My task has drawn to its close. In a series of chapters, incompletely no
doubt but I trust not superficially, the position of woman under
monasticism has been brought before the reader, and some account has been
given of the various aspects of convent life. In conclusion it seems well
to pause and look back over the ground traversed, to take in at a glance
what Catholic tradition, convent-life and saint-lore have done for women
in the past. The area over which the reader has been taken is a wide one,
and the ground in many directions remains unexplored. Still some of the
most prominent landmarks have been noted, and some districts carefully
examined. Thus while further information might be sought concerning many
special points, it still seems legitimate to form a general survey and to
draw certain conclusions.
Turning back to the earliest period when Christianity with its new
conceptions first came into contact with beliefs dating from a distant
heathen era, we have seen how many sentiments and associations of ideas
peculiar to pre-Christian times lived on and were absorbed into the new
religion. The early representatives of Christianity, with a keen-sighted
appreciation of the means by which a change of religion is most
successfully effected, treated the older conceptions with tolerance, and
by doing so made possible the establishment of new ideas in the old
heathen setting. The legends and the cult of the saints contain a mine of
wealth as yet little explored by the student of primitive civilization and
folk-lore, a mine which has here been tapped at one vein only,—namely for
the information it yields on the antiquity of beliefs which attach to
certain women who are reckoned among the saints.
Passing from the ground of tradition to that of history we have seen how
the convent was looked upon with favour by women of the newly converted
barbarian races, and how readily they availed themselves of the protection
which the Christian religion held out to them. This development also
needed to be studied side by side with previous social conditions in order
to stand out in its true light, and it gained a new meaning when
considered in connection with the elements of older folk tradition which
it absorbed. The representatives of Christianity, profiting by a surviving
love of independence among womankind, turned the energies of women into
new channels, and giving scope to their activity in new directions,
secured their help in the cause of peaceful progress. The outward
conditions of life were such that the woman who joined the convent made
her decision once for all. But provided she agreed to forego the claims of
family and sex, an honourable independence was secured to her, and she was
brought into contact with the highest aims of her age. At a period when
monasteries, placed in the remote and uncultivated districts, radiated
peace and civilization throughout the neighbourhood, many women devoted
themselves to managing settlements which in the standard they attained,
vied in excellence with the settlements managed by men.
At the outset many married women left their husbands for the purpose of
founding and governing convents; sometimes they founded convents the
management of which they left to others, and themselves retired to them
later in life. The prestige and advantages enjoyed by the heads of
religious settlements were such that kings and queens frequently installed
their daughters as abbesses in preference to seeking for them matrimonial
alliances, and these princesses were joined by many daughters of the most
influential families, who gladly availed themselves of the opportunity of
embracing the religious vocation. Through their close contact with
high-born women, convents maintained a high tone in manners, morals and
general behaviour, and grew into important educational centres, the
beneficent influence of which was generally recognised.
The career open to the inmates of convents both in England and on the
continent was greater than any other ever thrown open to women in the
course of modern European history; abilities might raise the nun to the
rank of abbess, a position of substantial authority. In the Kentish
charter, to which reference has been made, the names of the abbesses as
representatives of religion follow those of the bishops. In Saxony it fell
to an abbess to act as representative of the emperor during his absence.
As independent landowners, who held their property of and from king and
emperor, the abbess took rank with the lords temporal and spiritual in the
right of jurisdiction which they exercised, and in the right of being
represented in Parliament or at the Imperial Diet as the case might be.
While fulfilling the duties which devolved on them in virtue of their
station, abbesses did not neglect their opportunities of keeping in touch
with culture and of widening their mental horizon. In Anglo-Saxon England
men who attained to distinction received their training in settlements
governed by women. Histories and a chronicle of unique value were inspired
by and drafted under the auspices of Saxon abbesses. For nuns Ealdhelm
wrote his most famous treatises, and several valuable contemporary
biographies, such as those of Sturmi and of Robert of Fontevraud, were
written at the express desire of nuns. And while eager in encouraging
productiveness in others, they were not slow in trying to develop their
own literary powers. In the 6th century Radegund was writing epistles in
verse under the tuition of an exiled Latin poet; to an Anglo-Saxon nun
whose name is not recorded we owe one of the earliest and most interesting
accounts extant of a journey to Palestine. In the 8th century the nun
Lioba was trying her hand at Latin verse in a convent in Thanet; in the
10th century the nun Hrotsvith in Saxony was composing Latin dramas on the
model of Terence. The contributions of nuns to literature as well as
incidental remarks show that the curriculum of study in the nunnery was as
liberal as that accepted by monks, and embraced all available writing,
whether by Christian or profane authors. While Scripture and the writings
of the Fathers of the Church at all times formed the groundwork of
monastic studies, Cicero at this period was read by the side of Boethius,
Virgil by the side of Martianus Capella, Terence by the side of Isidor of
Sevilla. From remarks made by Hrotsvith we see that the coarseness of the
later Latin dramatists made no reason for their being forbidden to nuns,
though she would have seen it otherwise; and Herrad was so far impressed
by the wisdom of the heathen philosophers of antiquity that she pronounced
this wisdom to be the ‘product of the Holy Spirit also.’ Throughout the
literary world as represented by convents, the use of Latin was general,
and made possible the even spread of culture in districts that were widely
remote from each other and practically without intercourse.
