspondence of Boniface
there is one from Aelflaed, abbess of Whitby, in which she writes to the
abbess Adolana (probably Adela) of Pfälzel (Palatiolum) on the Mosel near
Trier, recommending to her care a young abbess who is on her way to
Rome. This letter shows that Aelflaed was well versed in writing Latin. The
name of the abbess in whose behalf the letter was penned is not known, but
she may be identical with Wethburg, who lived and died at Rome[381].
‘To the holy and worshipful abbess Adolana, a greeting in the Lord of
eternal salvation.
‘Since we have heard of your holiness from those who have come from
your parts, and from widespread report, in the first place I pray for your
warm affection, for the Lord has said: This is my command, that ye love
one another[382].
‘Further we make humble request that your holy and fervent words may
commend us worthily to God Almighty, should it not be irksome to you to
offer devotion in return for ours; for James the Apostle has taught and said:
Pray for one another, that ye may be saved.
‘Further to your great holiness and usual charity we humbly and earnestly
commend this maiden vowed to God, a pious abbess, our dear and faithful
daughter, who since the days of her youth, from love of Christ and for the

honour of the apostles Peter and Paul, has been desirous of going to their
holy threshold, but who has been kept back by us until now because we
needed her and in order that the souls entrusted to her might profit. And we
pray that with charity and true kindness she may be received into your
goodwill, as well as those who are travelling with her, in order that the
desired journey with God’s help and your willing charity may at last be
accomplished. Therefore again and again we beseech that she may be
helped on her way with recommendations from you to the holy city Rome,
by the help of the holy and signbearing leader (signifer) of the apostles
Peter; and if you are present we hope and trust she may find with you
whatever advice she requires for the journey. May divine grace watch over
your holiness when you pray for us.’
The desire to go southward was strengthened among religious women by
the increasing difficulties of their position at home. Monastic privileges
were no longer respected by the kings of Mercia and Northumbria, and the
Church lacked the power of directly interfering in behalf of monks and
nuns. There is in the correspondence a letter which Boniface wrote in his
own name and in that of his foreign bishops to Aethelbald, king of Mercia
(716-756); he sharply rebukes him for his immoral practices and urges on
him the desirability of taking a lawful wife. He accuses the king of
indulging his wicked propensities even in monasteries and with nuns and
maidens who were vowed to God; following the example of Tacitus, he
praises the pure morals of the heathen Germans. The passages which bear
on the subject are worthy of perusal, for they show how uncertain was the
position of monasteries and how keenly Boniface realized the difficulties of
nuns. He tells the king ‘that loose women, whether they be vowed to
religion or not, conceive inferior children through their wickedness and
frequently do away with them.’ The privileges of religious houses, he says,
were respected till the reign of King Osred (706-17) of Northumbria, and of
King Ceolred (709-16) of Mercia, but ‘these two kings have shown their
evil disposition and have sinned in a criminal way against the teaching of
the gospels and the doings of our Saviour. They persisted in vice, in the
seduction of nuns and the contemptuous treatment of monastic rights.
Condemned by the judgment of God, and hurled from the heights of royal
authority, they were overtaken by a speedy and awful death, and are now
cut off from eternal light, and buried in the depths of hell and in the abyss

of the infernal regions[383].’ We have seen that in the letter written by
Boniface to Eadburg, Ceolred is described as suffering torments in hell, and
that King Aethelbald at a later date is depicted in the same predicament.
With his letter to Aethelbald Boniface forwarded two others to the priest
Herefrith, probably of Lindisfarne[384], and to Ecgberht (archbishop of
York, 732-66), requesting them to support him against Aethelbald. ‘It is the
duty of your office to see that the devil does not establish his kingdom in
places consecrated to God,’ he wrote to Ecgberht, ‘that there be not discord
instead of peace, strife instead of piety, drunkenness instead of sobriety,
slaughter and fornication instead of charity and chastity[385].’ Shortly
afterwards he wrote to Cuthberht, archbishop of Canterbury (740-62),
telling him of the statutes passed at the Synod of Soissons[386], and severely
censuring the conduct of the layman, ‘be he emperor, king or count, who
snatches a monastery from bishop, abbot, or abbess.’
These admonitions show that the position of the religious houses and that of
their rulers depended directly on the temper of the reigning prince. In the
correspondence there are several letters from abbesses addressed to
Boniface bearing on this point, which give us a direct insight into the tone
of mind of these women. Their Latin is cumbersome and faulty, and biblical
quotations are introduced which do not seem always quite to the point. The
writers ramble on without much regard to construction and style, and yet
there is a genuine ring about their letters which makes the distress described
seem very real.
One of these letters was written by an abbess named Ecgburg, probably at
an early period of Boniface’s career[387]. Her reference to the remoteness of
her settlement suggests the idea that it was Repton, and that she herself was
identical with Ecgburg, daughter of Ealdwulf king of the East Angles, the
abbess whom we have noticed in connection with Guthlac. If that be so her
sister Wethburg, to whom she refers, may be identical with the young
unnamed abbess whom Aelflaed sped on her journey to Rome.
‘Since a cruel and bitter death,’ she writes, ‘has robbed me of him, my
brother Osher, whom I loved beyond all others, you I hold dearer than all
other men. Not to multiply words, no day, no night passes, but I think of
your teaching. Believe me it is on account of this that I love you, God is my

witness. In you I confide, because you were never forgetful of the affection
which assuredly bound you to my brother. Though inferior to him in
knowledge and in merit, I am not unlike him in recognizing your goodness.
Time goes by with increasing swiftness and yet the dark gloom of sadness
leaves me not. For time as it comes brings me increase of indignities, as it is
written “Love of man brings sorrow, but love of Christ gladdens the heart.”
More recently my equally beloved sister Wethburg, as though to inflict a
wound and renew a pang, suddenly passed out of my sight, she with whom
I had grown up and with whom I was nursed at the same breast; one mother
she and I had in the Lord, and my sister has left me. Jesus is my witness that
on all sides there is sorrow, fear, and the image of death[388]. I would gladly
die if it so pleased God, to whom the unknown is manifest, for this slow
death is no trifle. What was it I was saying? From my sister not a sudden
and bitter death, but a bitterer separation, divides me; I believe it was for
her happiness, but it left me unhappy, as a corpse laid low, when adopting
the fashion of the age she went on a pilgrimage, even though she knew how
much I loved and cherished her, whom now as I hear a prison confines at
Rome. But the love of Christ, which is strong and powerful in her, is
stronger and more binding than all fetters, and perfect love casteth out fear.
Indeed, I say, he who holds the power of divination, the Ruler of high
Olympus, has endowed you with divine wisdom, and in his law do you
meditate night and day[389]. For it is written: “How beautiful are the feet of
them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring tidings of good things[390].”
She has mounted by a steep and narrow path, while I remain below, held by
mortal flesh as by irons upon my feet. In the coming judgment full of joy
she, like unto the Lord, will sing: “I was in prison and ye came unto
me[391].” You also in the future life, when the twelve apostles sit on their
twelve seats[392], will be there, and in proportion to the number of those
whom you have won by your work, will rejoice before the tribunal of the
eternal King, like unto a leader who is about to be crowned. But I living in
the vale of tears as I deserve, shall be weeping for my offences, on account
of which God holds me unfit to join the heavenly hosts. Therefore, believe
me, the tempest-tossed mariner does not so much long for the haven, the
thirsty fields do not long so much for rain, the mother on the winding shore
does not so anxiously wait for her son, as I long to rejoice in your sight. But
oppressed by sins and innumerable offences, I so long to be freed from
imminent danger, that I am made desperate; adoring the footsteps of your

holiness and praying to you from the depths of my heart as a sinner, I call to
you from the ends of the earth, O beloved master; as my anxious heart
prompts, raise me to the corner-stone of your prayer, for you are my hope
and a strong tower invisible to the enemy. And I beg as consolation to my
grief and as limit to the wave of my sorrow, that my weakness may be
supported by your intercession as by a prop. I entreat that you will
condescend to give me some comfort either in the form of a relic or of a
few words of blessing, written by you, in order that through them I may
hold your presence secure.’
By the side of this letter must be quoted another written by an Abbess
Eangith, describing similar difficulties in a similar strain[393]. We do not
know over which settlement Eangith presided, but her name and that of her
daughter Heaburg of whom she speaks are inscribed in the Durham ‘Liber
Vitae[394].’
‘Beloved brother in the spirit rather than in the flesh,’ she writes, ‘you are
magnified by the abundance of spiritual graces, and to you alone, with God
as our sole witness, we wish to make known what you see here spread out
before you and blotted by our tears: we are borne down by an accumulation
of miseries as by a weight and a pressing burden, and also by the tumult of
political affairs. As the foaming masses of the ocean when the force of the
winds and the raging fury of the tempest lash up the great sea, carry in and
carry out again the heaving billows dashing over rocks, so that the keels of
the boats are turned upwards and the mast of the ship is pressed
downwards, so do the ships of our souls groan under the great press of our
miseries and the great mass of our misfortunes. By the voice of truth has it
been said of the heavenly house: “The rain descended and the floods came,
and the winds blew and beat upon that house[395],” etc.
‘First and before all noteworthy of the things that affect us from without,
must be mentioned the multitude of our offences and our want of full and
complete faith, due not so much to care for our own souls but, what is
worse and more oppressive, to care for the souls of those of either sex and
of every age which have been entrusted to us. For this care involves
ministering to many minds and to various dispositions, and afterwards
giving account before the supreme tribunal of Christ both for obvious sins
in deeds and words, and for secret thoughts which men ignore and God

alone witnesseth; with a simple sword against a double-edged one, with ten
thousand to meet twenty thousand warriors[396]. In addition to this care of
souls we have difficulties in our domestic affairs, and various
disagreements which the jealous enemy of all good has sown, namely, he
who fills the impure hearts of men with malice and scatters it everywhere,
but chiefly in the settlements of monks and nuns; but it is said “the mighty
shall be mightily tormented[397].” Moreover the poverty and scantiness of
our temporal possessions oppress us, and the smallness of the cultivated
part of our estate; and the hostility of the king, for we are accused before
him by those who envy us, as a wise man has said: “the bewitching of
vanity obscureth good things[398].” Similarly we are oppressed by service
due to the king and the queen, to bishop and prefect, officers and attendants.
It would take long to enumerate those things which can be more easily
imagined than described.
‘To all these evils is added the loss of friends, connections, and relatives by
alliance and by blood. I[399] have neither son nor brother, neither father nor
father’s brother, none but an only daughter who is bereft of all that was dear
to her; and a sister who is old, and the son of our brother, who too is
unhappy in his mind, for our king holds his family connections in great
contempt. There is no one else for us to rely on; God has removed them all
by one chance or another. Some have died in their native land, and their
bodies lie in the grimy dust of the earth to rise again on the day of doom,
when the Master’s trumpet shall sound, and the whole race of man shall
come forth from dark tombs to give account of themselves; when their
spirits, borne upwards in angels’ arms, shall abide with Christ; when all
sorrow shall end, and envy be worn out, and grief and mourning shall
vanish in sight of the saints. Again others have left their native shores, and
trusted themselves to the wide seas, and have sought the threshold of the
holy apostles Peter and Paul and of all those martyrs, virgins and
confessors, whose number God alone knows.
‘For these and other like causes, hardly to be enumerated in one day though
July and August lengthen the days of summer, we are weary of our present
life and hardly care to continue it. Every man uncertain of his purpose and
distrustful of his own counsel, seeks a faithful friend whose advice he
follows since he distrusts his own; and such faith has he in him that he lays
before him and reveals to him every secret of his heart. As has been said,

what is sweeter than having someone with whom one can converse as with
oneself? Therefore on account of the pressing miseries we have now
insisted on to the full, we needs must find a true friend, one whom we can
trust more than ourselves; who will treat our grief, our miseries and our
poverty as his own, who will sympathize with us, comfort us, support us by
his words, and raise us up by wise counsel. Long have we sought him. And
we believe that in you we have found the friend whom we longed for,
whom we wished for, whom we desired.
‘Would that God had granted to us that, as Habakkuk the prophet was sped
with food into the lion’s den to the seer Daniel[400], or that as Philip one of
the seven deacons was sped to the eunuch[401], we also were sped and could
come to the land and to the district where you dwell; or that it were possible
for us to hear living words from your lips. ‘How sweet are thy words unto
my palate, O Lord, sweeter than honey to my mouth[402].’
‘But since this is not vouchsafed to us and we are divided from you by a
wide expanse of land and of sea and by the boundaries of many provinces,
because of our faith in you referred to above we will tell you, brother
Boniface, that for a long time we have entertained the design like so many
of our friends, relatives and others, of visiting Rome, the mistress of the
world, there to seek forgiveness of our sins as many others have done and
are now doing; so especially I (wish to do) since I am advanced in age, and
have erred more than others. Wala, at one time my abbess and spiritual
mother, was acquainted with my wish and my intention. My only daughter
at present is young, and cannot share my desire. But because we know how
many there are who scoff at this wish and deprecate this desire, and support
their view by adducing what the canons of the synods enjoin, that wherever
anyone has settled and taken his vow, there shall he remain and there serve
God; for we all live in different ways and God’s purposes are unknown, as
the prophet says: ‘Thy righteousness is like the great mountains, thy
judgments are a great deep, O Lord[403]’; and because His sacred will and
desire in these things is hidden,—therefore we two, both of us in our
difficulty, call on you earnestly and reverently: be you to us as Aaron, a
mountain of strength, let your prayer be our help, swing the censer of prayer
with incense in sight of the Divine, and let the lifting up of your hands be as
the evening sacrifice[404]. Indeed we trust in God and beg of your goodness
that by supplication of mouth and inward prayer it may be revealed to you

what seems for us wise and useful: whether we are to live at home or go
forth on pilgrimage. Also we beg of your goodness to send back your
answer across the sea, and reply to what we have scratched on these leaves
in rustic style and with unpolished wording. We have scant faith in those
who glory in appearance and not in heart[405], but faith in your love, your
charity in God and your goodness.’
It is not known whether Eangith carried out her intention and went to
Rome.
Boniface had another correspondence with an abbess named Bugga, but
though Eangith states that her daughter Heaburg was sometimes called by
that name, it is not probable that they were the same, for Boniface writing
to Bugga makes no mention of Eangith’s plan, which he would hardly have
omitted to do if Heaburg had been his correspondent[406].
Bugga was afterwards abbess of a monastery in Kent. She too sent gifts to
Boniface, and later entertained the idea of going to Rome. In early days the
prelate wrote to her telling her how he had been mercifully led through
unknown countries, how ‘the Pontiff of the glorious see’ Gregory II had
inclined to him, and how he had cast down ‘the enemy of the Catholic
Church, Radbod,’ the Frisian.
In reply she assures him of her continued affection and makes some
remarks on books they have exchanged. The Passions of the Martyrs which
he has asked for she has not yet procured, but she will forward them as soon
as she can. ‘But you, my friend,’ she writes, ‘send me as a consolation what
you promised in your kind letter, your extracts from the holy writings. And
I beseech you to offer the oblation of the holy mass for one of my relatives
whom I loved beyond all others. I send you by the bearer of this letter fifty
gold coins (solidi) and an altar cloth, better gifts I cannot procure. They are
truly signs of a great affection though of insignificant appearance[407].’
Bugga does not style herself abbess, but Boniface addresses her as such in
acknowledging the receipt of her gifts and advising her about going to
Rome. On another occasion he wrote to express concern at her troubles,
which he heard from many people had not diminished since she retired
from rule for the sake of quiet[408]. The letter in which he advises her about
going to Rome is worth quoting[409].

‘Be it made known to you, dearest sister,’ he writes, ‘regarding the advice
which you asked for in your letter, that I do not presume to forbid you the
pilgrim’s journey, neither would I directly advise it. I will explain why. If
you gave up the charge you had of the servants of God, of his virgins
(ancillae), and your own monastic life, for the purpose of securing quiet and
the thought of God, in what way are you now bound to obey the words and
the will of seculars with toil and wearing anxiety? Still if you cannot find
peace of mind in your home in secular life among seculars it seems right
that you should seek in a pilgrimage freedom for contemplation, especially
since you wish it and can arrange it; just in the way our sister Wethburg did.
She told me in her letter that she had found the quiet she longed for near the
threshold of St Peter. In reference to your wish she sent me a message, for I
had written to her about you, saying that you must wait till the attacks,
hostility and menaces of the Saracens who have lately reached the Roman
States have subsided, and that God willing she would then send you a letter
of invitation. I too think this best. Prepare yourself for the journey, but wait
for word from her, and then do as God in his grace commands. As to the
collection of extracts for which you ask, be considerate to my shortcomings.
Pressing work and continuous travelling prevent my furnishing you with
what you desire. As soon as I can I will forward them to please you.
‘We thank you for the gifts and vestments which you have sent, and pray to
God Almighty, to put aside a gift for you in return with the angels and
archangels in the heights of heaven. And I beseech you in the name of God,
dear sister, yea mother and sweet lady, that you diligently pray for me. For
many troubles beset me through my shortcomings, and I am more distressed
by uncertainty of mind than by bodily work. Rest assured that our old trust
in each other will never fail us.’
Bugga carried out her intention and went to Rome, where she met Boniface,
who was the Pope’s guest about the year 737. He had achieved a signal
success in reconverting the Hessians, and was now appointed to constitute
bishoprics in Bavaria and to hold councils of Church dignitaries at regular
intervals[410]. At Rome Bugga and Boniface walked and talked together, and
visited the churches of the holy apostles. A letter from Aethelberht II, king
of Kent, to Boniface refers to their meeting[411]. Bugga had come back to
her old monastery and had given the king a description of her visit. She
attained a considerable age, for she was advanced in years before her

pilgrimage, and about twenty years later Bregwin, archbishop of Canterbury
(759-765), wrote to Lul informing him of her death[412].
Boniface made provision at Rome for the women in whom he was
interested. A certain deacon Gemmulus writes to him from Rome to inform
him[413] that ‘the sisters and maidens of God who have reached the
threshold of the apostles’ are there being cared for by himself and others as
Boniface has desired.
The readiness with which Anglo-Saxon nuns went abroad eventually led to
a state of things which cast discredit on religion. Boniface addressed the
following remarks on these pilgrimages to Cuthberht of Canterbury in the
letter written after the synod of Soissons[414].
‘I will not withhold from your holiness,’ he says, ‘... that it were a good
thing and besides honour and a credit to your Church and a palliation of
evils, if the synod and your princes forbade women, and those who have
taken the veil, to travel and stay abroad as they do, coming and going in the
Roman states. They come in great numbers and few return undefiled. For
there are very few districts of Lombardy in which there is not some woman
of Anglian origin living a loose life among the Franks and the Gauls. This is
a scandal and disgrace to your whole Church....’
The difficulty of exercising more control over those who chose to leave
their settlements was only partly met by stricter rules of supervision. For
there were no means of keeping back monk or nun who was tired of living
the monastic life. In the 9th century Hatto bishop of Basel († 836) wrote to
the bishop of Toul enjoining that no one should be suffered to undertake a
pilgrimage to Rome without leave, and provisions of a much later date
order that houses shall not take in and harbour inmates from other
settlements.
In this connection it is interesting to find Lul, who had settled abroad with
Boniface, excommunicating an abbess Suitha because she had allowed two
nuns to go into a distant district for some secular purpose without
previously asking permission from her bishop[415]. The women who settled
in Germany under Boniface were brought under much stricter control than
had till then been customary in either France or England.

§ 2. Anglo-Saxon Nuns abroad.

