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Between 1598 and 1800, an estimated 3, 271 Catholic women left England to enter convents on the Continent. This study focuses more particularly upon those who became Benedictines in the seventeenth century, choosing exile in order to pursue their vocation for an enclosed life. Through the study of a wide variety of original manuscripts, including chronicles, death notices, clerical instructions, texts of spiritual guidance, but also the nuns’ own collections of notes, this book highlights the tensions between the contemplative ideal and the nuns’ personal experiences. Its first four chapters adopt a traditional historical approach to illustrate the tensions between theory and practice in the ideal of being dead to the world. They offer a prosopographical study of Benedictine convents in exile, and show how those houses were both cut-off and enclosed yet very much in touch with the religious and political developments at home. The next fur chapters propose a different point of entry into the history of nuns, with a study of emotions and the senses in the cloister, delving into the textual analysis of the nuns’ personal and communal documents to explore aspect of a lived spirituality, when the body, which so often hindered the spirit, at times enabled spiritual experience.
This article offers the first comprehensive study of Manchester, John Rylands Library, MS Latin 182, a twelfth-century codex formerly belonging to (and possibly produced at) the Benedictine Abbey of (Mönchen-)Gladbach in Germany. I begin with a full codicological and palaeographical analysis of the entire manuscript, before moving on to a discussion of its contents. These include the Venerable Bede‘s Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum and the Continuatio Bedae, as well as two hagiographical works copied at the end of the manuscript. I then propose a new possible context of reception for Bede‘s Historia ecclesiastica during the twelfth century, one that interlinked with the prevalent discourses on secular ecclesiastical lordship and monastic reform at Gladbach, as well as, perhaps, in Germany more widely. In doing so, I essentially argue for the possibility that the Gladbach scribes and their audiences may have used and understood the Historia ecclesiastica not only in the conventional context of history and historiography, but also (and perhaps equally important) as an example of the golden age of monasticism which during the later twelfth century was re-framed and re-contextualised as both a spiritual guide and a source of miracle stories.
The life of the monk, canon or nun was based on fidelity to a rule. The Benedictines, Cistercians, Cluniacs and many nunneries followed the sixth-century Rule of St Benedict, and other monastic orders were heavily influenced by its teachings. For those religious following it, the Benedictine Rule remained the staple of monastic reading and education throughout the
of this spirit becomes striking when we consider how the first new foundation (the Benedictine cloister at Brussels) inaugurated a movement which led to the opening of several houses of other Orders in quick succession. Poor Clares settled at Gravelines in 1606, Augustinians at Louvain in 1609, Carmelites at Antwerp in 1618 and Franciscans at Brussels in 1619. Around the time of the negotiations for a match between Prince Charles and the Infanta Maria Anna, when Catholic hopes were high in England, the Benedictines opened two new 101 MUP
6 • Divine love, an emotional panacea? Seventeenth-century English Benedictines, like all their Sisters and Brothers in Catholic Orders, were exhorted to make every effort to tame their worldly emotions. Their entire focus should be on Christ. Any bond of worldly friendship, though it might feel precious (especially within the confines of the cloister), was a distraction from spiritual pursuits. Even when they focused upon their spiritual quest, religious men and women were prey to human emotions which they saw as negative. When they went through times of doubt
the inner emotional lives of their brethren. Third, on a broader level, this book will offer one of the only in-depth expositions of the affective devotional lives of traditional, often called ‘Benedictine’, 11 monks, known more for their presumed adherence to unfeeling, blind, communal ritual than for their emphasis on an individual, affective relationship with God. And finally, on its broadest level, as a study of the earliest manifestations of affective piety, this book will recalibrate our understanding of the roots of later medieval spirituality
Conclusion Delving into the overwhelming mass of manuscripts documenting the lives of English Benedictine nuns in exile is, at once, a rewarding and a frustrating exercise which poses as many questions as it answers. This study, within its limited scope, has touched upon several points which inform and complement one another. The first part of this monograph showed how the contemplative ideal of dying to the world was pragmatically impossible to achieve; if nuns were not supposed to be creatures of the world, they had to exist in the world, and therefore make
Benedictine Father Benito Feijoo (1676– 1764) launched against the so-called vulgo (the ‘common herd’), one of the most impassioned was undoubtedly that dedicated to those possessed by the Devil. Presenting himself as an exposer of false beliefs, for whom Spanish society at the time was crying out, Feijoo warned his contemporaries about the great number of falsely possessed wandering around the country. From his perspective, the proliferation of fake possessed people constituted one of the most serious deceptions, and also one of the most widely accepted by the masses. For
BENEDICTINE NUNS IN EXILE they settled.2 They enrolled the help of secular agents, both English exiles and locals, whom they entrusted with the important business they could not carry out themselves. The endowment of new foundations, the purchase of adequate property, the management of real estate and the payment of dowries were all achieved through networks of translators, lawyers and representatives who acted on behalf of the Sisters. Nuns might not be creatures of the world, but they needed to live in the world. Without sound financial planning, good leadership
Scholars of the Middle Ages have long taught that highly emotional Christian
devotion, often called ‘affective piety’, originated in Europe after the twelfth
century, and was primarily practised by late medieval communities of mendicants,
lay people, and women. As the first study of affective piety in an
eleventh-century monastic context, this book revises our understanding of
affective spirituality’s origins, characteristics, and uses in medieval
Christianity.
Emotional monasticism: Affective piety at the eleventh-century
monastery of John of Fécamp traces the early monastic history of affective
devotion through the life and works of the earliest-known writer of emotional
prayers, John of Fécamp, abbot of the Norman monastery of Fécamp from 1028 to
1078. The book examines John’s major work, the Confessio theologica; John’s
early influences and educational background in Ravenna and Dijon; the
emotion-filled devotional programme of Fécamp’s liturgical, manuscript, and
intellectual culture, and its relation to the monastery’s efforts at reform; the
cultivation of affective principles in the monastery’s work beyond the
monastery’s walls; and John’s later medieval legacy at Fécamp, throughout
Normandy, and beyond. Emotional monasticism will appeal to scholars of
monasticism, of the history of emotion, and of medieval Christianity. The book
exposes the early medieval monastic roots of later medieval affective piety,
re-examines the importance of John of Fécamp’s prayers for the first time since
his work was discovered, casts a new light on the devotional life of monks in
medieval Europe before the twelfth century, and redefines how we should
understand the history of Christianity.