The educational influence of convents during centuries cannot be rated
too highly. Not only did their inmates attain considerable knowledge, but
education in a nunnery, as we saw from the remarks of Chaucer and others,
secured an improved standing to those who were not professed. The fact
that a considerable number of women’s houses after the monastic revival of
the 11th and 12th centuries were founded largely at the instigation of
men, proves that the usefulness of these institutions was generally
recognised.
While devoted to reading and study which pre-eminently constituted the
religious vocation, nuns during their leisure hours cultivated art in
several of its branches. Spinning and weaving were necessarily practised
in all settlements during many centuries, for the inmates of these
settlements made the clothes which they wore. But weaving and embroidery,
always essentially woman’s work, found a new development in the convent,
and works of marked excellence were produced both in England and abroad.
The painstaking industry, which goes far in the production of such work,
was reflected in the activity of women as scribes and illuminators, and
the names of several nuns who were famous for their writing have been
handed down to posterity. In the twofold domain of learning and art the
climax of productiveness was reached in the person of Herrad, in whom a
wide range of intellectual interests and a keen appreciation of study
combined with considerable artistic skill and a certain amount of
originality.
Side by side with literary and artistic pursuits nuns were active in the
cause of philanthropy. Several women who had the sufferings of their
fellows at heart are numbered among the saints; and under the auspices of
Hildegard a book was compiled on the uses of natural products in health
and disease, which forms a landmark in the history of mediæval medicine.
With the consciousness of the needs of others came too a keener power of
self-realisation. The attention of nuns was turned to the inner life, and
here again their productiveness did not fail them. The contributions to
mystical literature by nuns are numerous, and their writings, which took
the form of spiritual biography, legendary romance, or devotional
exercise, were greatly appreciated and widely read by their
contemporaries. Even now-a-days they are recommended as devotional works
by the Catholic Church.
We have seen that the position of the convent was throughout influenced by
the conditions of the world outside it; changes in outside political,
intellectual and social life necessarily made themselves felt in the
convent. Consequent upon the spread of the feudal system of land tenure,
which in the interest of an improved military organisation reserved the
holding of property for men, women forfeited their chance of founding and
endowing independent monasteries, and the houses founded after the
monastic revival never attained a position comparable with that of those
dating from the earlier period. As monasteries were theoretically safe
against infringement of their privileges by prince or bishop owing to
their connection with Rome, the relation of the Pope to temporal rulers
and to the greater ecclesiastics directly affected them, and when the
power of the Pope was relaxed they were at the mercy of prince and bishop.
We have seen how kings of England appropriated alien priories, and how
wilfully princes abroad curtailed the privileges of nunneries, the support
of their prelates giving countenance to these changes. At a later period a
considerable number of women’s convents were interfered with by churchmen,
who on the plea of instituting reforms took advantage of their position to
appropriate the convent property.
A change of a different kind which affected the convent in its educational
and intellectual standing was the growth of university centres, and the
increased facilities afforded to the student of visiting different centres
in succession. In the 9th century Bede who never stirred from his convent
might attain intellectual excellence; such a course was impossible in the
13th and 14th centuries when the centre of education lay in the
disputations which animated the lecture room. Some of the progressive
monasteries of men lessened the loss they felt by securing a house at the
university to which they sent their more promising pupils, but the tone at
the mediæval university was such that one cannot wonder that no attempt
was made in this direction by the convents of women. As a natural result
their intellectual standard for a time remained stationary, and then,
especially in the smaller and remoter settlements, it fell. This led to a
want of interest in intellectual acquirements among nuns, and it was
accompanied by a growing indifference in the outside world to the
intellectual acquirements of women generally.
