Middle English Literature

Prioresses
In the year 1000 only six or seven religious houses for women existed in
England. When religious houses were dissolved in the sixteenth century,
approximately seventy-five Benedictine nunneries were active. Nuns’ prim-
ary duties were prayer, contemplation of religious texts, and duties that
sustained their house. Nunneries’ wealth varied widely, from those that
received royal patronage or that benefited from the bequests of affluent
families, to houses that were in constant peril of economic failure.
Prioresses and abbesses often were women of some social standing. They
were in charge of not only the spiritual but also the physical well-being of
usually about twelve sisters; they had to be adept at managing property,
assigning work, buying and selling goods, finances, overseeing support staff,
novices’ education, and discipline. The Ankerwyke priory of Benedictine
nuns in Buckinghamshire west of London was founded about 1160 and
contained eight nuns in 1441. The properties mentioned in the bishop’s
record that were administered by the prioress, Dame Clemence Medforde,
were all within a 20-mile radius of the abbey.
The following excerpt is fairly typical of bishops’ visitation accounts,
revealing situations in which rules are frequently broken while accusations
and revenge are common among the inhabitants of houses. It follows the
usual form of such documents: introduction, detecta (the house members’
depositions) and comperta (the bishop’s findings) here combined, publica-
tion of the findings before the convent, and injunctions. Of bishop William
Alnwick’s forty-two surviving accounts from 1438–45, nine contain injunc-
tions in English, all of which are addressed to women’s houses. (Alnwick
also presided over Lollard cases, for which see “Lollardy Trials,” p. 59).
11
sooner.
12
Psalms 150.3–5.
Prioresses
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Conventions and Institutions
Primary documents and further reading
Caxton, W. (trans.) (1902) Three Middle English Versions of the Rule of St. Benet and
Two Contemporary Rituals for the Ordination of Nuns, ed. E. A. Koch. EETS,
o.s. 120. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner.
Clark, A. (ed.) (1905–11) The English Register of Godstow Nunnery, Near Oxford, 3