Among the women who came to Germany and settled there at the request of
Boniface was Lioba, otherwise Leobgith, who had been educated at
Wimbourne in Dorset, at no very great distance from Nutshalling where
Boniface dwelt, and who left England between 739 and 748. She was
related to him through her mother Aebbe, and a simple and modest little
letter is extant in which she writes to Boniface and refers to her father’s
death six years ago; she is her parents’ only child, she says, and would
recall her mother and herself to the prelate’s memory.
‘This too I ask for,’ she writes in this letter, ‘correct the rusticity of my style
and do not neglect to send me a few words in proof of your goodwill. I have
composed the few verses which I enclose according to the rules of poetic
versification, not from pride but from a desire to cultivate the beginnings of
learning, and now I am longing for your help. I was taught by Eadburg who
unceasingly devotes herself to this divine art.’ And she adds four lines of
verse addressed to God Almighty as an example of what she can do[416].
As mentioned above we are indebted for an account of Lioba’s life to the
monk Rudolf of Fulda († 865). From this we learn that Lioba at a tender age
had been given into the care of the abbess Tetta at Wimbourne[417]. ‘She
grew up, so carefully tended by the abbess and the sisters, that she cared for
naught but the monastery and the study of holy writ. She was never pleased
by irreverent jokes, nor did she care for the other maidens’ senseless
amusements; her mind was fixed on the love of Christ, and she was ever
ready to listen to the word of God, or to read it, and to commit to memory
what she heard and read to her own practical advantage. In eating and
drinking she was so moderate that she despised the allurements of a great
entertainment and felt content with what was put before her, never asking
for more. When she was not reading, she was working with her hands, for
she had learnt that those who do not work have no right to eat.’
She was moreover of prepossessing appearance and of engaging manners,
and secured the goodwill of the abbess and the affection of the inmates of
the settlement. A dream of hers is described by her biographer in which she

saw a purple thread of indefinite length issuing from her mouth. An aged
sister whom she consulted about it, interpreted the dream as a sign of
coming influence.
To Lioba, Tecla and Cynehild, Boniface addressed a letter from abroad,
asking in the usual way for the support of their prayers[418]. Lioba’s
biographer tells us that when Boniface thought of establishing religious
settlements, ‘wishing that the order of either sex should exist according to
rule,’ he arranged that Sturmi, who had settled at Fulda, should go to Italy
and there visit St Benedict’s monastery at Monte Casino, and he ‘sent
envoys with letters to the abbess Tetta (of Wimbourne) begging her as a
comfort in his labour, and as a help in his mission, to send over the virgin
Lioba, whose reputation for holiness and virtuous teaching had penetrated
across wide lands and filled the hearts of many with praise of her[419].’
This request shows that Boniface thought highly of the course of life and
occupations practised in English nunneries and that he considered English
women especially suited to manage the settlements under his care. In a
letter written from Rome about 738 Boniface refers to the sisters and
brothers who are living under him in Germany[420]. Parties of English men
and women joined him at different times. One travelled under the priest
Wiehtberht, who sent a letter to the monks of Glastonbury to inform them
of his safe arrival and honourable reception by Boniface, and he requests
that Tetta of Wimbourne may be told of this[421]. Perhaps Lioba, who was
Tetta’s pupil, was one of the party who travelled to Germany with
Wiehtberht.
‘In pursuance of his plan,’ says Lioba’s life[422], ‘Boniface now arranged
monastic routine and life according to accepted rule, and set Sturmi as
abbot over the monks and the virgin Lioba as spiritual mother over the
nuns, and gave into her care a monastery at the place called Bischofsheim,
where a considerable number of servants of God were collected together,
who now followed the example of their blessed teacher, were instructed in
divine knowledge and so profited by her teaching that several of them in
their turn became teachers elsewhere; for few monasteries of women
(monasteria fœminarum) existed in those districts where Lioba’s pupils
were not sought as teachers. She (Lioba) was a woman of great power and
of such strength of purpose that she thought no more of her fatherland and

of her relations but devoted all her energies to what she had undertaken, that
she might be blameless before God, and a model in behaviour and
discipline to all those who were under her. She never taught what she did
not practise. And there was neither conceit nor domineering in her attitude;
she was affable and kindly without exception towards everyone. She was as
beautiful as an angel; her talk was agreeable, her intellect was clear; her
abilities were great; she was a Catholic in faith; she was moderate in her
expectations and wide in her affections. She always showed a cheerful face
but she was never drawn into hilarity. No one ever heard a word of abuse
(maledictionem) pass her lips, and the sun never went down on her anger. In
eating and drinking she was liberal to others but moderate herself, and the
cup out of which she usually drank was called by the sisters ‘the little one
of our beloved’ (dilectae parvus) on account of its smallness. She was so
bent on reading that she never laid aside her book except to pray or to
strengthen her slight frame with food and sleep. From childhood upwards
she had studied grammar and the other liberal arts, and hoped by
perseverance to attain a perfect knowledge of religion, for she was well
aware that the gifts of nature are doubled by study. She zealously read the
books of the Old and New Testaments, and committed their divine precepts
to memory; but she further added to the rich store of her knowledge by
reading the writings of the holy Fathers, the canonical decrees, and the laws
of the Church (totiusque ecclesiastici ordinis jura). In all her actions she
showed great discretion, and thought over the outcome of an undertaking
beforehand so that she might not afterwards repent of it. She was aware that
inclination is necessary for prayer and for study, and she was therefore
moderate in holding vigils. She always took a rest after dinner, and so did
the sisters under her, especially in summer time, and she would not suffer
others to stay up too long, for she maintained that the mind is keener for
study after sleep.’
Boniface, writing to Lioba while she was abbess at Bischofsheim, sanctions
her taking a girl into the settlement for purposes of instruction.
Bischofsheim was on the Tauber a tributary of the river Main, and Boniface,
who dwelt at Mainz, frequently conferred with her there. Lioba went to stay
with Boniface at Mainz in 757 before he went among the Frisians[423]; he
presented her with his cloak and begged her to remain true to her work
whatever might befall him. Shortly after he set out on his expedition he was

attacked and killed by heathens. His corpse was brought back and buried at
Fulda, and Lioba went to pray at his grave, a privilege granted to no other
woman.
Lioba was also in contact with temporal rulers. Karl the Great gave her
presents and Queen Hildegard († 783) was so captivated with her that she
tried to persuade her to come and live with her. ‘Princes loved her,’ her
biographer tells us, ‘noblemen received her, and bishops gladly entertained
her and conversed with her on the scriptures and on the institutions of
religion, for she was familiar with many writings and careful in giving
advice.’ She had the supervision of other settlements besides her own and
travelled about a good deal. After Boniface’s death she kept on friendly
terms with Lul who had succeeded him as bishop of Mainz (757-786), and
it was with his consent that she finally resigned her responsibilities and her
post as abbess at Bischofsheim and went to dwell at Schornsheim near
Mainz with a few companions. At the request of Queen Hildegard she once
more travelled to Aachen where Karl the Great was keeping court. But she
was old, the fatigues of the journey were too much for her, and she died
shortly after her return in 780. Boniface had expressed a wish that they
should share the same resting-place and her body was accordingly taken to
Fulda, but the monks there, for some unknown reason, preferred burying
her in another part of their church.
It is noteworthy that the women who by the appointment of Boniface
directed convent life in Germany, remained throughout in a state of
dependence[424], while the men, noticeably Sturmi ( † 779) whom he had
made abbot at Fulda, cast off their connection with the bishop, and
maintained the independence of their monasteries. Throughout his life
Sturmi showed a bold and determined spirit, but he was not therefore less
interesting to the nuns of Boniface’s circle. His pupil and successor Eigil
wrote an account of his life at the request of the nun Angiltrud, who is also
supposed to have come from England to Germany[425].
We know little concerning the other Anglo-Saxon women who settled
abroad, for there are no contemporary accounts of them. The ‘Passion of
Boniface,’ written at Mainz between 1000 and 1050, tells us that as Lioba
settled at Bischofsheim so Tecla settled at Kizzingen, where ‘she shone like
a light in a dark place[426].’ No doubt this Tecla is identical with the nun of

that name whom Boniface speaks of in his letter to Lioba[427]. She has a
place among the saints[428], but it seems doubtful whether she founded the
monastery at Kizzingen or the one at Oxenfurt.
The names of several other women are given by Othlon, a monk of St
Emmeran in Bavaria, who in consequence of a quarrel fled from his
monastery and sought refuge at Fulda. While there, between 1062 and 1066,
he re-wrote and amplified Wilibald’s life of Boniface. In this account he
gives a list of the men who came into Germany from England, the
correctness of which has been called in question. He then enumerates the
women who came abroad and mentions ‘an aunt of Lul called Chunihilt[429]
and her daughter Berthgit[430], Chunitrud and Tecla, Lioba, and Waltpurgis
the sister of Wilibald and Wunebald[431].’ The only mention of Waltpurgis is
her name, but he describes where the other women settled, some in the
district of the Main, others in Bavaria.
This woman Waltpurgis has been the subject of many conjectures; writers
generally do not hesitate to affirm that the sister of Wunebald and Wilibald
is identical with the saint who was so widely reverenced. But St Waltpurgis,
popularly called Walburg, is associated with customs and traditions which
so clearly bear a heathen and profane character in the Netherlands and in
North Germany, that it seems improbable that these associations should
have clustered round the name of a Christian woman and a nun[432].
In face of the existing evidence one of two conclusions must be adopted.
Either the sister of Wunebald and Wilibald really bore the name Waltpurgis,
and the monk Wolfhard who wrote an account of a saint of that name whose
relics were venerated at Eichstätt (between 882 and 912) took advantage of
the coincidence of name and claimed that the Walburg, who bears the
character of a pseudo-saint, and the sister of Wunebald and Wilibald were
identical; or else, desirous to account for the veneration of relics which
were commonly connected with the name Walburg, he found it natural and
reasonable to hold that Walburg had belonged to the circle of Boniface, and
identified her with the sister of Wunebald and Wilibald[433].
Nothing is preserved concerning this sister except a reference to her
existence, which is contained in the accounts of the acts of Wilibald and
Wunebald written by a nun at Heidenheim, whose name also is not

recorded[434]. These accounts offer many points of interest. The nun who
wrote them was of Anglo-Saxon origin; her style is highly involved and
often falls short of the rules of grammar, but she had possession of
interesting information, and she was determined to impart it. It has been
noticed that her writing varies according to whether she is setting down
facts or dilating on them; for she is concise enough when it is a question of
facts only, but when it comes to description she falls into the spirit of
Anglo-Saxon literature and introduces alliteration into her Latin and
launches forth into panegyric. She came from England to Germany, as she
tells us, shortly before the death of Wunebald (c. 765), and experiences of
an unpleasant nature led her to expect that her writings would not pass
without criticism.
‘I am but a woman,’ she says[435], ‘weak on account of the frailty of my sex,
neither supported by the prerogative of wisdom nor sustained by the
consciousness of great power, yet impelled by earnestness of purpose,’ and
she sets to work to give a description of the life of Wilibald and the journey
which he made to Palestine, parts of which she took down from his
dictation, for at the close of her account she says that she wrote it from
Wilibald’s narrative in the monastery of Heidenheim in the presence of
deacons and of some of Wilibald’s pupils who were witnesses to the fact.
‘This I say,’ she adds, ‘that no one may again declare this to be nonsense.’
The account she gives of Wilibald’s experiences contains one of the earliest
descriptions written in northern Europe of a journey to Palestine, and
modern writers have commented on it as a curious literary monument of the
time. Interest in descriptions of the Holy Land was increasing. Besides early
references to such journeys in the letters of St Jerome who described how
Paula went from Rome to Jerusalem and settled there in the 4th century, we
hear how Adamnan came to the court of King Ealdfrith of Northumbria
about the year 701 and laid before him his book on Holy Places[436] which
he had taken down from the narrative of bishop Arculf who had made the
pilgrimage, but of whom we know nothing more. But Adamnan’s account is
bald and its interest is poor compared to this description of the adventures
of Wilibald and of what he saw on his travels.
The nun prefaces her account of the journey by telling us of Wilibald’s
origin. She describes how he fell ill as a child, how his parents vowed him

to a religious life if he were spared, and how in conformity with their
promise they took him to the abbey of Waltham at the age of five, where
Wilibald continued studying till manhood. We are not told to what his love
of travel was due. He determined to go south and persuaded his father and
his brother Wunebald to accompany him. We hear how they and their
companions took boat and arrived at Rouen, how they travelled on till they
reached Lucca where the father fell ill and died, and how the brothers
pursued their journey to Rome where they spent the winter. We hear how
the heat and bad air of summer drove them away from Rome and how,
while Wunebald remained in Italy, Wilibald with a few companions pushed
on by way of Naples and Reggio and reached Catania in Sicily, where he
took boat for Ephesus and Syria. We get a good deal of information by the
way on saints and on relics, and hear of the veil of St Agatha which stayed
the eruptions of Mount Aetna, and of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus. The
travellers experienced all kinds of hardships; thrice they were cast into
prison and liberated before their feet trod on holy ground. Then they visited
Nazareth and Chana; they gazed upon Lake Tiberias, they bathed in the
river Jordan, and finally they reached Jerusalem where they made a long
stay, broken however by several long expeditions. Each site is described in
turn, and its connection with scriptural history is pointed out. We hear a
good deal about Jerusalem, about Mount Sion, the site of the Ascension of
the Virgin, and about the site of the Nativity at Bethlehem. It was ‘once a
cave, now it is a square house cut into the rock,’ over which a little chapel is
built. We also hear of various monasteries where the travellers stayed in
coming and going. Finally they travelled to Tyre, where they took boat to
Constantinople. There they made a lengthy stay and then journeyed on to
Italy and visited the Isle of Lipari, where Wilibald desired to get a glimpse
of the crater, which is designated as hell, the thought of which called forth a
fine piece of description from the nun.
‘And when they arrived there they left the boat to see what sort of a hell it
was. Wilibald especially was curious about what was inside the crater, and
would have climbed the summit of the mountain to the opening; but he was
prevented by cinders which rose from the black gulf and had sunk again; as
snow settles falling from the sky and the heavenly heights in white thick
masses, so these cinders lay heaped on the summit of the mountain and
prevented Wilibald’s ascent. But he saw a blackness and a terrible column

of flame projected upwards with a noise like thunder from the pit, and he
saw the flame and the smoky vapour rising to an immeasurable height. He
also beheld pumice-stone which writers use[437] thrown up from the crater
with the flame, and it fell into the sea and was again cast up on the shore;
men there gathered it up to bring it away.’
When Wilibald and his companion Tidberht reached Rome they had been
absent seven years, and their travels had made them personages of such
interest that the Pope interviewed them. Wilibald at the Pope’s suggestion
agreed to join Boniface in Germany. Wunebald, the brother whom he had
left in Italy, had met Boniface in Rome in 738 and had travelled back with
him. Wilibald also settled in Germany and was made bishop of the new see
of Eichstätt. Here he came across the nun, who was so fired by his account
of his travels that she undertook to record them.
After she had finished this work she was moved to write a short account of
the life of Wunebald[438]. It is written in a similar style and contains
valuable historical information, but it has not the special interest of the
other account. Wunebald on coming into Germany had first stayed at
Mainz, then he travelled about with Boniface, and finally he settled at
Heidenheim where he made a clearance in the midst of a wooded
wilderness and dwelt there with a few younger men. He was active in
opposing idolatrous customs, but does not appear to have been satisfied
with his work. He died about the year 765, and his brother Wilibald, bishop
of Eichstätt, and his sister, of whom mention is now made for the first time,
came to his monastery to assist at the translation of his corpse. The sister
took charge of his settlement, apparently for a time only, for the monastery
at Heidenheim continued to be under the rule of an abbot and there is no
evidence that women belonged to it.
It was from this sister that the nun received her information about
Wunebald. The theory has been put forward that she was the same person as
a nun who came to Heidenheim and was there miraculously cured.
However that may be, this literary nun is the last Anglo-Saxon woman of
whom we have definite information who came abroad in connection with
Boniface. Her name is lost, it is as the anonymous nun of Heidenheim that
she has come down to posterity.

CHAPTER V.

CONVENTS IN SAXON LANDS BETWEEN A.D.
800-1000.
‘Nec scientia scibilis Deum offendit, sed
injustitia scientis.’ Hrotsvith.

§ 1. Women’s Convents in Saxony.

Some account has been given in the preceding chapters of the form which
monastic settlements of women took among the Franks and the Anglo-
Saxons during the first centuries after the acceptance of Christianity.
Features similar to those which appear in France and England characterised
the first period of monastic development among the continental Saxons, the
last branch of the German race to accept Christianity as a nation. Here also
we find highborn and influential women as abbesses at the head of
establishments which were important centres of contemporary culture.
The convent in Saxon lands, as elsewhere, was a place of residence and a
training school for women of the ruling classes. Girls came there to be
educated, and either considered the convent as their permanent home or left
it to be married; the widow frequently returned to it later in life. But some
of the Saxon settlements of women gained an additional importance in the
10th and 11th centuries owing to their close connection with the political
affairs and interests of the time. The abbess was frequently a member of the
royal or imperial family. In one case she was appointed as the guardian of
the Emperor, in another she became representative of the Emperor during
his absence in Italy.
The story of the spread of monastic life into Saxony is closely connected
with the history of the conquest of the country and the subsequent growth of

national independence. The Saxons occupied the districts of northern
Germany, Westphalia, Eastphalia and Engern, of which Westphalia bordered
on lands occupied by the Franks. Between the 6th and the 9th centuries the
Franks had sometimes fought against the Saxons and had sometimes made
common cause with them against their mutual enemies the people of
Thüringen. But the Saxons were warlike and ferocious, insensible to the
influence of Christianity, and ready at any moment to begin hostilities. They
became more and more dreaded by the Franks, who looked upon them as
dangerous neighbours, and who attacked them whenever opportunity
offered. Karl the Great († 814), king of the Franks, and Roman Emperor of
the German nation, received the war against the Saxons as part of his
heritage, but repeated inroads into Saxony and a cruelty bordering on
vindictiveness were needed before he could speak of the conquest of the
Saxons as an accomplished fact. In 785, after a prolonged struggle,
Widukind, the Saxon leader in whom the spirit of Arminius lived, was
finally defeated; and he and his followers accepted Christianity as part of
their subjection.
The Frankish Emperor and the Church now united in extending a uniform
system of government over the lands of the Saxons. The count (graf or
comes) was made responsible for the maintenance of peace in the separate
district (gau or pagus) entrusted to him, and bishoprics were founded as
dependencies of the ancient archiepiscopal sees of Cöln and Mainz. At the
same time colonies of monks migrated into the conquered districts from the
west and south. Their settlements developed rapidly, owing to the favour
which monastic life found with the newly converted Saxons.
The subjection of the Saxons was not however of long duration. The
supremacy of the Western Empire culminated under the rule of Karl the
Great; the union under one rule of many peoples who were in different
stages of civilization was only possible at all through the rare combination
of commanding qualities in this emperor; at his death the empire at once
began to crumble away. This brought a returning sense of self-confidence to
those peoples on whom the yoke of subjection had been forcibly thrust.
Fifty years after Karl’s death a warlike chief of the old type was established
among the Saxons as duke (herzog or dux); a hundred years later and a
Saxon duke was chosen king of the Germans by the united votes of
Frankish and Saxon nobles. The supreme authority now passed from the

Franks to the Saxons; a change which the Saxon historian of the 10th
century associated with the transference of the relics of St Vitus from
France to Saxon soil[439]. The present age seeks the explanation of the
removal of the centre of authority in less romantic causes, and finds it in the
altogether extraordinary aptitude which the Saxons showed for assimilating
new elements of civilization, and for appropriating or remodelling to their
own use institutions of rule and government into which they breathed a
spirit peculiarly their own.
The history of the attainment to political supremacy by the Saxons helps us
to understand the spirit which animated the Church and monastic
institutions of the time. The bishoprics which Frankish overlordship had
established were soon in the hands of men who were Saxons by birth, and a
similar appropriation took place in regard to monastic settlements. Corvei, a
religious colony founded on Saxon soil by monks from La Corbie in
northern France, a lifetime after the conversion numbered Saxon nobles
among its inmates. Settlements of women were also founded and rapidly
gained importance, especially in the eastern districts where they rivalled the
episcopal sees in wealth and influence.
A reason for the favour with which monastic life was regarded during the
period of political subjection lay in the practical advantages which these
settlements offered. The nobleman who turned monk was freed from the
obligations thrust upon him by the new régime; he was exempt from
fighting under the standard of his conqueror, and the property which he
bestowed on the religious settlement was in a way withdrawn from the
enemy. But when the people regained their independence the popularity of
the convent still remained. For the Saxons were quick in realizing the
advantages of a close union between religion and the state, and the most
powerful and progressive families of the land vied with each other in
founding and endowing religious settlements.
The political interest of the period centres in the career of Liudolf, who was
styled duke by his people, but count by the Emperor. Liudolf rapidly rose to
greatness and became the progenitor of a family which has given Germany
many remarkable men and her first line of kings. His son Otto († 912) was
renowned like his father for personal valour, and success in every way
favoured the undertakings of his grandson Heinrich the Fowler († 936), first

king of the Saxon line. Heinrich became the favourite hero of the national
poet on account of the triumphs he gained over the Slavs and Magyars, who
at this time threatened the lands occupied by Germans at every point
between the Baltic and the Adriatic. Again Heinrich’s successes were
reflected in those of his son Otto I († 973), surnamed the Great, who added
the lustre of imperial dignity to his father’s firmly established kingship.
Emulating the fame of Karl the Great, Otto was crowned emperor by the
Pope in Rome. During the reign of his son, Otto II ( † 982), and of his
grandson, Otto III († 1002), the Saxon court remained the meeting-place of
representatives of the civilized world. It was there that envoys were
received from England and Italy, and it was from thence that messengers
were sent out to Constantinople and Cordova. The elective crown of the
German Empire remained hereditary in the Saxon dynasty for over a
hundred years, and it is with this period that the Germans associate the first
development of their national life on national soil.[440]
At this time the kingdoms founded in other parts of Europe by peoples of
the German race were much enfeebled. During the 9th and 10th centuries
the Frankish princes were wanting in that unity of purpose which alone
could prevent the appropriation of fruitful tracts of their territory by the
vikings. In England a period of returning difficulties had followed the reign
of King Aelfraed, so brilliant in many ways. The personal valour of his
children, the intrepid Lady Aethelflaed († 918) and King Eadward († 925)
her brother, had not stayed the social changes which prepared the way for
the rule of the Dane. It is in Saxony only that we find the concentration and
consolidation of power which make the advance and attitude of a nation
conspicuous in history. The sword was here wielded to good purpose and
likewise the pen. The bishoprics of Hildesheim, Halberstadt, and
Magdeburg had become centres of artistic activity, and the monastery of
Corvei rivalled the time-honoured settlements of St Gallen and Fulda in
intellectual importance. The Saxon historian Widukind († after 973) was at
work in Corvei in the 10th century; this author is for Saxon history what
Gregory is for Frankish and Bede for Anglo-Saxon history. Monasteries for
women, especially those of Herford, Gandersheim, and Quedlinburg, had
rapidly developed and exerted a social and intellectual influence such as has
rarely fallen to the lot of women’s religious settlements in the course of
history.

The first religious house for women of which we have definite information
is Herford, which was situated close to Corvei in Westphalia and had
originally been founded as a dependency of it. Two small settlements for
women existed at an early period in Eastphalia, but our knowledge of them
is slight. The story is told that the heathen Saxon Hessi, having been
defeated by Karl the Great in 775, went to live in the monastery of Fulda,
and left his daughter Gisela in possession of his property, which she
devoted to founding two little monasteries (monasteriola) for her daughters.
This information is preserved in an account of Liutberg, a Saxon girl of
noble parentage who was brought up in one of these little monasteries, but
afterwards left it, as she preferred to dwell as a recluse in a neighbouring
cell. Here she was visited by Theotgrim, bishop of Halberstadt († 840), and
by the writer to whom we owe our account of her[441]. Wendhausen, one of
the little monasteries spoken of in this account, was in existence a century
later, for an attempt was then made to transfer its inmates to Quedlinburg.
The fame of Liutberg’s virtues was great during her lifetime but apparently
did not secure her recognition as a saint. The cell in which she had lived
was afterwards granted to Quedlinburg by charter (958).
We have abundant information about Herford, the dependency of Corvei. In
838 a certain Tetta was abbess, who came from Soissons and regulated the
settlement at Herford on the plan of the house she had left[442]. The Saxon
element asserted itself here also. In 854 the abbess was Addila, who was of
Saxon parentage and probably the widow of a Saxon nobleman. Again in
858 we hear of another abbess, Hadewy, probably the niece of Warin, who
was abbot of Corvei and a relation of Duke Liudolf. During her rule the
relics of the woman-saint Pusinna were sent to Herford by the Saxon
nobleman Kobbo as a gift to his sister the abbess Hadewy. The Saxons had
no traditions or relics of early Christians who had lived among them, and so
they were obliged to import relics to form a centre for their worship. King
and bishop alike set an extraordinary value on relics and paid exorbitant
prices for them. So great an importance was attached to the arrival of the
relics of Pusinna at Herford that a contemporary monk wrote a detailed
account of the event[443]. But it is characteristic of the author’s disposition
that he tells us nothing of the life and the works of Pusinna, who but for this
account is unknown to history.

