The Convent and the Community in Late Medieval England

Detailed study of female monasticism in the later middle ages, with particular emphasis on the nuns' importance to the local community.

Convents were an important part of medieval monastic life, but only now, with the upsurge of interest in women's history, are they beginning to receive the attention they deserve. The prevailing view has been that female monasticism was bankrupt, spiritually and socially as well as financially, but Professor Oliva shows the reality to have been otherwise. In her study of the eleven female monasteries in the diocese of Norwich between 1350-1540, the convents emerge as integral parts of the local social and spiritual landscape, with nuns more active in the local community than their male counterparts, and markedly more popular with parish gentry and yeoman farmers (as their wills prove). The majority of nuns are shown to have been from these parish gentry families, not from the upper gentry or aristocracy as has been thought, and the records of their active lives, so rewardingly examined here, reveal mobilitywithin the nunnery too, the existence of a `career ladder' enabling nuns to progress to more important and prestigious household offices.
Professor MARILYN OLIVAteaches in the Center for Medieval Studies at Fordham University.