Not that the desire to maintain a high standard had passed away from
women’s convents. The readiness with which many houses adopted the chance
of betterment held out to them by the congregations of the 15th century,
goes far to prove that nuns continued to identify the idea of salvation
with a high moral tone and an application to study. But study now ran
along a narrow groove, for the monastic reformers favoured devotional
study only. The nuns, who were impressed by the excellence of the
reformers’ motives, and prevented by circumstances from forming opinions
of their own in the matter, showed an increasing readiness to adopt their
views. The friars led the way in this direction by cutting off the nuns,
given into their care, from the management of outside affairs; they were
followed by the order of Sion, and by the congregations of Bursfeld and
Windesheim, all of which alike urged that the primary duty of a nun was
sanctification of self. The interest of this movement lies in the
voluminous devotional literature it called forth, a literature full of
spiritual beauty, but in the production of which nuns, so far as we know,
took no share. By writing out oral sermons they helped, however, to
preserve and spread them. The change which had come over the convent life
of women cramped rather than stimulated their intellectual vitality, and
the system of which they made part was apparently beyond their control.
The author of ‘Holy Maidenhood’ in the 13th century called the nun the
free woman, and contrasted her with the wife who in his eyes was the
slave. But Erasmus at the beginning of the 16th century urged that the
woman who joined the convent by doing so became a slave, while she who
remained outside was truly free. Erasmus also insisted on the fact that
there was no reason why a woman should enter a convent, as she might as
well stay in the world and remain unmarried if she so preferred. In point
of fact social conditions had so far changed that society no longer called
to the Church for protection of its daughters. For a time the convent
ranked high as an educational establishment; then this use began to pass
away also, and it was largely on account of the provision religious houses
made for unmarried women that they still continued in favour with a
portion of the community.
Many historians have advocated the view that the Protestant reformers
discovered the abuses of the monastic system, and finding these
intolerable, swept the whole system away. The evidence adduced above in
connection with the dissolution shows that matters were far otherwise,
that the dissolution of convents was accompanied by many regrettable
incidents, and that as far as England is concerned, it may confidently be
called premature. For many years those who sought progress by peaceful
educational means seemed to be confronted only by hopeless and sanguinary
confusion; they passed away with the belief that the whole movement they
had witnessed was opposed to real progress, holding the view that the
Protestants were innovators of the worst and most dangerous kind.
However, as far as convents are concerned, it seems as though the
Protestant reformers, far from acting as innovators, had done no more than
give violent and extreme application to forces which had for some time
been at work. The dissolution was led up to by a succession of conventual
changes, and before the outbreak of the Lutheran agitation, at least one
well-wisher of the system in Germany, Tritheim, had despaired of putting
this system to new and effective uses. Not that monasticism can be said to
have generally outlived its purposes at the time of the Reformation. In
some countries, as in France and Spain, it subsequently chronicled
important developments. But where German elements were prevalent, convents
were either swept away, or put to altogether different uses by the
Protestants, or else allowed to continue on a very much narrowed basis by
the Catholics. Many convents fell utterly to decay in course of time and
ceased to exist at the beginning of this century, others again still
linger on but are mere shadows of their former brilliant selves.
The reason for these changes lay not altogether with those who professed
religion in convents, they were part of a wider change which remoulded
society on an altered basis. For the system of association, the groundwork
of mediæval strength and achievement, was altogether giving way at the
time of the Reformation. The socialistic temper was superseded by
individualistic tendencies which were opposed to the prerogatives
conferred on the older associations. These tendencies have continued to
the present with slight abatements, and have throughout proved averse to
the continuation of monasticism which attained greatness through the
spirit of association.
Repelled through the violence and aggressiveness of the reformers, and
provoked by the narrowness of Protestantism generally, some modern writers
take the view that the Reformation was throughout opposed to real
progress, and that mankind would have been richer had the reformers left
undisturbed many of the institutions they destroyed. The revenues of these
institutions would now have been at the disposal of those who would put
them to public and not to personal uses. As far as convents, especially
those of women, are concerned, I cannot but feel sceptical on both
points. Granting even that these houses had been undisturbed, a
possibility difficult to imagine, experience proves that it is hardly
likely they could now be used to secure advantages such as they gave to
women in the past. Certainly it is not in those districts where women’s
convents have lived on, securing economic independence to unmarried women
as in North Germany, nor where they have lingered on along old lines as in
Bavaria, that the wish for an improved education has arisen among women in
modern times, nor does it seem at all likely that their revenues will ever
be granted for such an object. It is in those countries where the change
in social conditions has been most complete, and where women for a time
entirely forfeited all the advantages which a higher education brings, and
which were secured in so great a measure to women by convents in the past,
that the modern movement for women’s education has arisen.