A side-light is thrown on the material prosperity and the national
sympathies of the settlements of Corvei and Herford in 889. Egilmar,
bishop of Osnabrück (885-906), lodged a complaint with the Pope,
contending that these settlements, besides appropriating other rights, drew
so many tithes from his diocese that his income was reduced to a quarter of
what it should be. But Egilmar got scant reward for his pains, no doubt
because those in authority at Corvei and Herford were family connections
of Duke Liudolf, whom it was felt dangerous to cross. For the Saxon duke
had gained in influence as the Franks relaxed their hold on Saxon affairs,
and while he nominally remained a dependent, pressure from outside was
not brought to bear on him. In refusing to interfere in Egilmar’s behalf,
which would have involved his coming into conflict with Liudolf, the Pope
was acting in accordance with the policy which the Franks pursued in
Saxon lands[444].
At an early date the abbey of Herford was renowned as an educational
centre, and it long maintained its reputation. Hathumod, a daughter of Duke
Liudolf, was educated there previous to becoming abbess at Gandersheim,
as we shall see later on. A hundred years later Queen Mathilde († 968) of
the race of the warrior Widukind, and wife of Heinrich the Fowler, was
brought up at Herford, her grandmother being abbess at the time.
The foundation of Gandersheim in Eastphalia followed upon that of
Herford. Gandersheim was founded by Duke Liudolf and remained the
favourite settlement of the women of his family; we shall return to it later
on. Two other important abbeys ruled by women in connection with royalty
were Essen and Quedlinburg. Essen was founded by Altfrid, bishop of
Hildesheim (847-874), a Saxon by birth[445], and Quedlinburg at the
instigation of Queen Mathilde, who as mentioned above had been educated
at Herford. For centuries the abbess of Quedlinburg remained a person of
marked importance, in her influence both on politics and on matters social
and literary. Essen and Quedlinburg afterwards became centres of art
industry; all these early monastic foundations maintained their importance
down to the time of the Reformation.
The favour found by these institutions is explained when we come to
consider the uncertainty of the times and the changeful political events
which accompanied the growth of Saxon independence. The age, judged by

a later standard, may well be called an age of violence. For the country was
in the hands of a number of overlords who were frequently at war together,
and who dwelt in isolated castles in a thickly wooded district in which only
a patch here and there had been brought under cultivation.
The monotony of life in the castles or burghs of this period can hardly be
exaggerated. Means of communication were few and occasions for it were
rare. When the master and his men were absent, engaged in some private
broil, or else summoned by the arrière-ban to attend the duke or the king,
weeks and months would go by without a reminder of the existence of the
world outside; weeks and months when the arrival of a traveller offered the
one welcome diversion. The young nobleman followed his father to camp
and to court, where he tasted of the experiences of life; the young
noblewoman stayed at home, cut off from intercourse with those of her age
and standing, and from every possibility of widening her mental horizon.
It is with the daughters of these families that the religious house first found
favour. Settlements such as Herford, Gandersheim, Essen, and Quedlinburg
offered the companionship of equals, and gave a domestic and intellectual
training which was the best of its kind. Later ages were wont to look upon
the standard of education attained at Gandersheim and Quedlinburg as
exemplary. The word college (collegium), which early writers often apply
to these settlements in its modern sense of a learning and a teaching body,
aptly designates their character. For the religious settlement was an
endowed college where girls were received to be trained, and where women
who wished to devote themselves to learning and the arts permanently
resided.
The age at which girls were received in these settlements can be determined
by inference only; some were given into their care as children, others joined
them later in life. Probably here as elsewhere girls came at about the age of
seven, and remained till the age of fourteen, when they left if marriage was
to be their destiny. The responsibilities of married and of unmarried life
were undertaken at this period by persons of extreme youth. Hathumod was
made abbess of Gandersheim when she was between twelve and thirteen
years of age; and Mathilde, as abbess of Quedlinburg, at the age of twelve
received her dying grandmother’s injunctions together with valuable

documents[446], but in her case the chronicler notes that she had developed
early[447].
It remains an open question at what period in history the inmates of these
settlements took vows. Fritsch, who has written a detailed history of the
abbey of Quedlinburg, holds that its inmates never took a permanent vow,
since not a single case of the defection of a nun is on record[448], but this
view is disproved by accounts of consecrations during the early period in
other houses. Luther at the time of the Reformation noted that the nuns of
Quedlinburg were bound by no vow[449]. Probably the inmates took vows at
first, and the custom afterwards lapsed. Harenberg, to whom we owe many
learned dissertations on Gandersheim, says that the women there lived at
first according to the rule of St Benedict; but after the 12th century became
Austin canonesses[450]. Engelhausen, a writer of the 15th century, speaking
of the inmates of Saxon houses generally, says that they lived as Austin
canonesses[451]. Early writers in speaking of the inmates of Saxon convents
use the familiar terms nuns (sanctimoniales) and virgins (virgines); the term
canoness (canonissa), which designates a woman who took residence
without a permanent vow, came into general use only at a later date[452]. It
seems simplest therefore throughout to retain the familiar term nun when
speaking of the inmates of Saxon settlements, though it must be understood
with a reservation, for we are not certain of the exact meaning of the word
at different periods.
Engelhausen, the writer referred to above, adds that abbeys for women in
Saxony were founded ‘in order to help the noblemen who fought for the
faith of Christ and were killed by the heathens; so that their daughters might
not be reduced to begging (mendicare) but might live in these monasteries
(monasteria), and when they had attained a marriageable age, might leave to
be married.’
The range of subjects taught in the Saxon nunnery was wide. It included the
study of religious as well as of classical writers. Spinning, weaving, and
embroidery were also taught and practised. We shall see later on that the
nuns assembled at Quedlinburg wove large and elaborate hangings.
Reference is also made to the study of law, and it is said that Gerberg II,
abbess at Gandersheim ( † 1001), instructed her niece Sophie in convent
discipline and in common law. An early chronicle in the vernacular says

that the princess Sophie, a woman of determined character, so mastered
these subjects that she was able to enter into disputation with learned men
and successfully opposed them[453].
Where the inmate of a convent was consecrated to the office of nun, this
was done by the bishop of the diocese; but a curious story is told in
connection with the consecration of the above-named princess Sophie[454].
Sophie was the daughter of the emperor Otto II, and had been educated at
Gandersheim, but she refused to be consecrated by the bishop of
Hildesheim, who usually performed this office at the convent, and declared
that she must have the archbishop of Mainz, whose dignity was more in
keeping with her station. The compromise that both prelates should assist at
the consecration was at last agreed upon. But Sophie was not satisfied. She
left Gandersheim for the court of her brother, and only returned at the death
of the abbess, whom she succeeded. Endless quarrels occurred during the
term of her rule. On one occasion she allowed her nieces, Sophie and Ida,
who were consecrated nuns, to depart on a visit to her friend the archbishop
of Mainz, but when they sent word from Mainz that they did not intend to
return to Gandersheim, she applied to her old enemy the bishop of
Hildesheim, and forced him to interfere with the archbishop and bring back
her nuns. They returned, but only for a time, for they were appointed
abbesses at other convents.
It is interesting to note how large a number of princesses of the ruling
dynasty were unmarried, and remained in convents. Five daughters of Duke
Liudolf spent their lives at Gandersheim, of whom only one as far as we
know had been betrothed. At a later period Mathilde, the only daughter of
Otto I, was from her cradle upwards appointed to become abbess of
Quedlinburg; and her cousin Gerberg, daughter of Heinrich, duke of the
Bavarians ( † 955), was abbess of Gandersheim. In the next generation
Mathilde, daughter of Prince Liudolf († 957), was abbess at Essen († 1011),
and her two cousins, Adelheid and Sophie, the daughters of Otto II,
embraced the religious profession at the wish, it is said, of their mother.
Adelheid was abbess at Quedlinburg (999-1040), and Sophie, the princess
alluded to above, was abbess at Gandersheim (1001-1039). When Sophie
died her sister Adelheid planned to unite in herself the rule of both houses,
but death put a stop to her ambition[455]. The princess Mathilde, another
daughter of Otto II, had married Ezo, son of the Palgrave of Lothringen, to

whom she bore seven daughters; six of these embraced convent life and in
course of time attained to the rank of abbess[456].
These details are not without significance. They suggest that it was
probably for the interest of the royal family that its princesses should
remain in the convent in preference to contracting matrimonial alliances
which might involve their relatives in political difficulties. On the other
hand they suggest that life in these settlements must have been congenial in
more ways than one.
As abbess of one of the royal houses the princess certainly held a place of
authority second to that of no woman in the land. To gather together a few
items of this power: she held the abbey of the king and from the king,
which precluded a dependent relation on lords spiritual or temporal, and
made her abbey what is termed a free abbey (freies reichstift). Her rights of
overlordship sometimes extended over many miles, and the property of
Gandersheim is described as enormous[457].
As holding the place of a feudal lord the abbess had the right of ban; she
issued the summons when war had been declared and sent her contingent of
armed knights into the field; and she also issued the summons to attend in
her courts, where judgment was given by her proctor (vogt). In short she
had the duties and privileges of a baron who held his property of the king,
and as such she was summoned to the Imperial Diet (reichstag). She may
have attended in person during early times, the fact appears doubtful; but in
the 16th century she was only represented there[458].
Similar rights and privileges devolved on those abbesses in England who
were baronesses in title of the land they held. But these abbesses never
secured some of the rights enjoyed by their sisters in Saxony, for example
the right of striking coin which the abbess of Quedlinburg secured under
Otto I[459]. Coins also are extant which were struck by abbesses of
Gandersheim, whose portraits they bear[460].
In addition to these advantages of position, the abbesses of the chief Saxon
houses in the 10th and 11th centuries were in direct contact with the court
and with politics. During the minority of Otto III, who was three years old
when his father died in Italy (983), his mother Adelheid together with his
aunt Mathilde, abbess of Quedlinburg, practically ruled the empire. Later

when this emperor went to Italy for a prolonged stay in 997 the
management of affairs was given to the abbess Mathilde, who is praised for
the determined measures she took to oppose the invading Wends. In 999 she
summoned a diet at Dornberg on her own authority[461].
The so-called free abbeys were under the obligation of entertaining the king
and his retinue in return for privileges granted to them, and as the king had
no fixed place of residence he stayed at his various palaces (palatia) in turn,
and usually spent holiday time at one of the religious centres. Frequent
royal visits to Quedlinburg are on record; the court was also entertained at
Gandersheim. These visits brought a store of political information to the
abbess of which she made use in her own way. Thus Mathilde, abbess of
Quedlinburg, is thought to have supplied the annalist of Quedlinburg with
the information which gives his chronicle its special value, and she was so
far interested in the history of her own time that Widukind forwarded his
history of the Saxons to her book by book for approval[462]. The abbess
Gerberg of Gandersheim was similarly in contact with politics. As we shall
see she supplied the nun Hrotsvith with the materials for writing the history
of Otto the Great.

§ 2. Early History of Gandersheim[463].

From these general remarks we turn to the foundation and early history of
Gandersheim, one of the earliest and wealthiest of Saxon houses, which
claims our attention as the home of the nun Hrotsvith. It was situated on
low-lying ground near the river Ganda in Eastphalia and was surrounded by
the wooded heights of the Harz mountains. It owed its foundation to Liudolf
himself, the great Saxon duke and the progenitor of the royal house of
Saxony. At the close of a successful political career, Liudolf was persuaded
by his wife Oda to devote some of his wealth and his influence to founding
a settlement for women in Eastphalia, where his property chiefly lay.
Oda was partly of Frankish origin, which may account for her seeking the
aggrandisement of her family in a religious foundation at a time when there
were very few in Saxon lands. It is noteworthy that this foundation was to
be for women and that all the daughters of Liudolf and Oda went to live

there. Information about the early history of Gandersheim is abundant.
There are extant a life of Hathumod, its first abbess, which was written by
her friend the monk Agius ( † 874), and an elegy on her death in which
Agius tries to comfort her nuns for the loss they have sustained; both these
compositions are written in a very attractive style[464]. A century later the
nun Hrotsvith was busy at Gandersheim describing the early history of the
settlement in a poem in which she celebrates both it and the family of its
founder[465]. In many ways this is the most beautiful and finished of the
nun’s compositions; a work which reflects credit alike on her powers as a
poetess, and on the settlement with which her name and fame are
indissolubly linked.
From these accounts we gather that Oda’s mother, Ada, had already had a
vision of the future greatness of her family. Hrotsvith tells how St John the
Baptist appeared to her clad in a garment made of camel’s hair of bright
yellow, his lovely face of shining whiteness, with a small beard and black
hair. In giving these details of the saint’s appearance the nun was doubtless
describing a picture she had before her at Gandersheim.
It was in 852 that a plan was formed for transferring a small congregation
of women, who had been living at Brunshausen, to some property on the
river Ganda. A suitable site had to be sought and a fitting centre of worship
provided. Liudolf and Oda undertook a journey to Rome and submitted
their scheme to Pope Sergius II (844-847), begging him for a gift of relics.
They received from him the bodies of the saints Anastasius and Innocentius,
which they carried back with them to Saxony.
On the night before All Saints’ Day a swineherd in Liudolf’s employ had a
vision of lights falling from heaven and hanging in the air, which was
interpreted as a heavenly indication of the site of the settlement. A clearance
was accordingly made in the densely wooded district and a chapel was
built.
It was at this time that Hathumod, the eldest daughter of Liudolf, was living
in Herford. From childhood her bent had been serious, and her friend Agius
tells us that ‘of her own free will she desired to be admitted to serious
studies to which others are driven even by force[466].’ She left her father’s
residence for Herford, where she was so happy that in after years she often

longed to be back there. In 852 at the age of twelve she was taken away to
Gandersheim to preside over the new settlement. This settlement was to be
an improvement on existing institutions of the kind, for Agius tells us that
its members were not allowed to have separate cells or to keep servants.
They slept in tenements (villula) in the neighbourhood till their ‘spiritual
mother’ was able to provide them with a suitable dwelling. Curious side-
lights are thrown on other religious institutions by the following remarks of
Agius on the nuns of Hathumod’s convent: ‘They shared everything,’ he
says[467]; ‘their clothes were alike, neither too rich nor too poor, nor entirely
of wool. The sisters were not allowed to dine out with relatives and friends,
or to converse with them without leave. They were not allowed like other
nuns (sanctimoniales) to leave the monastery to stay with relatives or visit
dependent estates (possessiones subjectae). And they were forbidden to eat
except at the common table at the appointed times except in cases of
sickness. At the same hour and in the same place they partook of the same
kind of food. They slept together and came together to celebrate the
canonical hours (ad canonicos cursus orandi). And they set to work together
whenever work had to be done.’
Agius draws a beautiful picture of the gentleness and dignified bearing of
Hathumod, who was at once strong and sensitive. She was always greatly
cheered by signs of goodness in others, and she was as much grieved by an
offence of a member of the community as if she had committed it herself.
Agius tells us that she was slow in making friends but that she clung
faithfully through life to those she had made.
Her literary acquirements were considerable. ‘No one could have shown
greater quickness of perception, or a stronger power of understanding in
listening to or in expounding the scriptures,’ he says[468], and the scriptures
always remained her favourite reading.
It is difficult to form an idea of the standard of life in these religious
settlements. The age was rough and barbarous in many ways, but the
surroundings of the Saxon dukes did not lack a certain splendour, and traces
of it would no doubt be found in the homes they made for their daughters.
In these early accounts nothing transpires about their possessions in books
and furniture, but it is incidentally mentioned that the abbess Hathumod

owned a crystal vessel in the form of a dove, which contained relics and
hung suspended by her bedside[469].
The plan was formed to build a stone church for Gandersheim, an unusual
and difficult undertaking. No suitable stone, however, could be found till
one day, as Hathumod was praying in the chapel, she was divinely moved to
walk forth and follow a dove which was awaiting her outside. The bird led
the way to a spot where the underwood was removed and masses of stone
which could be successfully dealt with were laid bare. ‘It is the spot barren
through its huge masses of stone, as we know it now-a-days,’ Hrotsvith the
nun wrote a hundred years later[470].
The densely-wooded character of the neighbourhood is frequently referred
to by early and later writers. Lingering superstitions peopled the forest with
heathen fantasies, with ‘fauns and spirits,’ as Hrotsvith designates them.
The settlement lay in the midst of the forest and was at all times difficult of
access, but especially so in winter when the ground was covered with snow.
In the introduction to her history of Otto the Great Hrotsvith likens her
perplexity and fear in entering on so vast a subject to the state of mind of
one who has to cross the forest in mid winter, a simile doubtless suggested
by the surroundings of the convent[471]. Her feelings, she says, were those
of ‘someone who is ignorant of the vast expanse of the forest which lies
before him, all the paths of which are hidden by a thick covering of snow;
he is guided by no one and keeps true to his direction only by noticing the
marks pointed out to him; sometimes he goes astray, unexpectedly he again
strikes the right path, and having penetrated half way through the dense
interlacing trees and brushwood he longs for rest and stops and would
proceed no farther, were he not overtaken by some one, or unexpectedly
guided by the footprints of those who have gone before.’
Neither Liudolf the founder of Gandersheim nor his daughter Hathumod
lived to see the stone church completed. He died in 866, and the abbess in
874 at the age of thirty-two. She was surrounded by her nuns, among whom
were several of her sisters, and her mother Oda, who had also come to live
at Gandersheim. The monk Agius, who was a frequent visitor at the home,
was often with her during her last illness, and after her death he composed
an elegy in dialogue to comfort the nuns under the loss they had sustained.
This poem is full of sweetness and delicacy of feeling, and is said to have

been written on the model of the eclogues of Virgil. Alternate verses are put
into the mouths of the nuns and of Agius; they describe their sorrow, and he
dwells on the thoughts which might be a consolation to them. It opens in
this strain:
‘Sad were the words we exchanged, I and those holy and worthy sisters
who watched the dying moments of the sainted abbess Hathumod. I had
been asked to address them, but somehow their recent grief made it
impossible for them to listen to me, for they were bowed down by sorrow.
The thoughts which I then expressed I have now put into verse and have
added somewhat to them. For they (the sisters) asked me to address them in
writing, since it would comfort them to have before their eyes, and to dwell
upon, the words which I then spoke in sadness. Yielding to their wish and
entreaties, I have attempted to express the thoughts which follow. Thou, O
reader, understand that I am conversing with them, and follow us if thou
wilt in our lament.’
He then directly addresses the nuns and continues: ‘Certainly we should
weep for one who died before her time in the bloom of youth. Yet grief also
has its limits; your sorrowful weeping should be within bounds. ’Tis natural
you should be unhappy, still reason commands moderation in all things, and
I therefore entreat you, O beloved and holy sisters, to stay your weeping
and your tears. Spare your energies, spare your eyesight which you are
wearing out by excess of grief. “Moderation in all things” has been said
wisely and has been said well, and God Himself commands that it should be
so.’ The nuns make reply in the following words: ‘What you put before us
is certainly true. We know full well that God forbids excess, but our grief
seems not excessive, for it falls so far short of what her merit claims. We
can never put into words the wealth of goodness which we have lost in her.
She was as a sister to us, as a mother, as a teacher, this our abbess under
whose guidance we lived. We who were her handmaids and so far beneath
her shared her life as her equals; for one will guided us, our wishes were the
same, our pursuits alike. Shall we not grieve and weep and lament from our
hearts for her who made our joy and was our glory, and in whom we have
lost our happiness? There can be no excess of tears, of weeping and of grief,
for in them only we find solace now that we shall never more behold her
sweet face.’ Agius replies: ‘I doubt not that your grief is well founded, or
that your tears rightly flow. But weeping will not undo you altogether, for

the body has powers of endurance; you must bear this great anguish, for it
has come to you through the will of God. Believe me, you are not alone in
this grief, I too am oppressed by it, I too am suffering, and I cannot
sufficiently express to you how much I also have lost in her. You know full
well how great was her love for me, and how she cherished me while she
lived. You know how anxious she was to see me when she fell ill, with what
gladness she received me, and how she spoke to me on her deathbed. The
words she spoke at the last were truly elevating, and ever and anon she
uttered my name.’ Agius tries to comfort himself with dwelling on
Hathumod’s gentleness and sweetness, and urges the nuns as they loved
their abbess in the flesh now to continue loving her in the spirit. This alone,
he says, will help the work to grow and increase which she began and
loved. ‘To dwell on grief,’ he says, ‘brings weeping and weakness; to dwell
on love cheers and brings strength. The spirit of your abbess is still among
you, it was that which you most loved in her, and it is that which you have
not lost.’
There is a curiously modern ring in much that the monk urges. His poem
sets forth how the nuns at last took heart, and requested Agius to visit them
again and help them with his advice, which he promised to do.
On her deathbed Hathumod in talking to Agius compared her monastery to
a plant of delicate growth and deplored that no royal charter sanctioning its
privileges had as yet been obtained[472]. This charter and further privileges
were secured to the settlement during the abbacy of Gerberg I (874-897),
sister and successor of Hathumod, a woman of determined character and
full of enthusiasm for the settlement. She was betrothed at one time to a
certain Bernhard, against whose will she came to live at Gandersheim, and
refused to leave it. He had been summoned to war, and departed declaring
that she should not remain in the convent after his return. But opportunely
for her wishes he was killed and she remained at Gandersheim. She ruled as
abbess more than twenty years and advanced the interests of the settlement
in many ways. The stone church which had been begun during Hathumod’s
rule was completed during that of Gerberg and was consecrated in 881, on
All Saints’ Day. The bishop of Hildesheim officiated at the ceremony of
consecration, many visitors came to assist, and the assembled nuns for the
first time took part in the singing of divine service.

The abbess Gerberg was succeeded by her sister Christine, who ruled from
897 to 919. Köpke, one of the chief modern historians of this period,
considers that these three sisters, Hathumod, Gerberg and Christine,
abbesses of Gandersheim, were among the most zealous advocates of
culture and civilizing influences in Saxony during the 9th century[473]. The
settlement became a centre of interest to the whole ducal family. After the
death of Liudolf his widow Oda, who is said to have attained the age of one
hundred and seven years, dwelt there altogether. She outlived her son, Duke
Otto, who died in 912 and was buried at Gandersheim, and it is said that she
lived to hear of the birth of her great-grandson Otto (913), who was
destined to become king and emperor.
After the death of the abbess Christine the settlement of Gandersheim drifts
for a time into the background; Quedlinburg, founded by Heinrich I at the
instigation of his wife Mathilde, takes its place in ducal and royal favour.
Scant notices are preserved of the abbesses who ruled during the first half
of the 10th century. We hear of the abbess Hrotsvith († 927) that she was
distinguished like her namesake of later date for literary acquirements[474],
and that she wrote treatises on logic and rhetoric which are lost. And ‘what
is more,’ says an early writer[475], ‘she forced the devil to return a bond
signed with blood by which a youth had pledged away his soul.’
Her writings may have perished in the fire which ravaged the settlement
without permanently interfering with its prosperity during the rule of
Gerberg II (959-1001). Contemporary writers concur in praise of the
learning, the powers of management and the educational influence of this
princess, who was the daughter of Heinrich, duke of the Bavarians († 955).
Heinrich for many years was the enemy and rival of his brother Otto I; and
the final reconciliation and lasting friendship between these princes formed
an important episode in the history of the time. We do not know what
prompted Gerberg to embrace convent life; perhaps she became a nun at the
wish of her father. She was appointed abbess at the age of nineteen when
her father was dead and her mother Judith was ruling in Bavaria in the
interests of her young son. Gerberg ruled at Gandersheim for forty-two
years; she has a special claim on our interest because she was the friend,
teacher, and patron of the nun Hrotsvith.

§ 3. The Nun Hrotsvith and her Writings[476].

The nun Hrotsvith occupies a unique position in monastic life and among
unmarried women generally. ‘This fruitful poetic talent,’ says the writer
Ebert, ‘which lacks not the inspiration and the courage of genius to enter
upon new ground, evinces how the Saxon element was chosen to guide the
German nation in the domain of art.’ The literary work of Hrotsvith can be
grouped under three headings. To the first belongs the writing of metrical
legends which were intended for the perusal and the edification of inmates
of convents; to the second, the composition of seven dramas written in the
style of Terence; and to the third, the writing of contemporary history in
metrical form. Each kind of work has merits of its own and deserves
attention. But while Hrotsvith as a legend writer ranks with other writers of
the age, and as a historical writer is classed by the modern historian
Giesebrecht with Widukind and Ruotger, as a writer of Latin drama she
stands entirely alone. We have no other dramatic compositions except hers
between the comedies of classic times and the miracle plays, which at first
consisted only of a few scenes with bald dialogue.
It can be gathered from Hrotsvith’s writings that she was born about the
year 932; and the fact of her entering a nunnery is proof of her gentle birth.
It is uncertain when she came to Gandersheim, probably at a very early age.
She owed her education there partly to Rikkardis, to whom she refers in her
writings, but chiefly to the abbess Gerberg, who, she says, was somewhat
younger than herself.
Judging from Hrotsvith’s writings she worked diligently and soon attracted
attention beyond the limits of her convent. The following facts in regard to
time are of importance. The first of her two sets of legends was put together
and dedicated to Gerberg as abbess, that is after the year 959; she wrote and
submitted part if not the whole of her history of Otto the Great to Wilhelm,
archbishop of Mainz, before the year 968, in which the prelate died. How
the composition of her dramas is related in point of time to that of the
legends and the historical poems cannot be definitely decided; probably the
dramas were written in the middle period of Hrotsvith’s life. For the legends
bear marks of being the outcome of early effort, while the historical poems,
especially the one which tells of the early history of Gandersheim, were
written in the full consciousness of power. We do not know the date of

Hrotsvith’s death; an early chronicle says that she wrote a history of the
three Emperors Otto, in which case she must have lived till 1002, that being
the year of Otto III’s death. But the annalist to whom we owe this remark
may have been misinformed; only a part of the history of the first emperor
is extant, and we cannot argue from any references in her other works that
she wrote a continuation of it[477]. The nun and her writings soon ceased to
attract attention, and there are few references to her in any writings for
nearly five hundred years. At the beginning of the 16th century, however,
the humanist Conrad Celtes came across a copy of her dramas, which
seemed to him so remarkable that he had them printed. And since then they
have repeatedly been published, and excellent translations have been made
of them into German and French[478].
In the introduction to her plays Hrotsvith appeals to the judgment of
powerful patrons, but she does not give their names; in her history, as
mentioned above, she asks for criticism from Wilhelm, archbishop of
Mainz, who was the illegitimate son of Otto I, and a leading prelate of the
time. This exhausts what we know of friends outside the convent; probably
the abbess Gerberg was the chief critic throughout and had more influence
on her than any other. It was she who introduced Hrotsvith to the works,
classical and other, which she had herself studied under learned men, and
she was always ready to encourage her able pupil and supply her with
materials to work upon.
The library at Gandersheim, to which Hrotsvith had access, contained the
writings of a number of classical and theological authors. Among the
classical writers with whom the nun is thought to have been directly
acquainted were Virgil, Lucan, Horace, Ovid, Terence, and perhaps Plautus;
among the Christian writers Prudentius, Sedulius, Fortunatus, Marianus
Capella, and Boethius[479]. Ebert, who has analysed the sources from which
Hrotsvith drew the subject matter of her legends and dramas, considers that
at this time Greek authors were read at Gandersheim in Latin translations
only. Another writer, arguing from the fact that the nun frequently uses
words of Greek origin, considers that she had some knowledge of
Greek[480]. This latter opinion has little in its favour. However we know that
Greek teachers were summoned from Constantinople to instruct Hedwig,
Gerberg’s sister, who was to have married the Emperor Constantine. The
match fell through, but the Saxon royal family aimed steadily at securing an

alliance with the court of Constantinople, and ultimately attained this object
by the marriage of Otto II to the Greek princess Theofanu (971).
After Hrotsvith had mastered the contents of the library at Gandersheim she
was moved to try her hand at writing Latin verse; she cast into metrical
form the account of the birth and life of the Virgin Mary contained in a
gospel which in some manuscripts is ascribed to St James, the brother of
Christ[481]. The story is well told, and the incidents described follow each
other naturally; the poem exceeds nine hundred lines in length. She
supplements the original text with some amplifications of a descriptive
nature and a panegyric on Christ, with which she closes the poem.
The diffidence Hrotsvith felt at first in writing is described in the
introduction which she prefixed to the complete collection of her legendary
poems and addressed to a wider public[482].
‘Unknown to others and secretly, so to speak, I worked by myself’; she
says, ‘sometimes I composed, sometimes I destroyed what I had written to
the best of my abilities and yet badly; I dealt with material taken from
writings with which I became acquainted within the precincts of our
monastery of Gandersheim through the help of our learned and kindly
teacher Rikkardis, afterwards through that of others who taught in her place,
and finally through that of the high-born abbess Gerberg, under whom I am
living at present, who is younger than I am in years but more advanced in
learning as befits one of royal lineage, and who has introduced me to
various authors whom she has herself studied with the help of learned men.
Writing verse appears a difficult and arduous task especially for one of my
sex, but trusting to the help of divine grace more than to my own powers, I
have fitted the stories of this book to dactylic measures as best I could, for
fear that the abilities that have been implanted in me should be dulled and
wasted by neglect; for I prefer that these abilities should in some way ring
the divine praises in support of devotion; the result may not be in proportion
to the trouble taken and yet it may be to the profit of some.’
The nun is filled with the consciousness that her undertaking is no mean
one. ‘Full well I know,’ she says, addressing the Virgin, ‘that the task of
proclaiming thy merits exceeds my feeble strength, for the whole world
could not celebrate worthily that which is a theme of praise among the

angels.’ The poem on the life of the Virgin is written in leonine hexameters,
that is with rhymes at the middle and the end of the line. This form of verse
was sometimes used at that period, and Hrotsvith especially in her later
historical poems handled it with considerable skill.
Hrotsvith afterwards added to the account of the Virgin a poem of a hundred
and fifty lines on the Ascension of Christ[483]. In this, as she tells us, she
adapted an account written by John the Bishop, which had been translated
from Greek into Latin.
This poem also is simple and dignified, and gives proof of considerable
power of expression on the part of the nun. Her vocabulary however has
certain peculiarities, for she is fond of diminutives, a tendency which in the
eyes of her editor is peculiarly feminine[484].
The poem on the Ascension closes with the following characteristic lines:
‘Whoever reads this let him exclaim in a forbearing spirit: Holy King, spare
and have mercy on the suppliant Hrotsvith and suffer that she who here has
been celebrating thy glorious deeds may persevere further in holy song on
things divine!’
The next subject which engrossed the nun’s attention was the history of
Gongolf[485], a huntsman and warrior of Burgundy, who lived in the time of
King Pipin. He was credited with performing wonders such as calling up a
fountain; he was a pious Christian and was put to a cruel death by his
faithless wife and her lover. This poem is over five hundred lines in length
and contains some fine descriptive passages. The version of the story
Hrotsvith made use of being lost, we cannot tell how far she drew upon her
own powers of narrative[486].
But the next legend she wrote left full scope for originality of treatment. It
describes the experiences and martyrdom of Pelagius, a youth who had
been recently (925) put to death by the Saracens at Cordova in Spain; the
event, as she herself informs us, had been described to Hrotsvith by an eye-
witness. The story opens with an enthusiastic description of the beauties of
Cordova. Pelagius, the son of a king of Galicia, persuaded his father to
leave him as hostage with the Caliph. But the Caliph, enamoured by the
youth’s physical beauty, persecuted him with attentions, and meeting with
contempt ordered him to be cast down from the city walls. The young man

remained unharmed, and was then beheaded and his head and body thrown
into the river. Fishermen picked them up and carried them to a monastery,
where their identity was ascertained by casting the head in the fire, which
left it untouched. The head and body were then given solemn burial.
The next legend has repeatedly been commented on as the earliest account
in verse of a pact with the devil and as a precursor of the many versions of
the legend of Faust[488]. The ‘Lapse and conversion of Theophilus[489]’ may
have had special attractions for Hrotsvith since the incident of the devil
forced to return his bond was connected, as mentioned above, with her
namesake Hrotsvith, abbess of Gandersheim. The story of Theophilus
which Hrotsvith expanded and put into verse had recently been translated
from Greek into Latin, as Ebert has shown. The story runs as follows.
Theophilus, nephew of a bishop of Cilesia (of uncertain date), had been
educated in the seven liberal arts, but he held himself unworthy of
succeeding his uncle, and considered the office of ‘vice-domus’ more suited
to his powers. His popularity however drew on him the hatred of the newly
appointed bishop, who robbed him of his post. Thirsting for revenge the
young man went for advice to a certain Hebrew, ‘who by magic art turned
away many of the faithful,’ and who led him at night through the town to a
dark place ‘full of phantasms that stood in white clothes holding torches in
their hands’ (line 99). Their demon king was at first indignant that a
Christian claimed his assistance and jeered at the Christians’ ways, but at
last he promised to help Theophilus on condition that he should sign an
agreement by which he pledged himself to be one of the ghastly crew to all
eternity. The young man agreed to the condition, and on his return home
was favourably received by the bishop and reinstated in his dignity. But his
peace of mind had deserted him; again and again he was seized by qualms
of conscience and affrighted by agonising visions of eternal suffering which
he forcibly describes in a monologue. At last he sought to escape from his
contract by praying to the Virgin Queen of heaven in her temple, and for
forty days consecutively prayed to her to intercede in his favour with God.
The Virgin at last appeared to him, told him that he was free and handed
him the fatal document. On a festal day he confessed his wrong-doing
before all the people and burnt the parchment in their presence. In the very
act of doing so he appeared as a changed man before their eyes and was
instantly overtaken by death.

To this legend Hrotsvith attached a little prayer of eight lines which is a
grace for use at meals. This prayer is in no way connected with the legend,
and its presence here indicates that the legends were originally intended to
be read aloud during meals in the refectory, and the reading to be closed
with a prayer.
Having written so far Hrotsvith collected her legendary poems together
with the poem on the Virgin and dedicated them in the form of a little book
to her teacher, the abbess Gerberg. Evidently the stories attracted attention
beyond the limits of the convent, and Hrotsvith was encouraged to continue
in the path she had chosen. Accordingly she wrote a second set of legends,
in composing which she was mindful of a wider public and that not
exclusively of her own sex. For in the opening lines of the first of these
legends which treats of the conversion of Proterius by Basilius, bishop of
Caesarea, she begs that those who peruse this story ‘will not on account of
her sex despise the woman who draws these strains from a fragile reed[490].’
The story of this conversion, like that of Theophilus, treats of a pact with
the evil one, but with a difference. For in the one story the man signs away
his soul to regain his position, in the other he subscribes the fatal bond for
the purpose of securing the hand of the bishop’s daughter. The bishop
however intercedes with God in his behalf and regains his liberty for him.
The poem is neither so complete nor so striking as that of Theophilus.
Two more legends are grouped with it. One of them describes the Passion of
Dionysius[491], who suffered martyrdom at Paris, and who at an early date
was held identical with Dionysius the Areopagite. The hand of this saint had
been given as a relic to King Heinrich the Fowler, and had been deposited
by him at Quedlinburg—an incident which made the saint’s name familiar
in Saxon lands.
The passion of Dionysius is described according to a prose account written
by Hilduin ( † 814), but Hrotsvith abbreviated and altered it[492]. She
describes how Dionysius witnessed an eclipse of the sun at Memphis at the
time when Christ was put to death, how he returned to Athens and there
waited to hear something of the new god. The apostle Paul arrived and
preached, and Dionysius followed him to Rome. From Rome he was
despatched into Gaul to preach the new faith, and while there he was first

cast into the flames which did not burn him, and then thrown before wild
beasts which refused to touch him. He was finally beheaded during the
persecutions under Diocletian. In this poem there is an especially fine
passage in which we hear how Dionysius after being beheaded rose to life
and took up his head, which he carried away down the hill to the spot where
he wished to be buried,—a story similar to that told of many saints.
The last legend which Hrotsvith wrote treats of the Passion of St Agnes, a
virgin saint of Rome, whose fortitude in tribulation and stedfast adherence
to Christianity and to the vow she had taken made her story especially
suitable for a convent of nuns[493]. The story has often been put into writing
from the 4th century downwards; Hrotsvith took her account from that
ascribed to Ambrosius († 397), which she followed closely. She prefaces it
with an address to maidens vowed to God, who are exhorted to remain
steadfast in their purpose. Like most of these legendary tales it is between
four and five hundred lines in length.
Throughout her legends Hrotsvith, as she herself says in a few remarks
which stand at the conclusion of the legends, was bent on keeping close to
the original accounts from which she worked. ‘I have taken the material for
this book, like that for the one preceding it, from ancient books compiled by
authentic authors (certis nominibus), the story of Pelagius alone is
excepted.... If mistakes have crept into my accounts, it is not because I have
intentionally erred but because I have unwittingly copied mistakes made by
others[494].’
Ebert, commenting on the spirit of the legends generally, remarks on the
masterly way in which the nun has dealt with her material, on her skill in
supplying gaps left by earlier writers, on her deft handling of rhyme and
rhythm, on the right feeling which guides her throughout her work, and on
the completeness of each of her legends as a whole[495].
The lines in which the second set of legends are dedicated to Gerberg bear
witness to the pleasure Hrotsvith derived from her work. ‘To thee, lady
Gerberg,’ she says, ‘I dedicate these stories, adding new to earlier ones, as a
sinner who deserves benevolent indulgence. Rejoicing I sing to the
accompaniment with dactylic measures; do not despise them because they
are bad, but praise in your gentle heart the workings of God[496].’

Having so far worked along accepted lines and achieved success therein,
the nun of Gandersheim was moved to strike out a new path. Conscious of
her powers and conscious of a need of her time, filled with admiration for
the dramatic powers of classical writers while disapproving of their
tendencies, she set to work to compose a series of plays on the model of
Terence, in which she dramatised incidents and experiences calculated to
have an elevating influence on her fellow-nuns.
How she came to write plays at all and what determined her in the choice of
her subject, she has described in passages which are worth quoting in full.
They show that she was not wanting either in spirit or in determination, and
that her conviction that the classical form of drama was without equal
strengthened her in her resolve to make use of that form as the vehicle for
stories of an altogether different tenor. The interest of the plays of Terence
invariably turns on the seduction of women and exposure of the frailty of
the sex; the nun of Gandersheim determined to set forth woman’s stedfast
adherence to a vow once taken and her firm resistance to temptation.
Whatever may be thought of these compositions, the merit of originality
can hardly be denied to them. They were intended for perusal only, but
there is nothing in the dialogue or mechanism that makes a dramatic
representation of them impossible.
‘There are many Christians,’ says the nun[497], ‘from whom we cannot
claim to be excepted, who because of the charm of finished diction prefer
heathen literature with its hollowness to our religious books; there are
others who hold by the scripture and despise what is heathen, and yet
eagerly peruse the poetic creations of Terence; while delighting in his flow
of language, they are all polluted by the godless contents of his works.
Therefore I “the well known mouthpiece of Gandersheim” have not
hesitated in taking this poet’s style as a model, and while others honour him
by perusing his dramas, I have attempted, in the very way in which he treats
of unchaste love among evil women, to celebrate according to my ability
the praiseworthy chasteness of godlike maidens.
‘In doing so, I have often hesitated with a blush on my cheeks through
modesty, because the nature of the work obliged me to concentrate my
attention on and apply my mind to the wicked passion of illicit love and to
the tempting talk of the amorous, against which we at other times close our

ears. But if I had hesitated on account of my blushes I could not have
carried out my purpose, or have set forth the praise of innocence to the
fulness of my ability. For in proportion as the blandishments of lovers are
enticing, so much greater is the glory of our helper in heaven, so much
more glorious the triumph of those who prevail, especially where woman’s
weakness triumphs and man’s shameless strength is made to succumb.
Certainly some will allege that my language is much inferior, much poorer,
and very unlike that of him whom I try to imitate. It is so, I agree with
them. And yet I refuse to be reproached on this account as though I had
meant to class myself with those who in their knowledge are so far above
my insufficiency. I am not even so boastful as to class myself with the least
of their pupils; all I am bent on is, however insufficiently, to turn the power
of mind given to me to the use of Him who gave it. I am not so far
enamoured of myself that I should cease from fear of criticism to proclaim
the power of Christ which works in the saints in whatever way He grants it.
If anyone is pleased with my work I shall rejoice, but if on account of my
unpolished language it pleases no one, what I have done yet remains a
satisfaction to myself, for while in other writings I have worked, however
insufficiently, only in heroic strophe (heroico strophio), here I have
combined this with dramatic form, while avoiding the dangerous
allurements of the heathen.’
Those passages in which Hrotsvith speaks of her modest hesitation are
especially worthy of notice and will not fail to appeal to those women now-
a-days, who, hoping to gain a clearer insight into the difficulties with which
their sex has to contend, feel it needful to face facts from which their
sensibilities naturally shrink. They will appreciate the conflicting feelings
with which the nun of Gandersheim, well-nigh a thousand years ago,
entered upon her task, and admire the spirit in which she met her difficulties
and the courage with which she carried out her purpose, in spite of her
consciousness of shortcomings and derogatory criticism.
As she points out, the keynote of her dramas one and all is to insist on the
beauties of a steadfast adherence to chastity as opposed to the frenzy and
the vagaries of passion. In doing so she is giving expression to the ideas of
contemporary Christian teaching, which saw in passion, not the inborn
force that can be applied to good or evil purpose, not the storage of strength
which works for social advantage or disadvantage, but simply a tendency in

human nature which manifests itself in lack of self-restraint, and the
disturbing element which interferes with the attainment of calmness and
candour.
As Hudson, one of the few English writers who has treated of this nun and
her writings[498], remarks: ‘It is on the literary side alone that Hrotsvitha
belongs to the classic school. The spirit and essence of her work belong
entirely to the middle ages; for beneath the rigid garb of a dead language
beats the warm heart of a new era. Everything in her plays that is not formal
but essential, everything that is original and individual, belongs wholly to
the christianised Germany of the 10th century. Everywhere we can trace the
influence of the atmosphere in which she lived; every thought and every
motive is coloured by the spiritual conditions of her time. The keynote of all
her works is the conflict of Christianity with paganism; and it is worthy of
remark that in Hrotsvitha’s hands Christianity is throughout represented by
the purity and gentleness of woman while paganism is embodied in what
she describes as ‘the vigour of men (virile robur).’
For the nun does not disparage marriage, far from it; nor does she inculcate
a doctrine of general celibacy. It is not a question with her of giving up a
lesser joy for a greater, but simply of the way to remain true to the higher
standard, which in accordance with the teaching of her age she identified
with a life of chastity. Her position may appear untenable; confusion of
thought is a reproach which a later age readily casts on an earlier. But
underneath what may seem unreasonable there is the aspiration for self-
control. It is this aspiration which gives a wide and an abiding interest to
her plays. For she is not hampered by narrowness of thought or by pettiness
of spirit. Her horizon is limited, we grant; but she fills it entirely and she
fills it well.
Passing from these generalities to the plays themselves, we find ourselves
in a variety of surroundings and in contact with a wide range of
personalities. The transition period from heathendom to Christianity
supplies in most cases the mental and moral conflicts round which centres
the interest of these plays.
The plays are six in number, and the one that stands first is divided into two
separate parts. Their character varies considerably. There is the heroic, the

romantic, the comic and the unrelieved tragic element, and the two plays
that stand last contain long disquisitions on scholastic learning. A short
analysis of their contents will give the reader an idea of the manner in
which Hrotsvith makes her conceptions and her purpose evident.
‘Gallicanus,’ the play that stands first[499], is in some ways the most striking
of all. A complex theme is ably dealt with and the incidents follow each
other rapidly; the scene lies alternately in Rome and on the battle-field. The
Emperor Constantine is bent on opposing the incursions of the Scythians,
and his general Gallicanus claims the hand of the emperor’s daughter
Constantia as a reward for undertaking so dangerous an expedition.
Constantia is a convert to Christianity, Gallicanus is a heathen. In an
interview with her father the girl declares she will sooner die than be united
to a heathen, but with a mixture of shrewdness and confidence in her faith
she agrees to marry him on his return on condition that the Christians John
and Paul shall accompany him on his expedition, and that his daughters
shall meanwhile be given into her keeping. The manner in which she
receives the girls is at once proud and dignified. ‘Welcome my sisters,
Attica and Artemia,’ she exclaims; ‘stand, do not kneel, rather greet me with
a kiss of affection.’ There is no development of character in the course of
the play, for Hrotsvith is chiefly bent on depicting states of mind under
given conditions. The characters in themselves are forcibly drawn: witness
the emperor’s affection for his daughter, the general’s strength and
determination, Constantia’s dignified bearing and the gentleness of the
Christian teachers. The sequel of events bears out Constantia’s
anticipations. The daughters of Gallicanus are easily swayed in favour of
Christianity and their father is converted. For Gallicanus is hard pressed by
the Scythians on the battle-field and despairs of success, when the Christian
teachers urge him to call upon their God for help. He does so, overcomes
the Scythians and takes their leader Bradan prisoner. In recognition of his
victory he is rewarded by a triumphal entry into Rome. But he is now a
convert to Christianity; he describes to the emperor how Christ Himself and
the heavenly host fought on his side, and he approaches Constantia and his
daughters and thus addresses them: ‘I greet you, holy maidens; abide in the
fear of God and keep inviolate your virgin crown that the eternal King may
receive you in His embrace.’ Constantia replies: ‘We serve Him the more
readily if thou dost not oppose us.’ Gallicanus: ‘I would not discourage,

prevent or thwart your wishes, I respect them, so far that I would not now
constrain thee, beloved Constantia, whom I have secured at the risk of my
life.’ But he admits that his resolve costs him much, and he decides to seek
solace in solitude for his grief at having lost so great a prize.
The sequel to this play is short, and describes the martyrdom of the
Christian teachers, John and Paul, who had accompanied Gallicanus on his
expedition. Gallicanus is no more, the Emperor Constantius is dead, and
Julian the Apostate reigns in his stead and cruelly persecutes the Christians.
No woman appears in this part of the play. We first witness the martyrdom
of the Christians who are put to death by Terentian, one of the emperor’s
generals. Terentian’s son is then seized by a terrible illness, and his unhappy
father goes to the grave of the martyrs, where he becomes a convert to
Christianity and prays for their intercession with God in behalf of his son.
His prayer finds fulfilment and the boy is restored to health. Hrotsvith took
this story from the Acts and the Passion of the saints John and Paul, but, as
Ebert has shown, the development is entirely her own[500]. Though working
on the model of Terence the nun is quite indifferent to unities of time and
place, and sacrifices everything to the exigencies of the plot, so that the
transition from scene to scene is often sudden and abrupt.
The next play is ‘Dulcetius, or the sufferings of the maidens Agape, Chionia
and Irene[501].’ It dramatises a story which was familiar in western Europe
from an early date; Ealdhelm mentions it in his poem on Virginity. Its
popularity is no doubt due to the juxtaposition of entirely divergent
elements, the pathos of martyrdom being in close company with scenes of
broad humour.
During the persecutions under Diocletian three youthful sisters are brought
before the emperor, who thus addresses the eldest:
‘Diocletian. The noble stock from which you spring and your extreme
beauty demand that you should be connected with our court through
marriage with high officials. This we incline to vouchsafe you if you agree
to disown Christ and offer sacrifice to our most ancient gods.
Agape. O spare yourself this trouble, do not think of giving us in marriage.
Nought can compel us to disown the name of Christ, or to debase our purity
of heart.

Diocletian. What is the object of this madness?
Agape. What sign of madness do you see in us?
Diocletian. A great and obvious one.
Agape. In what?
Diocletian. In this, that casting from yourselves the observance of the
ancient faith, you follow this new foolish Christian teaching.
Agape. Blasphemer, fear the power of God Almighty, threatening danger....
Diocletian. To whom?
Agape. To you and to the realm you govern.
Diocletian. The girl is crazy, let her be removed.’
He then interviews the other two, but with similar results; threats are of no
avail and the girls are handed over to the general Dulcetius to be summarily
dealt with. Dulcetius, however, is so powerfully impressed by their beauty,
that he orders them to be placed in a chamber beyond the kitchen, hoping to
take advantage of their helplessness and induce them to gratify his passion.
He repairs at night to the chamber in spite of the warning of his soldiers,
when a spell falls on him, he misses the room, and his reason so utterly
forsakes him that he proceeds to fondle and caress the pots and pans which
he seizes upon in his excitement. The girls are watching him from the next
room through a chink in the wall and make merry over his madness.
‘Agape. What is he about?
Hirena. Why, the fool is out of his mind, he fancies he has got hold of us.
Agape. What is he doing?
Hirena. Now he presses the kettle to his heart, now he clasps the pots and
pans and presses his lips to them.
Chionia. How ludicrous!

Hirena. His face, his hands, his clothes are all black and sooty; the soot
which clings to him makes him look like an Ethiopian.
Agape. Very fitting that he should be so in body, since the devil has
possession of his mind.
Hirena. Look, he is going. Let us wait to see what the soldiers who are
waiting outside will do when they see him.’
The soldiers fail to recognise their leader, they take to their heels. Dulcetius
repairs to the palace, where the gatekeeper scoffs at his appearance and
refuses him admittance, in spite of his insisting on his identity and speaking
of himself as dressed in splendid attire. At last his wife who has heard of his
madness comes forth to meet him. The spell is broken and he discovers that
he has been the laughing-stock of the maidens. He then orders them to be
exposed naked in the market-place as a punishment. But a divine power
causes their garments to cling to them, while Dulcetius falls so fast asleep
that it is impossible to rouse him. The Emperor Diocletian therefore entrusts
the accomplishment of the maidens’ martyrdom to Sisinnius. Two of the
girls are cast into the flames, but their souls pass away to heaven while their
bodies remain without apparent hurt. The third sister is threatened with
shameful treatment, but before it is carried out she is miraculously borne
away to a hill-top. At first the soldiers attempt in vain to approach her, but
at last they succeed in killing her with arrows. The youthful, girlish traits
which appear in both the mirth and the sorrow of the three sisters are well
developed, and form a vivid contrast to the unrelieved brutality of Dulcetius
and Sisinnius.
Quite a different range of ideas is brought before the reader in the next play,
‘Calimachus,’ which is Hrotsvith’s nearest approach to a love tragedy[502].
She took its subject from an apocryphal account of the apostles, but as
Ebert remarks she handles her material with considerable freedom[503]. The
opening scene shows her power of immediately presenting a situation. The
scene is laid in the house of Andronicus, a wealthy Ephesian. The youth
Calimachus and his friends enter.
‘Calimachus. A few words with you, friends!
Friends. We will converse with thee as long as thou pleasest.

Calimachus. If you do not mind, we will converse apart.
Friends. Thou biddest, we comply.
Calimachus. Let us repair to a secluded spot, that we may not be interrupted
in our converse.’
They go and Calimachus explains how a heavy misfortune has befallen
him; they urge him to unbosom himself. He confesses he is in love with a
most beauteous, most adorable being, it is a woman, the wife of
Andronicus; what shall he do to secure her favour? His friends declare his
passion hopeless, Drusiana is a Christian and has moreover taken the vow
of chastity; ‘I ask for help, you give me despair,’ Calimachus exclaims. In
the next scene he confronts Drusiana and declares his passion. Drusiana
repudiates his advances but she is intimidated by his threats, and gives
utterance to her fears in a monologue in which she declares that she would
rather die than yield to him. Sudden death cuts her down; and the apostle
John is called in by her husband and undertakes to give her Christian burial.
But the youth Calimachus is not cured of his passion. At the instigation of
his companion, Fortunatus, he goes with him by night to the vault where
she lies and would embrace the corpse, but a serpent of terrible aspect
surprises the two young men and kills them. In the following scene the
apostle is leading Andronicus to the vault: when they enter they come upon
the serpent lying by the side of the youths. The apostle then explains to
Andronicus what has happened and gives proof of his great power by
awakening Calimachus from the dead. The young man confesses his evil
intentions and explains how he came there at the suggestion of his
companion. The apostle then recalls Drusiana to life, and she begs that
Fortunatus also may be restored, but the apostle refuses on account of the
man’s wickedness. Drusiana herself then intercedes in his behalf and prays
to God for his restoration. Her wish is fulfilled, Fortunatus comes back to
life, but he declares he would sooner have died than have seen Drusiana
happy and his friend a convert to Christianity. The wounds which the
serpent had inflicted at once begin to swell, and he expires before their
eyes, and the apostle explains that his jealousy has sent him to hell. A great
deal of action is crowded into this play and we are abruptly carried on from
scene to scene. It closes with some pious reflections on the part of the
apostle.

There is considerable diversity of opinion among modern writers on the
merits of the dramas we have discussed hitherto, but all concur in praise of
the play called ‘Abraham,’ which dramatises the oft repeated story of a
woman who yields to temptation and is reclaimed from her wicked ways.
The interest in this play never flags and the scenes are worked out with a
breadth of conception which gives the impression of assured strength[504].
Hrotsvith took the subject of this drama from an account, written in the 6th
century by Ephrem, of the life of his friend, the hermit Abraham. The story
was written originally in Greek and is preserved in that language; the
translation into Latin used by Hrotsvith is lost[505]. The plot of the drama is
as follows:
The devout hermit Abraham consults his friend the hermit Ephrem as to
what he shall do with his niece, Maria, who is left to his care, and together
they decide that she shall come and live in a cell near her uncle. Abraham
throughout speaks directly and to the point, while Ephrem’s talk is full of
mystic allusions. He talks to the maiden of the beauties of the religious
vocation and assures her that her name, Maria, signifies ‘star of the sea,’
and that she is therefore intended for great things. The maiden is surprised
at his words and naïvely remarks that it would be a great thing ‘to equal the
lustre of the stars.’ She comes to dwell in a cell close to that of the two
hermits, but after a time she is enticed away and disappears from the sight
of her uncle, who is deeply grieved at her loss. For several years he hears
nothing from her; at last a friend comes and tells him that the girl has been
seen in the city, and is there living in a house of ill fame. The old man at
once decides to go forth to seek his niece and to reclaim her. He dons shoes,
a traveller’s dress and a large hat, and takes with him money, since that only
can give him access to her. The scene then shifts from the sylvan solitude to
the house where Maria is living. Abraham arrives and is received by the
tavern-keeper, whom he asks for a night’s lodging, offering him his
‘solidus’ and requesting to see the woman the fame of whose beauty has
spread. This scene and the one that follows bring the situation before the
reader admirably. Abraham is served with a meal and Maria enters, at sight
of whose levity he scarce represses his tears. She entertains him, and he
feigns a gaiety corresponding to hers, the tavern-keeper being present. Of a
sudden she is overcome by the thought of the past, but he keeps up his
assumed character. At last supper is over, and they retire into the adjoining

chamber. The moment for disclosure has come, and Hrotsvith is seen at her
best.
‘Abraham. Close fast the door, that no one enter and disturb us.
Maria. Be not concerned, I have done so; no one will find it easy to get in.
Abraham. The time has come; away, deceitful clothes, that I may be
recognised. Oh, my adopted daughter, joy of my soul, Maria, dost thou not
know the aged man who was to thee a parent, who vowed thee to the
heavenly king?
Maria. Oh woe is me! It is my father, my teacher Abraham, who speaks.
Abraham. What then has come to thee, my daughter?
Maria. Ah, wretchedness!
Abraham. Who was it that deceived thee? Who allured thee?
Maria. He who was the undoing of our first parents.
Abraham. Where is the noble life thou once wast wont to lead?
Maria. Lost, lost for ever!
Abraham. Where is thy virgin modesty, thy wondrous self-restraint?
Maria. Gone from me altogether.
Abraham. If thou dost not return to thine own self, what reward in the life to
come canst thou expect for fasting, prayer, and watching, since fallen as
from heaven’s heights thou now art sunk in hellish depths?
Maria. Woe, woe is me!
Abraham. Why didst thou thus deceive me? why turn from me? Why didst
thou not make known to me thy wretchedness, that I and my beloved
Ephrem might work for thy repentance?
Maria. Once fallen into sinfulness, I dared not face you who are holy.
Abraham. But is there any one entirely faultless, except the Virgin’s Son?

Maria. Nay, no one.
Abraham. ’Tis human to be frail, but to persist in wickedness is of the devil.
Not he who falls of a sudden is condemned, but he who, having fallen, does
not strive forthwith to rise again.
Maria. Woe unto me, wretch that I am!
(She sinks to the ground.)
Abraham. Why dost thou sink? why lie upon the ground? Arise and ponder
what I am saying.
Maria. Fear casts me down, I cannot bear the weight of thy paternal
admonition.
Abraham. Dwell only on my love and thrust aside thy fear.
Maria. I cannot.
Abraham. Think, was it not for thee I left my little hermitage, and so far set
aside the rule by which I lived that I, an aged hermit, became a visitor to
wantonness, and keeping silence as to my intent spoke words in jest that I
might not be recognised? Why then with head bent low gaze on the ground?
Why hesitate to give answer to my questions?
Maria. The accusations of my conscience bear me down, I dare not raise
my eyes to heaven, nor enter into converse with thee.
Abraham. Be not afraid, my daughter, do not despair; rise from this depth of
misery and fix thy mind on trust in God.
Maria. My sins in their excess have brought me to depths of desperation.
Abraham. I know thy sins are great, but greater than aught else is Heaven’s
power of grace. Put by thy grief and do not hesitate to spend the time
vouchsafed to thee in living in repentance; divine grace overflows, and
overflowing washes out the horrors of wrong-doing.
Maria. If I could entertain the hope of grace I should not be found wanting
in repentance.

Abraham. Think of the weariness that I have suffered for thee; leave this
unprofitable despair, nought in this world is so misleading. He who despairs
of God’s willingness to have compassion, ’tis he who sins hopelessly; for as
a spark struck from a stone can never set aflame the ocean, so the bitterness
of sin must ever fail to rouse sweet and divine compassion.
Maria. I know the power of grace divine, and yet the thought of how I have
failed fills me with dread; I never can sufficiently atone.
Abraham. Thy feeble trust in Him is a reproach to me! But come, return
with me to where we lived, and there resume the life which thou didst
leave.
Maria. I would not disobey thee; if it be thy bidding, readily I yield.
Abraham. Now I see my daughter such as I would have her; I hope still to
hold thee dearest among all.
Maria. I own a little wealth in gold and clothing; I abide by thy decision
what shall be done with it.
Abraham. What came to thee in evil, with evil cast it from thee.
Maria. I think it might be given to the poor; or offered at the holy altars.
Abraham. I doubt if wealth acquired in wickedness is acceptable to God.
Maria. Besides this there is nothing of which the thought need trouble us.
Abraham. The dawn is breaking, the daylight shining, let us now depart.
Maria. Lead thou the way, dear father, a good shepherd to the sheep that
went astray. As thou leadest, so I follow, guided by thy footsteps!
Abraham. Nay, I shall walk, my horse shall bear thee, for this stony road
might cut thy tender feet.
Maria. Oh, that I ever left thee! Can I ever thank thee enough that, not by
intimidation and fear, but by gentle persuasion alone, unworthy though I
am, thou hast led me to repentance?

Abraham. Nought do I ask of thee but this, be now devoted to God for the
remainder of thy life.
Maria. Readily I promise, earnestly will I persevere, and though the power
fail me, my will shall never fail.
Abraham. It is agreed then—as ardently as before to vanity, be thou now
devoted to the will divine.
Maria. Thy merits be my surety that the divine will shall be accomplished.
Abraham. Now let us hasten our departure.
Maria. Yea, hasten; for I loathe to tarry here.’
They return to the hermitage together, and Maria resumes her former mode
of life in hope of redeeming the past. The drama closes with a scene
between Abraham and Ephrem, who discourse on the beneficent change
which familiar surroundings are already working in Maria; the angels sing
rejoicing at the conversion of the sinner, says Abraham; and Ephrem adds
that the repentance of the iniquitous causes greater joy in heaven than the
perseverance of the just.
This play, currently known as ‘Abraham,’ but which would be more fitly
named ‘Maria,’ marks the climax of Hrotsvith’s power. In form it preserves
the simple directness of the classic model, in conception it embodies the
moral ideals of Christian teaching.
The last two plays of Hrotsvith are chiefly of historical interest for the
learned disquisitions they contain; their dramatic value is comparatively
small, and many of the scenes are in a way repetitions of scenes in other
plays. In ‘Paphnutius’ we again have the story of a penitent woman, the
hetaira Thais, who lived in the 6th century, but whose conversion has little
of the interest which attaches to that of Maria. In ‘Sapientia’ we have a
succession of scenes of martyrdom which recall those of the play
‘Dulcetius.’ The Lady Sapientia and her three daughters Fides, Spes and
Caritas are put to death by order of the Emperor Hadrian, but the horrors of
the situation are relieved by no minor incidents. The learned disquisitions in
these plays are however extremely curious because they show on the one

hand what store Hrotsvith set on learning, and on the other they give an idea
of the method of study pursued at Gandersheim in those days.
The play ‘Paphnutius[506]’ opens with passages which Hrotsvith probably
adapted from two works of Boëthius: ‘On the teaching of Aristotle,’ and
‘On the study of music[507].’ The philosopher Paphnutius dilates to his
assembled pupils on man as the microcosm (minor mundus) who reflects in
himself the world, which is the macrocosm (major mundus), and then
explains that there is antagonism in the world, which is striving for concord
in accordance with the rules of harmony. He explains how a similar
antagonism exists in man and is represented by body and soul, which can
also be brought into agreement. These thoughts, he says, have been
suggested to him by the life of the hetaira Thais whose body and soul are
ever at variance. Paphnutius further enlarges on the higher course of study
known as the ‘quadrivium’ which includes arithmetic, geometry, music and
astronomy[508], and discourses about music and the influence of harmony.
His pupils, however, object to being taken along such devious paths and
having such knotty questions propounded to them, and at last they quote
Scripture in defence of their ignorance, saying that God has chosen the
foolish that he may confound the wise. This rouses indignation in
Paphnutius, who declares that ‘he who advocates falsehood, be he a fool or
a learned man, deserves to be confounded by God.’ And he further utters
words which are not devoid of a deeper significance: ‘It is not the
knowledge that man can grasp which is offensive to God, but the conceit of
the learned.’
The learned disquisitions of the play ‘Sapientia’ are presented in a form still
less attractive[509]. The Lady Sapientia, who speaks of herself as one of
noble stock, and as the descendant of Greek princes, dilates on the relative
value of numbers[510] to the emperor Hadrian till he tires of it and
commands her to be gone.
It is sometimes alleged that these two later plays were the productions of
earlier years, and that the nun added them to her other more finished
productions in order to equal the number of the plays of Terence. However
this may be, they were probably the two plays which she submitted to the
criticism of three outside but now unknown patrons with a letter in which
she states that she has taken threads and pieces from the garment of

philosophy to add to the worth of her work. We render this letter in full,
since it throws an interesting light on what Hrotsvith thought of her own
powers. If it brought advice which led to the composition of the other plays,
we must commend the judgment of those who counselled her. But it is just
possible that the approval which was accorded to the legends was denied to
the plays,—the absence of the name of the abbess Gerberg in connection
with them is remarkable,—and that, after writing a number of dramas which
found no appreciation, Hrotsvith was moved to compose ‘Paphnutius’ and
‘Sapientia,’ introducing learned disquisitions in hope of giving them a more
solid value.
The letter runs as follows:
‘To you, learned men[511], who abide in wisdom and are unenvious of
another’s progress and well-disposed towards him as befits the truly
learned, I, Hrotsvith, though I am unlearned and lacking in thoroughness,
address myself; I wish you health and unbroken prosperity. I cannot
sufficiently admire your great condescension, and sufficiently thank you for
the help of your liberal generosity and for your kindness towards me; you,
who have been trained in the study of philosophy and have perfected
yourselves in the pursuit of knowledge, have held my writings, those of a
lowly woman, worthy of admiration, and have praised with brotherly
affection the power which works in me. You have declared that there is in
me a certain knowledge of that learning (scientiam artium) the essence of
which is beyond my woman’s understanding. Till now I have dared to show
my rude productions only to a few of my nearest friends, and my work
along these lines would probably have ceased, for there were few who
understood my intentions, and fewer who could point out to me in what I
had failed, and who urged me to persevere. But now that threefold approval
comes to me from you I take confidence and feel strengthened by your
encouragement to devote my energies to work where God permits, and to
submit this work to the criticism of those who are learned. And yet I am
divided between joy and fear, which contend within me; for in my heart I
rejoice, praising God through whose grace alone I have become what I am;
and yet I am fearful of appearing greater than I am, being perplexed by two
things both of which are wrong, namely the neglect of talents vouchsafed to
one by God, and the pretence to talents one has not. I cannot deny that
through the help of the Creator I have acquired some amount of knowledge,

for I am a creature capable of learning, but I acknowledge there is
ignorance in me. For I am divinely gifted with abilities, but were it not for
the untiring zeal of my teachers, they would have remained undeveloped
and unused through my want of energy (pigritia). Lest this gift of God in
me should be wasted through neglect I have sought to pluck threads and
pieces from the garments of philosophy, and have introduced them into my
afore-mentioned work (praefato opusculo), so that my own moderate
knowledge may be enhanced by the addition of their greater worth, and
God, who grants power, may be praised by so much the more as a woman’s
power is held to be inferior. This is the object of my writing, this alone the
purpose of my exertions, for I do not conceal from myself that I am
ignorant, and had it depended on myself alone, I should know nothing. But
as you urge me on by the possibility of your approval and by your request
proffered to me in writing, I now submit to your criticism this little work
which I wrote with the intention of sending it to you but which I have
hitherto kept concealed on account of its demerits, hoping you will study it
with the intention of improving it as though it were your own work. And
when you have altered it to a correct standard, send it back to me so that I
may profit by your teaching in those points in which I may have largely
failed.’
The productions of Hrotsvith in the domain of contemporary history consist
of a poem on the emperor Otto the Great, and a history of the monastery of
Gandersheim. The history of Otto is thought to have been over sixteen
hundred lines in length[512], but only a fragment of about nine hundred lines
is preserved. The nun received the materials for this history chiefly if not
exclusively by word of mouth from the abbess Gerberg, whose family
feeling it seems to reflect in various particulars, for among other distinctive
traits, the quarrel between the father of Gerberg and his brother the emperor
is passed over; it is rather a history of the members of the ruling family than
a description of contemporary events[513]. This detracts from its historic,
though hardly from its poetical value, which is considerable. Some of the
episodes, such as that of the imprisonment and flight of Queen Adelheid in
Italy, are admirably told. Adelheid was the widow of the king of the
Langobards, and was afterwards married to Otto I. Her flight and
imprisonment in Italy previous to her second marriage are unrecorded
except by Hrotsvith.

The last work of the nun was probably that on the foundation and early
history of Gandersheim, in which, as in the history of Otto, Hrotsvith
enlarges more on persons than on events, and gives a detailed account of
Duke Liudolf, his wife and daughters. Many details referred to above, in
our chapter on the early history of the settlement, are taken from this
account, which is in many ways the most finished and beautiful of
Hrotsvith’s compositions.
The interest in Hrotsvith’s writings lay dormant for several centuries. It was
revived at the close of the 15th century when the learned abbot Tritheim
wrote of her, and the poet Celtes caused her dramas to appear in print.
During the last thirty years many writers have treated of her, an appreciative
and attractive account of her was written by Köpke[514], and different views
have been expressed as to her merits as a poet, a dramatist and a
historian[515]. Whatever place be ultimately assigned to Hrotsvith, the
reader of her writings cannot fail to be attracted by her modesty, her
perseverance, her loftiness of thought, and the directness of purpose which
underlies all her work. She stands nearly alone in Saxony, and by her very
solitariness increases our respect for her powers, and for the system of
education which made the development of these powers possible.

CHAPTER VI.

THE MONASTIC REVIVAL OF THE MIDDLE
AGES.

‘Pulchritudo certe mentis et nutrimentum
virtutum est cordis munditia, cui visio Dei
spiritualiter promittitur; ad quam munditiam
nullus nisi per magnam cordis custodiam
perducitur.’ Anselm to the Abbess of St
Mary’s.

§ 1. The new Monastic Orders.

In this chapter I intend to give a description of the different monastic orders
which were founded between the 10th and the 12th centuries, and to enter at
some length into the reasons for their progress. A mass of heterogeneous
information must be passed in rapid review with occasional digressions on
outside matters, for it is only possible to understand the rapid progress of
monasticism by recalling the relation in which it stood to other social
developments.
As we cross the borderland which divides the centuries before the year
1000 from the period that follows, we become aware of great changes
which about this time take definite shape throughout all social institutions.
In the various strata of society occupations were becoming more clearly
differentiated than they had ever been before, while those who were
devoted to peaceful pursuits, whether in lay or religious circles, were now
combined together for mutual support and encouragement.
In connection with religion we find the representatives of the Church and of
monasticism becoming more and more conscious of differences that were
growing up between them. Monasticism from its very beginning practically
lay outside the established order of the Church, but this had not prevented
bishop and abbot from working side by side and mutually supporting each
other; nay, it even happened sometimes that one person combined in
himself the two offices of abbot and bishop. But as early Christian times
passed into the Middle Ages, prelates ceased to agree with headquarters at
Rome in accepting monasticism as the means of securing a foothold for
religion. The Church was now well established throughout western Europe,

and her ministers were by no means prepared to side unconditionally with
the Pope when he fell out with temporal rulers. The monastic orders on the
contrary generally did side with him, and by locally furthering his interests,
they became strongholds of his power.
The 12th century has been called the golden age of monasticism, because it
witnessed the increased prosperity of existing monasteries and the
foundation of a number of new monastic and religious orders. A wave of
enthusiasm for the life of the religious settlement, and for the manifold
occupations which this life now embraced, passed over western Europe,
emanating chiefly from France, the country which took the lead in culture
and in civilizing influences.
The 12th century, as it was the golden age of monasticism, was also the
golden age of chivalry; the cloister and the court were the representative
centres of civilized life. Under the influence of the system of mutual
responsibility called feudalism, the knight by doughty deed and unwavering
allegiance to his lord, his lady and his cause, gave a new meaning to
service; while the monk, devoted to less hazardous pursuits, gave a hitherto
unknown sanctification to toil. The knight, the lady, the court-chaplain and
the court-poet cultivated the bearings and the formalities of polite
intercourse which formed the background of the age of romance, while in
the cloister the monk and the nun gave a new meaning to religious devotion
and enthusiasm by turning their activity into channels which first made
possible the approximation of class to class.
This period knew little of townships as centres of intellectual activity, and
their social importance remained far below that of cloister and court. The
townsmen, whose possession of town land constituted them burghers, had
won for themselves recognition as an independent body by buying
immunities and privileges from bishop and king. But the struggle between
them and the newer gilds, into which those who were below them in rank
and wealth, formed themselves, was only beginning; the success of these
newer gilds in securing a share in the government marks the rise of the
township.
The diversity of occupation in the different kinds of gilds was anticipated
by a similar diversity of occupation in the different monastic orders. The

great characteristic of the monastic revival of the Middle Ages lay in the
manifold and distinct spheres of activity which life offered inside the
religious community. The studious, the educational, the philanthropic, and
the agricultural element, all to some extent made part of the old monastic
system. But through the foundation of a number of different orders which
from the outset had separate aims, tastes which were widely dissimilar, and
temperaments that were markedly diverse, met with encouragement in the
religious settlement. The scholar, the artist, the recluse, the farmer, each
found a career open to him; while men and women were prompted to
undertake duties within and without the religious settlement which make
their activity comparable to that of the relieving officer, the poor-law
guardian and the district nurse of a later age.
To gain a clear idea of the purposes which the new monastic and religious
orders set before them, it will be best to treat of them severally in the
chronological order of their foundation. Two lines of development are to be
observed. There are the strictly monastic orders which sprang from the
order of St Benedict, which they developed and amplified. These included
the orders of Clugni, Citeaux, Chartreuse, and Grandmont, of which the last
two took no account of women. On the other side stand the religious orders
which are the outcome of distinctions drawn between different kinds of
canons, when the settlements of regular canons take a distinctly monastic
colouring. Among these the Premonstrant and the Austin orders are the
most important, the members of which, from the clothes they wore, were in
England called respectively White and Black Canons.
The importance of canonical orders, so far as women are concerned, lies in
the fact that the 12th century witnessed the foundation of a number of
religious settlements for both sexes, in which the men lived as canons and
the women as nuns. The Premonstrant began as a combined order; the
orders of Fontevraud and of St Gilbert of Sempringham were of a similar
kind. Bearing these distinctions in mind, we begin our enquiry with an
analysis of the Cluniac and the Cistercian orders, which have their root
directly in the monasticism of St Benedict.
As remarks in the previous chapters of this work will have shown,
monasteries had sprung up during early Christian times independently of
each other following a diversity of rules promulgated by various teachers,

which had gradually been given up in favour of the rule of St Benedict. At
the beginning of the 9th century this rule was largely prevalent in
monasteries abroad, owing to councils held under the auspices of Karl the
Great ( † 814)[516], and in England it gained ground through the efforts of
Aethelwold, abbot of Abingdon and bishop of Winchester ( † 984). Some
obscurity hangs about the subject, for a certain number of houses abroad,
and among them some of the oldest and wealthiest, clung to the prerogative
of independence and refused to accept St Benedict’s rule, while in England,
where this rule was certainly accepted in the 11th century, great diversity of
routine either remained or else developed inside the different houses. This is
evident from the account which Matthew Paris ( † 1259), a monk of St
Albans, gives of the visitation of houses in the year 1232[517].
The order of Clugni[518] owes its origin to the desire of obviating a
difficulty. As time wore on the rule of St Benedict had betrayed a weakness
in failing to maintain any connection between separate monasteries. As
there was no reciprocal responsibility between Benedictine settlements, a
lay nobleman had frequently been appointed abbot through princely
interference, and had installed himself in the monastery with his family, his
servants and his retinue, to the detriment of the monastic property, and to
the relaxation of discipline among the monks. The evil was most
conspicuous abroad in the eastern districts of France and the western
districts of Germany, and in 910 the order of Clugni was founded in
Burgundy as a means of remedying it.
At first the order of Clugni was the object of great enthusiasm, and it was
raised to eminence by a series of remarkable and energetic men. Powerful
patrons were secured to it, master-minds found protection in its shelter. The
peculiarities of its organisation consisted in the two rules that the abbot of
the Cluniac house should be chosen during the lifetime of his predecessor,
and that the abbots of different houses should meet periodically at a synod
at which the abbot of Clugni should preside. The Pope’s sanction having
been obtained, the order remained throughout in close contact with Rome.
In Germany especially this connection was prominent, and became an
important political factor in the 11th century when the Cluniac houses
directly supported the claim of Rome in the struggle between Pope and
Emperor.

The order of Clugni took slight cognizance of women, and the nunneries of
the order were few and comparatively unimportant. A reason for this may
be found in the nature of the order’s origin, for the settlements of nuns had
not been interfered with like the settlements of monks during the 9th and
10th centuries by the appointment of lay superiors, and were untouched by
the consequent evils. If this be so the falling away from discipline, which
called for correction in many houses of men, may justly be referred to a
change thrust on them from without, not born from within.
In England the order of Clugni was not officially introduced till after the
Norman Conquest, and then under circumstances which set a peculiar stamp
on it. The seed which each order scattered broadcast over the different
countries was the same, but the nature of the soil in which it took root, and
the climate under which it developed, modified the direction of its growth.
During the 9th and 10th centuries England had been the scene of great
social and political changes. The powerful kings who arose in Wessex and
eventually claimed supremacy over all the provinces were unable to assert
their authority to the extent of making the eastern provinces sink all
provincial differences and jealousies, and join in organised resistance to the
Danes. From the 9th century onwards, the entire seaboard of England, from
Northumberland to the mouth of the Severn, had been exposed to the
depredations of this people. Having once gained a foothold on the eastern
coasts they quickly contracted alliances and adapted themselves to English
customs, thus making their ultimate success secure.
The heathen invaders were naturally indifferent to the teachings of the
Christian Church, and to the privileges of monasteries, and the scant annals
of the period written before Knut of Denmark became king of England in
1016, give accounts of the destruction of many settlements. Some were
attacked and laid waste, and others were deserted by their inmates. To
realise the collapse of Christian institutions about this time, one must read
the address which Wulfstan, archbishop of York (1002-1023), wrote to
rouse the English to consciousness of the indignities to which their religion
was exposed[519]. But the collapse was only temporary, bishoprics and
abbacies stood firm enough to command the attention of the invader, and as
the heathenism of the Dane yielded without a blow to the teaching of
Christ, the settlements that were in the hands of abbot and monk rose anew.

However, it was only after the establishment of William of Normandy in
England (1066) that the conditions of life became settled, and that the tide
turned in favour of monasticism; that is to say in favour of the monastic life
of men, but not of women. Various reasons have been alleged for this
difference: that the better position of the wife under Danish rule made
women loth to remain in the convent, or that the spread of the system of
feudal tenure excluded women from holding property which they could
devote to the advantage of their sex. So much is certain, that during the
reign of William many Benedictine houses for monks were founded or
restored, but we do not hear of one for nuns.
In the wake of the Norman baron, the Norman prelate had entered this
country, bringing with him an interest in the order of Clugni. It was William
of Warren, son-in-law of the Conqueror, and earl of Surrey, who first
brought over Cluniac monks, whom he settled at Lewes in Sussex. He did
so at the suggestion of Lanfranc, a Norman monk of Italian origin, who had
become archbishop of Canterbury (1070-1089). Before the close of
William’s reign Cluniac monks had met with patrons to build them four
monasteries on English soil besides the house at Lewes.
The Norman barons continued to make liberal endowments to the order, but
its popularity remained comparatively small, partly owing to the distinctly
foreign character which it continued to bear[520]. Thus we find that after the
accession of Henry II (1154), whose reign was marked by a rise in English
national feeling, only one Cluniac house was added to those already in
existence.
From the order of Clugni we pass to that of Citeaux[521], the foundation of
which comes next in point of time, but which owed its existence to a
different cause, and was characterised by widely dissimilar developments.
The story of the foundation of the order has been fully told by men who
were under the influence of the movement; the facts only of the foundation
need be mentioned here. It originated in France when Robert, abbot of
Molêmes, roused by the remonstrances of one Stephen Harding, an English
monk living in his convent, left his home with a band of followers in 1098,
in search of a retreat where they might carry out the rule of St Benedict in a
worthier spirit. They found this retreat at Citeaux. From Citeaux and its

daughter-house Clairvaux, founded in 1113 by the energetic Bernard, those
influences went forth which made the Cistercian order representative of the
most strenuous devotion to toil and the most exalted religious aspirations.
While the order of Clugni in the 10th century secured the outward
conditions favourable to a life of routine, devoting this routine chiefly to
literary and artistic pursuits, the reform of Citeaux exerted a much wider
influence. It at once gained extensive local and national sympathy, by
cultivating land and by favouring every kind of outdoor pursuit.
The agricultural activity of the Cistercian has called forth much enthusiastic
comment. Janauschek, a modern student of the order, describes in eloquent
terms how they turned woods into fields, how they constructed water-
conduits and water-mills, how they cultivated gardens, orchards, and
vineyards, how successful they were in rearing cattle, in breeding horses, in
keeping bees, in regulating fishing, and how they made glass and procured
the precious metals[522].
A comparison of their temper and that of the Cluniacs offers many
interesting points; a comparison which is facilitated by a dialogue written
by a Cistercian monk between 1154 and 1174 to exalt the merits of his order
compared with those of the order of Clugni[523]. For while the Cluniac
delighted in luxurious surroundings, the Cistercian affected a simple mode
of life which added to the wealth placed at his disposal by his untiring
industry. While the Cluniac delighted in costly church decorations, in
sumptuous vestments and in richly illuminated books of service, the
Cistercian declared such pomp prejudicial to devotion, and sought to
elevate the soul not so much by copying and ornamenting old books as by
writing new ones; not so much by decorating a time-honoured edifice as by
rearing a new and beautiful building.
Perhaps the nature of these occupations yields a reason why the Cistercian
order at first found no place for women. At an early date Cardinal de Vitry
(Jacobus di Vitriaco, † 1144), writing about the Cistercian movement, says
that ‘the weaker sex at the rise of the order could not aspire to conform to
such severe rules, nor to rise to such a pitch of excellence[524].’ In the
dialogue referred to above, the Cluniac expresses wonder that women
should enter the Cistercian order at all.

The first Cistercian nunneries were founded at Tart in Langres and at
Montreuil-les-Dames near Laon[525]. Hermann of Laon (c. 1150) describes
‘how the religious of Montreuil sewed and span, and went into the woods
where they grubbed up briars and thorns,’—an occupation which goes far to
equalise their activity with that of the monks[526]. In Switzerland and
Germany there is said to have been a pronounced difference in the character
of Cistercian nunneries, due to the various conditions of their foundation.
Some were aristocratic in tone, while others consisted of women of the
middle class, who banded together and placed themselves under the bishop
of the diocese, following of their own accord the rules accepted by the
monks of Citeaux[527].
In Spain a curious development of the order of Citeaux is recorded, fraught
with peculiarities which recall earlier developments.
In 1187 Alfonso VIII, king of Leon and Castille, founded an abbacy for
nuns of the order of Citeaux at Las Huelgas near Burgos, the abbess of
which was declared head over twelve other nunneries. In the following year
the king sent the bishop of Siguenza to the general chapter at Citeaux to
obtain leave for the abbesses of his kingdom to hold a general chapter
among themselves. This was granted. At the first chapter at Burgos the
bishops of Burgos, Siguenza and Placenza were assembled together with six
abbots and seven abbesses, each abbess being entitled to bring with her six
servants and five horses. The power of the abbess of Las Huelgas continued
to increase. In the year 1210 she had taken upon herself the discharge of
sacerdotal functions. In the year 1260 she refused to receive the abbot of
Citeaux, whereupon she was excommunicated. After the year 1507 the
abbess was no longer appointed for life, but for a term of three years only.
Chapters continued to be held under her auspices at Burgos till the Council
of Trent in 1545, which forbade women to leave their enclosures[528].
The date of the first arrival of monks of Citeaux in England was 1128, when
William Giffard, bishop of Winchester († 1129), in early days a partisan of
Anselm against Henry I, founded Waverley in Surrey for them[529]. Shortly
afterwards Walter Espec, the most powerful baron in northern England,
granted them land at Rievaulx in Yorkshire[530]. About the same time the
foundation at Fountains repeated the story of Citeaux. A small band of
monks, burning with the desire to simplify conventual life, left York and

retired into the wooded solitude of Fountains, whence they sent to Bernard
at Clairvaux asking for his advice[531].
These events fall within the reign of Henry I (1100-1135), the peacefulness
of which greatly furthered the development of monastic life. The pursuits to
which the Cistercians were devoted in England were similar to those they
carried on abroad. Here also their agricultural successes were great, for they
ditched, ridged and drained, wet land, they marled stiff soils and clayed
poor ones. The land granted to them, especially in the northern counties,
was none of the best, but they succeeded in turning wildernesses into
fruitful land, and by so doing won great admiration. Similarly the churches
built in this country under the auspices of these monks bear witness to great
purity of taste and ardent imagination. The churches built by them were all
dedicated to the Virgin Mary, who was the patron saint of the order.
All these early settlements of the Cistercian order were for monks, not for
nuns, for Cistercian nunneries in England were founded comparatively late
and remained poor and unimportant. If we look upon the Cistercians as
farmers, builders and writers, this fact is partly explained. But there are
other reasons which suggest why the number of Cistercian nunneries was at
first small, and why the Cistercian synod shrank from accepting control
over them.
Convents of women had hitherto been recruited by the daughters of the
landed gentry, and their tone was aristocratic; but a desire for the religious
life had now penetrated into the lower strata of society. Orders of combined
canons and nuns were founded which paid special attention to women of
the lower classes, but they encountered certain difficulties in dealing with
them. It is just possible on the one hand that the combined orders forestalled
the Cistercians in the inducements they held out; on the other, that the
experience of the combined orders made the Cistercians cautious about
admitting women.
Consideration of these facts brings us back to a whole group of phenomena
to which reference was made in a previous chapter, viz. the disorderly
tendencies which had become apparent in connection with loose women,
the greater opprobrium cast on these women as time went on, and the
increasing difficulties they had to contend with. The founders of the orders

of combined canons and nuns tried to save women from drifting into and
swelling a class, the existence of which was felt to be injurious to social
life, by preaching against a dissolute life and by receiving all persons into
their settlements regardless of their antecedents.
The earliest and in many ways the most interesting of these combined
orders is that founded by Robert († 1117) of Arbrissel, a village in Brittany.
Robert had begun life in the Church, but he left the clerical calling on
account of his great desire to minister to the needs of the lower classes, and
as a wandering preacher he gained considerable renown[532]. Men and
women alike were roused by his words to reform their course of life, and
they followed him about till he determined to secure for them a permanent
abode. This he found in an outlying district at Fontevraud. He organised his
followers into bands and apportioned to each its task. The men were divided
into clerics, who performed religious service, and lay brothers, who did
outdoor work. ‘They were to use gentle talk, not to swear, and all to be
joined in brotherly affection.’ It appears that the women were all professed
nuns[533]; unceasing toil was to be their portion, for they were to hold the
industrious and hardworking Martha as their model and take small account
of such virtues as belonged to Mary.
From every side workers flocked to the settlements, for Robert opened his
arms to all. We are told that ‘men of all conditions came, women arrived,
such as were poor as well as those of gentle birth; widows and virgins, aged
men and youths, women of loose life as well as those who held aloof from
men.’ At first there was a difficulty in providing for the numerous settlers,
but their labours brought profit, and gifts in kind poured in from outsiders, a
proof that in the eyes of the world the settlements supplied an obvious need.
Branch establishments were founded and prospered, so that in one cloister
there were as many as three hundred women, in another one hundred, and in
another sixty. Robert returned to his missionary work, after having
appointed Hersende of Champagne as lady superior of the whole vast
settlement. Her appointment was decisive for the system of government,—
Fontevraud remained under the rule of an abbess. It was for her successor,
Petronille, that the life of the founder Robert was written soon after his
death, by Baldric, bishop of Dol († 1130). Baldric repeatedly insists on the
fact that no one was refused admission to these settlements. ‘The poor were
received, the feeble were not refused, nor women of evil life, nor sinners,

neither lepers nor the helpless.’ We are told that Robert attracted nearly
three thousand men and women to the settlements; the nuns (ancillae
Christi) in particular wept at his death.
The fact that Robert had the welfare of women especially at heart is further
borne out by a separate account of the last years of his life, written by one
Andrea, probably his pupil. Andrea tells how Robert at the approach of
death assembled the canons or clerics of the settlement around him and
addressed them saying: ‘Know that whatever I have wrought in this world I
have wrought as a help to nuns.’ Fontevraud occupied a high standing, and
we shall find that nuns were brought thence into England when the nunnery
of Amesbury was reformed in the reign of King John. The order of
Fontevraud made great progress in the course of the 12th century, and next
to it in point of time stands the foundation of the order of Prémontré[534].
Fontevraud lies in the north-west of France, Prémontré in the east, and the
efforts of Robert have here a counterpart in those of Norbert († 1134), who
worked on similar lines. Norbert also left the clerical calling to work as a
missionary in north-western Germany, especially in Westphalia, and he also
succeeded in rousing his listeners to a consciousness of their ungodly mode
of life. With a view to reform he sought to give a changed tone to canonical
life and founded a religious settlement in the forest of Coucy, which he
afterwards called Prémontré from the belief that the Virgin had pointed it
out to him. His efforts were likewise crowned with success, for many
settlements were forthwith founded on the plan of that of Prémontré.
Hermann of Laon, the contemporary of Norbert, praises him warmly and
remarks that women of all classes flocked to his settlements, and were
admitted into the communities by adopting the cloistered life. The statement
is made, but may be exaggerated, that ten thousand women joined the order
during Norbert’s lifetime.
Norbert differed greatly in character from Robert; his personal ambition
was greater, and his restless temperament eventually drew him into political
life. He died in 1134, and in 1137 the chapter at Prémontré decided that the
women should be expelled from all the settlements that had inmates of both
sexes, and that no nuns should henceforth be admitted to settlements ruled
by men. The reasons which led to this resolution are not recorded. The nuns
thus rendered homeless are said to have banded together and dwelt in
settlements which were afterwards numbered among Cistercian houses, thus

causing a sudden increase of nunneries of this order. However a certain
number of Premonstrant houses, occupied solely by nuns and ruled by a
lady superior, existed previous to the decree of 1137. These remained
unmolested, and others were added to them in course of time[535]. It can be
gathered from a bull of 1344 that there were at that time over thirteen
hundred settlements of Premonstrant or White Canons in existence in
Europe, besides the outlying settlements of lay brothers, and about four
hundred settlements of nuns[536]. The settlements of White Canons in
England amounted to about thirty-five and were founded after the sexes had
been separated. There were also two settlements of Premonstrant nuns in
England[537].
A third order of canons and nuns, which in various ways is akin to the
orders of Fontevraud and Prémontré previously founded abroad, was
founded at the beginning of the 12th century in England by Gilbert of
Sempringham. But as the material for study of this order is copious, and as
it marks a distinct development in the history of women’s convent life in
England, it will be discussed in detail later[538].
The canons who belonged to the combined orders were regular canons, that
is they owned no individual property, and further differed from secular
canons in holding themselves exempt from performing spiritual functions
for the laity. Erasmus at a later date remarked that ‘their life is half way
between that of monks and that of those who are called secular canons[539].’
As to the distinction between the two kinds, it appears that bands of canons
who may fitly be termed regular had existed from an early period; but the
subject is shrouded in some obscurity[540]. In the 11th century mention of
them becomes frequent, especially in France, and at the beginning of the
12th century their position was defined by a decree published by Pope
Innocent II at the Lateran Council (1139)[541]. By this decree all those
canons who did not perform spiritual functions for the laity were designated
as regular and were called upon to live according to the rule of life laid
down by St Augustine in his Epistle, number 109. The terms Austin canon
and regular canon were henceforth applied indiscriminately, but many
independent settlements of unrecognised canons of an earlier date have
since been included under this term.

A few words are here needed in explanation of the term canoness or Austin
canoness, which is used in diverse ways, but is generally applied to women
of some substance, who entered a religious community and lived under a
rule, but who were under no perpetual vow, that is, they observed obedience
and celibacy as long as they remained in the house but were at liberty to
return to the world. These stipulations do not imply that a woman on
entering a convent renounced all rights of property, an assumption on the
strength of which the Church historian Rohrbacher interprets as applying to
canonesses the entire chapter of directions promulgated at Aachen in 816, in
the interest of women living the religious life[542]. But the terms used in
these provisions are the ordinary ones applied to abbess and nun[543].
Helyot, who has a wider outlook, and who speaking of the canon explains
how this term was at first applied to all living in canone, points out that
uncertainty hangs about many early settlements of women abroad, the
members of which were in the true sense professed[544]. It seems probable
that they at first observed the rule of St Benedict, and afterwards departed
from it, as has been pointed out above in connection with Saxon convents.
The tenor of the provisions made at Aachen shows that the monastic life of
women in a number of early settlements abroad rested on a peculiar basis,
and points to the fact that the inmates of settlements founded at an early
date were in some measure justified when they declared later that they had
always held certain liberties, and insisted on a distinction between
themselves and other nuns. The position of the inmates of some of these
houses continued different from that of the members of other nunneries till
the time of the Reformation. In England, however, this difference does not
seem to have existed. The inmates of the few Austin nunneries, of which
there were fifteen at the dissolution, though they are frequently spoken of as
canonesses in the charters that are secured by them, appear to have lived a
life in no way different from that of other nuns, while they were in
residence, but it may be they absented themselves more frequently.
When once their position was defined the spread of the Austin Canons was
rapid; they combined the learning of the Benedictine with the devotional
zeal of the Cistercian, and ingratiated themselves with high and low. Of all
the settlements of the Austin Canons abroad that of St Victor in Paris stands
first in importance. It became a retreat for some of the master minds of the
age[545], and its influence on English thinkers was especially great[546].

Austin Canons came from France into England as early as 1108. At first
their activity here was chiefly philanthropic, they founded hospitals and
served in them; but they soon embraced a variety of interests. In the words
of Kate Norgate speaking with reference to England[547]: ‘The scheme of
Austin Canons was a compromise between the old-fashioned system of
canons and that of monkish confraternities; but a compromise leaning
strongly towards the monastic side, tending more and more towards it with
every fresh development, and distinguished chiefly by a certain elasticity of
organisation which gave scope to an almost unlimited variety in the
adjustment of the relations between the active and the contemplative life of
the members of the order, thus enabling it to adapt itself to the most
dissimilar temperaments and to the most diverse spheres of activity.’
Their educational system also met with such success that before the close of
the reign of Henry I two members of the fraternity had been promoted to
the episcopate and one to the primacy. In the remarks of contemporary
writers on religious settlements, it is curious to note in what a different
estimation regular canons and monks are held by those who shared the
interests of court circles. For the courtier, as we shall presently see,
sympathised with the canon but abused and ridiculed the monk.
Throughout the early Christian ages the idea had been steadily gaining
ground that the professed religious should eschew contact with the outside
world, and it was more and more urged that the moral and mental welfare of
monk and nun was furthered by their confining their activity within the
convent precincts. Greater seclusion was first enforced among women; for
in the combined orders the nuns remained inside the monastery, and were
removed from contact with the world, while the canons were but little
restricted in their movements. How soon habitual seclusion from the world
became obligatory it is of course very difficult to determine, but there is
extant a highly interesting pamphlet, written about the year 1190 by the
monk Idung of the Benedictine monastery of St Emmeran in Bavaria, which
shows that professed religious women in the district he was acquainted with
went about as freely as the monks, and did not even wear a distinctive
dress. The pamphlet[548] is the more interesting as Idung was evidently
distressed by the behaviour of the nuns, but failed to find an authority on
which to oppose their actions. He admits that the rule as drafted by St
Benedict is intended alike for men and women, and that there are no

directions to be found in it about confining nuns in particular, and in fact
the rule allowed monks and nuns to go abroad freely as long as their
superior approved. Idung then sets forth with many arguments that nuns are
the frailer vessel; and he illustrates this point by a mass of examples
adduced from classical and Biblical literature. He proves to himself the
advisability of nuns being confined, but he is at a loss where to go for the
means of confining them. And he ends his pamphlet with the advice that as
it is impossible to interfere with the liberty of nuns, it should at least be
obligatory for them when away from home to wear clothes which would
make their vocation obvious.
No doubt the view held by this monk was shared by others, and public
opinion fell in with it, and insisted on the advantages of seclusion. Many
Benedictine houses owned outlying manors which were often at a
considerable distance, and the management of which required a good deal
of moving about on the part of the monks and nuns who were told off for
the purpose. We shall see later that those who had taken the religious vow
had pleasure as their object as much as business in going about; but
complaints about the Benedictines of either sex are few compared with
those raised against the Cistercian monks. For the Cistercians in their
capacity of producers visited fairs and markets and, where occasion offered,
were ready to drive a bargain, which was especially objected to by the
ministers of the Church, who declared that the Cistercians lowered the
religious profession in general estimation. Consequently orders which
worked on opposite lines enjoyed greater favour with the priesthood; such
as the monastic order of Grandmont, which originally demanded of its
members that they should not quit their settlement and forbade their owning
any animals except bees; and the order of Chartreuse, which confined each
monk to his cell, that is, to a set of rooms with a garden adjoining[549]. But
these orders did not secure many votaries owing to their severity and
narrowness.
Thus at the close of the 12th century a number of new religious orders had
been founded which spread from one country to another by means of an
effective system of organization, raising enthusiasm for the peaceful
pursuits of convent life among all classes of society. The reason of their
success lay partly in their identifying themselves with the ideal aspirations
of the age, partly in the political unrest of the time which favoured the

development of independent institutions, but chiefly in the diversity of
occupation which the professed religious life now offered. The success
obtained by the monastic orders however did not fail to rouse apprehension
among the representatives of the established Church, and it seems well in
conclusion to turn and recall some of the remarks passed on the new orders
by contemporary writers who moved in the court of Henry II (1154-89).
It has been pointed out how the sympathies of court circles at this period in
England were with the Church as represented by the priesthood; courtier
and priest were at one in their antagonism against monks, but in sympathy
with the canons. Conspicuous among these men stands Gerald Barri (c.
1147-c. 1220), a Welshman of high abilities and at one time court chaplain
to the king. He hated all monkish orders equally, and for the delectation of
some friends whom he entertained at Oxford he compiled a collection of
monkish scandals known as ‘The Mirror of the Church[550],’ in which he
represents the Cluniac monk as married to Luxury, and the Cistercian monk
to Avarice; but, in spite of this, incidental remarks in the stories he tells give
a high opinion of the Cistercian’s industry, hospitality and unbounded
charity. Gerald mentions as a subject for ridicule that the Cistercian monk
lived not on rent, but on the produce of his labour, an unaristocratic
proceeding which was characteristic of the order. Gerald’s attitude is
reflected in that of Ralph de Glanvil († 1190), justiciar of England during
the reign of Henry II, a clever and versatile man of whom we know, through
his friend Map, that he disliked all the monkish orders. But his enthusiasm
for religious settlements was not inconsiderable, and several settlements of
the Premonstrant or White Canons were founded by him.
The student of the period is familiar with the likes and dislikes of Walter
Map († c. 1210), great among poets and writers of the age, who disliked all
monks, but especially the Cistercians[551]. His friend Gerald tells how this
hatred had originated in the encroachments made by the monks of
Newenham on the rights and property of the church he held at Westbury.
For the perseverance with which Cistercian monks appropriated all
available territory and interfered with the rights of church and chapel, made
them generally odious to the ministers of the Church; their encroachments
were an increasing grievance. John of Salisbury, afterwards bishop of
Chartres († after 1180), directly censured as pernicious the means taken by
the monks to extend their power. He tells us they procured from Rome

exemption from diocesan jurisdiction, they appropriated the right of
confession, they performed burial rites; in short they usurped the keys of the
Church[552]. By the side of these remarks it is interesting to recall the
opinion of the monkish historian, William of Malmesbury, who a generation
earlier had declared that the Cistercian monks had found the surest road to
heaven.
All these writers, though lavish in their criticisms on monks, tell us hardly
anything against nuns. The order of St Gilbert for canons and nuns alone
calls forth some remarks derogatory to the women. Nigel Wirecker, himself
a monk, giving vent to his embittered spirit against Church and monkish
institutions generally in the satire of Brunellus, launches into a fierce attack
against the tone which then prevailed in women’s settlements[553]. He does
not think it right that women whose antecedents are of the worst kind
should adopt the religious profession and that as a means of preserving
chastity they should systematically enjoin hatred of men.
A similar reference is contained in the poem in Norman French called the
‘Order of Fair Ease,’ which is a production of the 13th century, and which
caricatures the different religious orders by feigning an order that unites the
characteristic vices of all[554]. It is chiefly curious in the emphasis it lays on
the exclusiveness of monasteries generally, representing them as reserved
for the aristocracy. It contains little on nunneries and only a few remarks
which are derogatory to the combined order of Sempringham.
These remarks were obviously called forth by the fact that the combined
orders in particular admitted women from different ranks of life. For
generally nunneries and their inmates enjoyed favour with churchman and
courtier, whose contempt for the monk does not extend to the nun. In the
correspondence of Thomas Beket, John of Salisbury, Peter of Blois and
others there are letters to nuns of various houses which show that these men
had friends and relatives among the inmates of nunneries. Indeed where
members of the same family adopted the religious profession, the son
habitually entered the Church while the daughter entered a nunnery. A sister
of Thomas Beket was abbess at Barking, and various princesses of the royal
house were abbesses of nunneries, as we shall presently see. They included
Mary, daughter of Stephen (Romsey); a natural daughter of Henry II

(Barking), and Matilda, daughter of Edward I (Amesbury); Queen Eleanor
wife of Henry III also took the veil at Amesbury.

§ 2. Benedictine Convents in the Twelfth Century.

From this general review of the different orders we pass on to the state of
nunneries in England during the 12th century, and to those incidents in their
history which give some insight into their constitution.
Attention is first claimed by the old Benedictine settlements which still
continued in prosperity and independence. Of these houses only those
which were in connection with the royal house of Wessex remained at the
close of the 10th century; those of the northern and midland districts had
disappeared. Some were deserted, others had been laid waste during the
Danish invasions; it has been observed that with the return of tranquillity
under Danish rule, not one of the houses for women was restored. Secular
monks or laymen took possession of them, and when they were expelled,
the Church claimed the land, or the settlement was restored to the use of
monks. Some of the great houses founded and ruled by women in the past
were thus appropriated to men. Whitby and Ely rose in renewed splendour
under the rule of abbots; Repton, Wimbourne and numerous other nunneries
became the property of monks.
Various reasons have been given for the comparatively low ebb at which
women’s professed religious life remained for a time. Insecurity during
times of warfare, and displacement of the centres of authority, supply
obvious reasons for desertion and decay. A story is preserved showing how
interference from without led to the disbanding of a nunnery. The Danish
earl Swegen († 1052), son of Earl Godwin, took away (vi abstractam) the
abbess Eadgifu of Leominster in Herefordshire in 1048, and kept her with
him for a whole year as his wife. The archbishop of Canterbury and the
bishop of Worcester threatened him with excommunication, whereupon he
sent her home, avenging himself by seizing lands of the monastery of
Worcester. He then fled from England and was outlawed, but at a later
period he is said to have wanted the abbess back. The result is not recorded,
for Leominster as a women’s settlement ceased to exist about this time[555].

There is no need to imagine a formal dissolution of the settlement. The
voluntary or involuntary absence of the abbess in times of warfare supplies
quite a sufficient reason for the disbanding of the nuns.
About the same time a similar fate befell the monastery of Berkley-on-
Severn, in spite of the heroic behaviour of its abbess. The story is told by
Walter Map how it was attacked and plundered at the instigation of Earl
Godwin ( † 1053) and how in spite of the stand made by the abbess, a
‘strong and determined’ woman, the men who took possession of it turned it
into a ‘pantheon, a very temple of harlotry[556].’ Berkley also ceased to
exist[557].
The monasteries ruled by women, which survived the political changes due
to the Danish invasion and the Norman Conquest, had been in connection
with women of the house of Cerdic; with hardly an exception they were
situated in the province of Wessex within the comparatively small area of
Dorset, Wilts, and Hampshire. Chief among them were Shaftesbury,
Amesbury, Wilton (or Ellandune), Romsey, and St Mary Winchester (or
Nunnaminster). With these must be classed Barking in Essex, one of the
oldest settlements in the land, which had been deserted at one time but was
refounded by King Edgar, and which together with the Wessex nunneries,
carried on a line of uninterrupted traditions from the 9th century to the time
of the dissolution.
The manors owned by these settlements at the time of the Conquest lay in
different shires, often at a considerable distance from the monastery itself.
From the account of survey in the Domesday book we gather that
Shaftesbury had possessions in Sussex, Wiltshire, Dorset, and
Hampshire[558], and that Nunnaminster owned manors in Hampshire,
Berkshire, and Wiltshire[559]. Barking, the chief property of which lay in
Essex, also held manors in Surrey, Middlesex, Berkshire, and
Bedfordshire[560].
These monasteries were abbacies, as indeed were all houses for nuns
founded before the Conquest. The abbess, like the abbot, had the power of a
bishop within the limits of her own house and bore a crozier as a sign of her
rank. Moreover the abbesses of Shaftesbury, Wilton, Barking, and
Nunnaminster ‘were of such quality that they held of the king by an entire

barony,’ and by right of tenure had the privilege at a later date of being
summoned to parliament, though this lapsed on account of their sex[561].
The abbess as well as the abbot had a twofold income; she drew
spiritualities from the churches which were in her keeping, and
temporalities by means of her position as landlord and landowner. The
abbess of Shaftesbury, who went by the title of abbess of St Edward, had in
her gift several prebends, or portions of the appropriated tithes or lands for
secular priests. In the reign of Henry I she found seven knights for the
king’s service, and had writs regularly directed to her to send her quota of
soldiers into the field in proportion to her knights’ fees; she held her own
courts for pleas of debts, etc., the perquisites of which belonged to her[562].
To look through the cartularies of some of the old monasteries, is to realise
how complex were the duties which devolved on the ruler of one of these
settlements, and they corroborate the truth of the remark that the first
requirement for a good abbot was that he should have a head for business.
Outlying manors were in the hands of bailiffs who managed them, and the
house kept a clerk who looked after its affairs in the spiritual courts; for the
management and protection of the rights and privileges of the property
claimed unceasing care.
The Benedictine abbesses do not seem to have been wanting in business
and managing capacity. At the time of the dissolution the oldest nunneries
in the land with few exceptions were also the wealthiest. The wealth of
some was notorious. A saying was current in the western provinces that if
the abbot of Glastonbury were to marry the abbess of Shaftesbury, their heir
would have more land than the king of England[563]. The reason of this
wealth lies partly in the fact that property had been settled on them at a time
when land was held as a comparatively cheap commodity; but it speaks
well for the managing capacities of those in authority that the high standing
was maintained. The rulers prevented their property from being wasted or
alienated during the 12th and 13th centuries, when the vigour or decline of
an institution so largely depended on the capacity of the individual
representing it, and they continued faithful to their traditions by effecting a
compromise during the 14th and 15th centuries, when the increased powers
of the Church and the consolidation of the monarchical power threatened
destruction to institutions of the kind.

It is worthy of attention that while all nunneries founded during Anglo-
Saxon times were abbacies, those founded after the Conquest were
generally priories. Sixty-four Benedictine nunneries date their foundation
from after the Conquest, only three of which were abbacies[564]. The
Benedictine prioress was in many cases subject to an abbot; her authority
varied with the conditions of her appointment, but in all cases she was
below the abbess in rank. The explanation is to be sought in the system of
feudal tenure. Women no longer held property, nunneries were founded and
endowed by local barons or by abbots. Where power from the preceding
period devolved on the woman in authority, she retained it; but where new
appointments were made the current tendency was in favour of curtailing
her power.
Similarly all the Cistercian nunneries in England, which numbered thirty-
six at the dissolution, were without exception priories. The power of women
professing the order abroad and the influence of the Cistercian abbesses in
Spain and France have been mentioned—facts which preclude the idea of
there being anything in the intrinsic nature of the order contrary to the
holding of power by women. The form the settlement took in each country
was determined by the prevailing drift of the time, and in England during
the 11th and 12th centuries it was in favour of less independence for
women.
Various incidents in the history of nunneries illustrate the comparatively
dependent position of these settlements after the Conquest. At first Sheppey
had been an abbacy. It had been deserted during the viking period; and at
the instigation of the archbishop of Canterbury about the year 1130 nuns
were brought there from Sittingbourne and the house was restored as a
priory.
Amesbury again, one of the oldest and wealthiest abbeys in the land for
women, was dissolved and restored as a priory, dependent on the abbess of
Fontevraud. This change of constitution presents some interesting features.
The lives of the women assembled there in the 12th century were of a
highly reprehensible character; the abbess was accused of incontinence and
her evil ways were followed by the nuns. There was no way out of the
difficulty short of removing the women in a body, and to accomplish this
was evidently no easy undertaking. Several charters of the time of King

John and bearing his signature are in existence. The abbess, whose name is
not on record, retired into private life on a pension of ten marks, and the
thirty nuns of her convent were placed in other nunneries. A prioress and
twenty-four nuns were then brought over from Fontevraud and established
at Amesbury, which became for a time a cell to the foreign house[565]. This
connection with France, at a time when familiarity with French formed part
of a polite education, caused Amesbury to become the chosen retreat of
royal princesses. During the wars with France under the Edwards, when
many priories and cells were cut off from their foreign connection,
Amesbury regained its old standing as an abbacy.
Several of the Benedictine nunneries founded after the Conquest owed their
foundation to abbacies of men. Some were directly dependent cells, like
Sopwell in Hertfordshire, a nunnery founded by the abbot of St Albans,
who held the privilege of appointing its prioress. So absolute was this
power that when the nuns appointed a prioress of their own choice in 1330,
she was deposed by the abbot of St Albans, who appointed another person
in her stead[566]. Similarly the nunnery at Kilburn was a cell to Westminster,
its prioress being appointed by the abbot of Westminster[567]. But as a
general rule the priories were so constituted that the nuns might appoint a
prioress subject to the approval of the patron of their house, and she was
then consecrated to her office by the bishop.
Various incidents show how jealously each house guarded its privileges and
how needful this was, considering the changes that were apt to occur, for
the charters of each religious house were the sole guarantee of its continued
existence. From time to time they were renewed and confirmed, and if the
representative of the house was not on the alert, he might awake to find his
privileges encroached upon. In regard to the changes which were liable to
occur the following incident deserves mention. In the year 1192 the
archbishop of York formed the plan of subjecting the nunnery of St
Clement’s at York[568], a priory founded by his predecessor Thurstan, to the
newly-founded abbacy for women at Godstow. Godstow was one of the few
women’s abbacies founded after the Conquest, and owed its wealth and
influence chiefly to its connection with the family of Fair Rosamond, at one
time the mistress of Henry II, who spent the latter part of her life there. But
the nuns of St Clement’s, who had always been free, would not obey the

abbess of Godstow, and they saved themselves from the archbishop’s
interference by appealing directly to the Court of Rome.
A curious incident occurred during the reign of Henry III in connection with
Stanford, a nunnery in Northamptonshire. Stanford was a priory dependent
on the abbot of Peterborough who had founded it. It appears that the
prioress and her convent, in soliciting confirmation of their privileges from
Rome, employed a certain proctor, who, besides the desired confirmation,
procured the insertion of several additional articles into the document, one
of which was permission for the nuns to choose their own prioress, and
another a release from certain payments. When the abbot of Peterborough
became aware of these facts he threatened to complain to the Pope,
whereupon the prioress with the nuns’ approval carried all their charters and
records of privileges to the archbishop of Canterbury, alleging that the
proctor had acted against their order. They renounced all claim to privileges
secretly obtained, and besought the primate to represent their conduct
favourably to the Pope and to make peace between them and their
patrons[569].
Both these incidents occurred in connection with Benedictine nunneries.
The difficulties which occurred in Cistercian nunneries are less easy to
estimate, as they were not daughter-houses to men’s Cistercian abbacies,
but in many cases held their privileges by a bull obtained directly from the
Pope. Thus Sinningthwaite in Yorkshire[570], founded in 1160, held a bull
from Alexander III which exempted the nuns from paying tithes on the
lands they farmed, such exemption being the peculiar privilege of many
Cistercian settlements. Other bulls secured by Cistercian nunneries in
England are printed by Dugdale[571].
A few incidents are recorded in connection with some of the royal
princesses, which illustrate the attitude commonly assumed towards
professed nuns, and give us an idea of the estimation in which convents
were held. Queen Margaret of Scotland we are told desired to become a
nun; her mother and her sister Christina both took the veil, and her
daughters, the princesses Matilda and Mary, lived at Romsey for some years
with their aunt Christina. As Pope Innocent IV canonised (1250) Queen
Margaret of Scotland a few words must be devoted to her.

Her father Edward, the son of Edmund Ironside († 1016), had found refuge
at the Scottish court when he came from abroad with his wife Agatha and
their children, a son and two daughters. Of these daughters, Christina
became a nun; but Margaret was either persuaded or constrained to marry
King Malcolm in 1070, and having undertaken the duties of so august a
station as that of queen, she devoted her energies to introducing reforms
into Scotland and to raising the standard of industrial art. We possess a
beautiful description of her life, probably written by her chaplain
Turgot[572], and her zeal and high principles are further evidenced by her
letters, some of which are addressed to the primate Lanfranc.
Margaret’s two daughters, Matilda and Mary, were brought up in the
convent, but it is not known when they came to Romsey in Wessex; indeed
their connection with Wessex offers some chronological difficulties. Their
mother’s sister Christina became a professed nun at Romsey in 1086[573];
she may have lived before in a nunnery in the north of England[574], and
there advocated her niece Matilda’s acceptance of the religious profession
as a protection against the Normans. If this is not the case it is difficult to
fix the date of King Malcolm’s scorn for her proposal that Matilda should
become a nun[575]. King Malcolm was killed fighting against William Rufus
in 1093, Queen Margaret died a few days afterwards, and the princesses
Matilda and Mary, of whom the former was about thirteen, from that time
till 1100 dwelt at Romsey in the south of England. In the year 1100, after
the violent death of Rufus, Henry, the younger of his brothers, laid claim to
the English crown. A union with a princess, who on the mother’s side was
of the house of Cerdic, appeared in every way desirable. According to the
statement of William of Malmesbury († c. 1142) Henry was persuaded by
his friends, and especially by his prelates, to marry Matilda. ‘She had worn
the veil to avoid ignoble marriages,’ says William, who lived close to the
locality and was nearly a contemporary, ‘and when the king wished to
marry her, witnesses were brought to say she had worn it without
profession[576].’ This is borne out by the historian Orderic Vitalis († 1142),
whose information however is derived at second hand, for he enlarges on
the princesses’ stay with the nuns at Romsey, and on the instruction they
received in letters and good manners, but he does not say that they were
actually professed[577].

The fullest account of the event is given by Eadmer ( † 1124), who was
nearly connected with the primate Anselm, and he naturally puts the most
favourable construction on Matilda’s conduct. According to him she wished
to leave the convent and went before Anselm to plead her cause.
‘I do not deny having worn the veil,’ the princess said. ‘When I was a child
my aunt Christina, whom you know to be a determined woman, in order to
protect me against the violence of the Normans, put a piece of black cloth
on my head, and when I removed it gave me blows and bad language. So I
trembling and indignant wore the veil in her presence. But as soon as I
could get out of her sight I snatched it off and trampled it underfoot[578].’ In
a lively way she goes on to describe how her father seeing the veil on her
head became angry and tore it off, saying he had no intention other than that
she should be married. Anselm, before complying with the wish of the
princess, convened a chapter at Lambeth, but after hearing their decision, he
declared Matilda free and united her in marriage to the king.
Anselm’s behaviour is doubtless faithfully represented by Eadmer.
Curiously enough later historians, Robert of Gloucester, Matthew Paris and
Rudbone († c. 1234), represent Matilda as unwilling to leave the cloister to
be married; and in one of these accounts she is described as growing angry,
and pronouncing a curse on the possible offspring of the union. Walter Map
goes so far as to say that the king took to wife a veiled and professed nun,
Rome neither assenting nor dissenting, but remaining passive.
Perhaps the validity of the union was afterwards for political reasons called
in question. At any rate Mary, Matilda’s sister, also left the convent to be
married to Eustace, Count of Boulogne, without objection being raised.
That Matilda did not object to leaving the cloister, we have conclusive proof
in her great and continued affection for Anselm as shown in her letters to
him. These letters and the charitable deeds of the queen, throw light on the
Latinity of the Romsey pupil and on the tastes she had imbibed there.
We shall have occasion to return to Matilda again in connection with the
philanthropic movement of the age, and we shall find her founding the
hospital of St Giles in the soke of Aldgate, and bringing the first Austin
Canons from France into England[579].

All her life she retained a taste for scholarly pursuits, and patronised
scholars and men of letters. Her correspondence with the primate
Anselm[580] yields proof of her own studies and the freedom with which she
wrote Latin.
In one of these letters, written shortly after her marriage (bk 3. 55), Matilda
urges the primate in strong terms to abstain from the severe fasting he
practises, quoting from Cicero ‘on Old Age,’ and arguing that as the mind
needs food and drink, so does the body; she at the same time admits the
Scriptures enjoin the duty of fasting, and Pythagoras, Socrates and others
urge the need of frugality. Anselm in his answer incidentally mentions
having joined her to the king in lawful wedlock.
Matilda’s next letters are less fraught with learning, and in unaffected terms
express grief at Anselm’s voluntary exile, which was the outcome of his
quarrel with the king. She is saddened by his absence and longs for his
return (3. 93); she would act as intercessor between him and her husband (3.
96), and she writes to the Pope on Anselm’s behalf (3. 99). The queen both
read and admired Anselm’s writings, and compares his style to that of
Cicero, Quintilian, Jerome, Gregory and others (3. 119) with whom her
reading at Romsey may have made her acquainted.
Anselm is not slow in answering that the king’s continued bitterness is to
him a source of grief, and in expressing the desire that the queen may turn
his heart. It is good of her to wish for his return, which, however, does not
depend on himself; besides ‘surely she wishes him to act in accordance with
his conscience.’ In one of these letters he accuses the queen of disposing
otherwise than she ought of the churches which are in her keeping (3. 57,
81, 97, 107, 120, 128).
Anselm’s continued absence from Canterbury, which was due to the quarrel
about investiture, was felt to be a national calamity, and many letters passed
between him and those among the Church dignitaries who sided with him
against the king.
Among Anselm’s correspondents were several abbesses of Wessex
settlements, who seem to have been in no way prejudiced against him on
account of the approval he gave to Matilda’s leaving the cloister. He writes
in a friendly strain to another Matilda, abbess of St Mary’s, Winchester

(Winton), thanking her for her prayers, urging her to cultivate purity of
heart and beauty of mind as an encouragement to virtue, and begging her to
show obedience to Osmund (bishop of Winchester) in affairs temporal and
spiritual (3. 30). To Adeliz, also abbess at St Mary’s (3. 70), he writes to say
she must not be sorry that William Giffard has left his appointment as
bishop of Winchester, for his going is a reason for rejoicing among his
friends, as it proves his steadfastness in religious matters. He also writes to
Eulalia, abbess (of Shaftesbury), who was anxious for him to come back,
and begs her to pray that his return may prosper (3. 125).
The references to the Benedictine nunneries of Wessex contained in this
correspondence are supplemented by information from other sources.
In the early part of the 12th century a girl named Eva was brought up at a
convent, but which she left to go to Anjou, since she preferred the life of a
recluse there to the career which was open to her in the English nunnery.
Her life abroad has been described in verse by Hilarius († c. 1124) who is
the earliest known Englishman who wrote religious plays. After studying
under Abelard Hilarius had taken up his abode at Angers, near the place
where Eva dwelt, and was much impressed by her piety and devotions[581].
From his poem we gather that Eva had been given into the care of the nuns
at St Mary’s, Winchester (Winton), a place which he designates as ‘good
and renowned.’ The girl’s progress in learning was the subject of wonder to
the abbess and her companions, but when Eva reached the age at which her
enrolment as a member of the community was close at hand, ‘she turned’ in
the words of the poet, ‘from success as though it had been a sinful trespass,’
and left the nunnery to go abroad.
Her admirer Hilarius has celebrated other women who were devoted to
religious pursuits. He addresses one of them as ‘Bona,’ and praises her for
caring little for the religious garb unless good works accompany it. The
meaning of her name and that of other religious women whom Hilarius also
addresses, such as ‘Superba,’ and ‘Rosa,’ gives him an opportunity for
compliments on the virtues these names suggest. His poems, though
insignificant in themselves, add touches to our knowledge of women who
adopted the religious profession.

In the wars which ensued after the death of Henry I (1134) the nunneries of
Wessex witnessed the climax and the end of the struggle. The Empress
Matilda, daughter of Henry I and Queen Matilda, who claimed the crown
on the strength of her descent, finding the sympathies of London divided,
approached Winchester, and was received by two convents of monks and
the convent of nuns who came forth to meet her. The Empress for a time
resided at St Mary’s Abbey, and there received a visit from Theobald,
archbishop of Canterbury[582]. During the fighting which followed the
nunnery of Wherwell was burnt[583], and perhaps St Mary’s Abbey at
Winchester was destroyed[584]. Matilda finally yielded to Stephen, and left
England on condition that her son Henry should succeed to the crown.
The nunnery of Romsey continued its connection with royalty, and we find
the daughter of Stephen, Mary of Blois, established there as abbess previous
to her marriage. Her case again throws curious side-lights on the foundation
of convents and the possibilities open to women who adopted the religious
profession.
The princess Mary had come over from St Sulpice in France with seven
nuns to Stratford at Bow (otherwise St Leonard’s, Bromley in Middlesex),
when the manor of Lillechurch in Kent was granted to the nunnery there by
King Stephen for her own and her companions’ maintenance[585]. But these
women, as the charter has it, because of the ‘harshness of the rule and their
different habits’ could not and would not stay at Stratford, and with the
convent’s approval they left it and removed to Lillechurch, which was
constituted by charter a priory for them. Mary removed later to Romsey
where she became abbess some time before 1159[586], for in that year her
brother William, the sole surviving heir of Stephen, died, so that she was
left heiress to the county of Boulogne. She was thereupon brought out of
the convent at the instigation of Henry II, and married to Matthew, son of
the Count of Flanders, who through her became Count of Boulogne.
Thomas Beket, who was then chancellor, not primate, was incensed at this
unlawful proceeding, and intervened as a protector of monastic rule, but the
only result of his interference was to draw on himself the hatred of Count
Matthew[587]. It is said that Mary returned to Romsey twelve years later.
Her daughters were, however, legitimised in 1189 and both of them
married.

Various letters found here and there in the correspondence of this period
show how women vowed to religion retained their connection with the
outer world. Among the letters of Thomas Beket there is one in which he
tells his ‘daughter’ Idonea to transcribe the letter he is forwarding, and lay it
before the archbishop of York in the presence of witnesses[588]. It has been
mentioned that a sister of Thomas Beket was in 1173 abbess at Barking.
Again, among the letters of Peter of Blois († c. 1200), chaplain to Henry II,
are several addressed to women who had adopted the religious profession.
Anselma ‘a virgin’ is urged to remain true to her calling; Christina, his
‘sister,’ is exhorted to virtue, and Adelitia ‘a nun’ is sent a discourse on the
beauties of the unmarried life[589].

§ 3. The Order of St Gilbert of Sempringham[590].

The study of the order of St Gilbert, which is of English origin, shows how
in this country also sympathy with convent life was spreading during the
12th century, and how, owing to the protection afforded to peaceful and
domestic pursuits by the religious houses, many girls and women of the
middle classes became nuns. From an intellectual point of view the order of
St Gilbert has little to recommend it, for we know of no men or women
belonging to the order who distinguished themselves in learning, literature
or art. As a previous chapter has indicated, its purpose was chiefly to
prevent women from drifting into the unattached and homeless class, the
existence of which was beginning to be recognised as prejudicial to society.
The material for the study of the order is abundant. We have several
accounts of the life and work of Gilbert, besides minute injunctions he
drafted to regulate the life of his communities, and there are references to
him in contemporary literature. The success of his efforts, like that of the
men who founded combined orders of canons and nuns abroad, was due to
the admission of women into his settlements regardless of their class and
antecedents. Like Robert of Arbrissel his interest centred in women, but he
differed from him in giving the supreme authority of his settlements into the
hands of men. For the settlements which afterwards became double
originated in Gilbert’s wish to provide for women who sought him as their

spiritual adviser. It was only in consequence of the difficulties he
encountered that canons were added to the settlements.
Helyot likens the order of St Gilbert to that of Norbert, the founder of the
order of Prémontré[591], but here too there are marked points of difference,
for in disposition and character Gilbert was as unlike Norbert as he was to
Robert; he had neither the masterfulness of the one nor the clear-sighted
determination of the other. The reason of his popularity lies more in his
gentleness and persuasiveness, and these qualities made him especially
attractive to women.
Gilbert was a native of Lincolnshire, born about 1083, the son of a wealthy
Norman baron and an English woman of low rank. His ungainly appearance
and want of courtly bearing rendered him unfit for knightly service. He was
sent to France for his education and there attained some reputation as a
teacher. After his return home he devoted his energies to teaching boys and
girls in the neighbourhood. His father bestowed on him two livings, one of
which was at Sempringham. His chief characteristic was pity for the lowly
and humble, and this attracted the attention among others of Robert Bloet,
bishop of Lincoln ( † 1123). For a time Gilbert acted as a clerk in Bloet’s
house, and after his death remained with his successor Alexander († 1148)
in a like capacity. With Alexander he consulted about permanently
providing for those of the lower classes whom his liberality was attracting
to Sempringham.
The first step taken by Gilbert was to erect suitable dwellings round the
church of St Andrew at Sempringham for seven women whom he had
taught and who had devoted themselves to religion under his guidance, and
as they were not to leave their dwelling place, lay sisters were appointed to
wait on them. He also provided dwellings at Sempringham for the poor, the
infirm, for lepers, and orphans.
The order of Gilbert is held to have been established before 1135, the year
of King Henry I’s death[592]. The author of his life in Dugdale likens
Gilbert’s progress at this time to the chariot of Aminadab; to it clung clerics
and laymen, literate and illiterate women, and it was drawn by Master
Gilbert himself.

Gilbert had entered into friendly relations with the Cistercian monks who
were then gaining ground in Yorkshire, and William, first abbot of Rievaulx
( † 1145-6), was among them. He had a good deal to do with Ailred ( †
1166), a notable north-country man who came from Scotland to live at
Rievaulx, and afterwards became abbot successively of Revesby and
Rievaulx.
At this time there were no nunneries in the north of England, for the great
settlements of the early English period had passed away and no new houses
for women had been founded. The numbers of those who flocked to Gilbert
were so great that he felt called upon to give them a more definite
organisation. His friendship with Cistercian monks no doubt turned his eyes
to Citeaux, and the wish arose in him to affiliate his convents to the
Cistercian order. Having placed his congregations under the care of the
Cistercians, he set out for Citeaux about 1146.
But his hopes were not fulfilled. At Citeaux he met Pope Eugenius III ( †
1153) and other leading men. He cemented his friendship with Bernard of
Clairvaux and entered into friendly relations with Malachy, bishop of
Armagh († 1148), who had introduced the Cistercian order into Ireland. But
the assembly at Citeaux came to the conclusion that they would not preside
over another religious order, especially not over one for women[593], and
Gilbert was urged to remain at the head of his communities and Bernard
and Malachy presented him with an abbot’s staff.
He returned to England, burdened with a responsibility from which he
would gladly have been free, and obliged to frame a definite rule of life for
his followers. As one account puts it, ‘he now studied the rules of all
religious orders and culled from each its flowers.’ The outcome of his
efforts was the elaborate set of injunctions which now lie before us.
From these injunctions we can see how Gilbert’s original plan had
expanded, for his settlements consisted of bands of canons, lay-brethren,
nuns, and lay-sisters. One set of rules is drafted for the canons who
observed the rule of St Augustine and performed religious service for the
double community, and a separate set for the laymen who acted as servants.
And similarly there is one set of rules for the nuns who lived by the rule of
St Benedict, and another for their servants the lay-sisters.

These rules suggest many points of similarity to the combined settlements
of canons and nuns previously founded abroad, but there are also some
differences.
In the Gilbertine settlements the dwellings of the men and women were
contiguous, and the convent precincts and the church were divided between
them. The men’s dwelling was under the rule of a prior, but three prioresses
ruled conjointly in the women’s house. The arrangements in both convents
were alike, and the duties of prior and prioress similar, but in all matters of
importance the chief authority belonged to the prior who was at the head of
the whole settlement. The property owned by Gilbertine settlements
apparently consisted largely of sheep, and among the men we note a
number of shepherds and a ‘procurator’ who bought and sold the animals.
The ewes were regularly milked and the wool was either used in the house
for making clothes, or sold. The lay-sisters were appointed to spin and
weave and the nuns to cut out and make the garments.
There was one cellar and one kitchen for the whole settlement, for the
cellaress in the women’s house acted as caterer both for the canons and the
nuns. Domestic duties fell to the share of the women. They cooked the
canons’ food as well as their own and handed the meals into the men’s
quarters through a hole in the wall with a turn-table, through which the
plates and dishes were returned to them. They also made clothes for the
whole establishment.
At the daily chapter held in the women’s house the prioresses presided in
turn, with a companion on either side. The cellaress reported to the prioress,
who settled the allowances and gave out the food. She received information
also from the ‘scrutatrices,’ the nuns whose duty it was to go the round of
the house and report disorders, and according to whose reports she imposed
the various penances.
We also hear in the women’s house of a librarian (‘precentrix[594]’), who
had the keys of the book-case (‘armarium’), which was kept locked except
during reading time when the nuns were allowed the use of the books.
There was to be no quarrelling over the books; the nun like the canon was
directed to take the one allotted to her and not to appropriate that given to
another. Simplicity of life was studied. Pictures and sculpture were declared

superfluous and the crosses used were to be of painted wood. Only books
for choir use were to be written in the convent, but while this holds good
alike for the women and for the men, there is this further prohibition with
regard to the nuns, that talking in Latin was to be avoided. ‘Altogether,’
says the rule[595], ‘we forbid the use of the Latin tongue unless under
special circumstances.’
The cooking was done by the nuns in turn for a week at a time in
compliance with a regulation contained in the rule of St Benedict. The
librarian also had her week of cooking, and when she was on duty in the
kitchen, gave up her keys to another nun. We hear also of the mistress
appointed to teach the novices, and of the portress who guarded the
approaches to the house.
The injunctions drafted for the canons and the lay members of the
settlement are equally explicit. Directions are also given about tending the
sick, who were to be treated with tenderness and care.
Girls were admitted into the company of the nuns at the age of twelve, but
several years passed before they could be enrolled among the novices. At
the age of twenty the alternative was put before the novice of joining the
nuns or the lay-sisters. If she decided in favour of the latter she could not
afterwards be promoted to the rank of nun; she was bound to observe
chastity and obedience while she remained in the house, but she was not
consecrated. A certain amount of knowledge of the hymns, psalms and
books of service was required from the novice before she could make
profession.
The scheme of life worked out by Gilbert met with success and numerous
patrons were found to endow settlements on the plan of that at
Sempringham. As the chronicler says, ‘many wealthy and highborn
Englishmen, counts and barons, seeing and approving of the undertaking
the Lord had initiated and holding that good would come of it, bestowed
many properties (‘fundos et praedia’) on the holy father (Gilbert) and began
to construct on their own account numerous monasteries in various
districts.’
The greater number of these settlements were situated in Lincolnshire and
Yorkshire, but judging by the extant charters the conditions and purposes of

their foundations were not always the same. Sometimes the grant is made
conjointly to men and women, sometimes reference is made to the prior
only. In the earlier charters the women are especially noticed, in the later
ones more account is taken of the men. As time went on the order gradually
ceased to have any attraction for women, and at the time of the dissolution
several foundations originally made for men and women were occupied
only by canons.
Gilbert himself did not accept a position of authority in his order but
became a canon at Bullington, one of its settlements. He appears to have
been influential in wider circles and we find him several times at court.
King Henry II visited him, and both the king and Queen Eleanor made
grants of land to the order. Henry regarded Gilbert with so much favour that
when he was summoned before the King’s Court in London on the charge
of having supported Beket in his exile, the king sent a message from abroad
ordering his case to be reserved for royal judgment, which practically meant
his acquittal[596].
Rapidly as the number of Gilbertine houses increased, the order did not
remain entirely free from trouble, for even in Gilbert’s lifetime distressing
incidents happened which justified to some extent the scornful remarks of
contemporary writers. One of these difficulties arose sometime between
1153 and 1166 in connection with a girl at Watton. A full account of the
affair was written and forwarded to Gilbert by Ailred, abbot of
Rievaulx[597]. This account illustrates pointedly the readiness of the age to
accept a miraculous rendering of fact, and gives a curious insight into the
temper of a community of nuns. Indeed such violence of conduct, and
details of such behaviour as are here described show that the barbarity of
the age, which so often strikes us in connection with camp and court, was
reflected in the monastery.
Watton was among the older Gilbertine houses and had been founded
before 1148 by a nobleman Eustace Fitz-John on property which had
belonged to a nunnery during the early English period[598]. The settlement
was among the larger Gilbertine houses; it owned property to the extent of
twenty acres.

The girl had been placed under the care of the nuns of Watton at the
suggestion of Murdach, abbot of Fountains († 1153), and had given endless
trouble by her unbecoming levity and hopeless laziness. ‘She is corrected
by word of mouth but without result, she is urged by blows but there is no
improvement,’ writes Ailred, who speaks of her as a nun without telling us
that she had actually made profession.
She made the acquaintance of one of the lay-brothers who were engaged in
repairing the women’s dwelling. The two contrived to meet frequently out
of doors until at last the nun’s condition became obvious. Her fellow-nuns
were so incensed at this discovery that they treated her with barbarous
cruelty and would have put her to death had not the prioress intervened and
had her chained and imprisoned. The anger of the nuns now turned against
the lay-brother who had brought disgrace on their convent, and with a
mixture of cunning and deceit they managed to discover him and have him
terribly mutilated. ‘I do not praise the deed, but the zeal,’ says Ailred; ‘I do
not approve of bloodshed, but for all that I praise the virgins’ hatred of such
wickedness.’ The esprit de corps among the nuns and their indignation
evidently went far in his eyes to excuse behaviour which he would not
describe as he did if he had not felt it altogether reprehensible.
Meanwhile the nun overcome by contrition was awaiting her delivery in
prison; there she had visions of abbot Murdach who had died some years
before. He first rebuked her, but then miraculously relieved her of her
burden and restored her to her normal condition. The nuns though greatly
surprised were convinced of the truth of the statement concerning the
miraculous doings of Murdach because they found the nun’s chains
loosened. The prior of Watton sent for Ailred to enquire more closely into
the matter. Ailred came, collected all possible evidence, and was convinced
that there had been divine intervention on the girl’s behalf. He wrote an
account of what had happened to Gilbert, with these words as preface: ‘to
know of the Lord’s miracles and of his proofs of divine love and to be silent
about them were sacrilege.’ What became of the girl we are not told. For
trespasses such as hers the rule of Gilbert decreed life-long incarceration,
but the canon for a like trespass suffered no punishment beyond being
expelled from the settlement.