14. Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker, Jocelyn Wogan-Browne - Household, Women, And Christianities. in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages(Medieval Women Texts and Contexts, Book 14) [Retail]

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060064 KATERN 1
HOUSEHOLD, WOMEN,
AND CHRISTIANITIES
in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages
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MEDIEVAL WOMEN: TEXTS AND CONTEXTS
Editorial Board under the auspices of the

Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Hull
Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski (University of Pittsburgh)

Juliette Dor (Université de Liège)
Constant J. Mews (Monash University)
Anneke Mulder-Bakker (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen)
Barbara Newman (Northwestern University)
Gabriella Signori (Universität Münster)
Nicholas Watson (Harvard University)
Jocelyn Wogan-Browne (Fordham University)
VOLUME 14
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HOUSEHOLD, WOMEN,
AND CHRISTIANITIES
in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages
Edited by
Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker
and
Jocelyn Wogan-Browne
H
F
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Household, women, and Christianities in late antiquity and

the Middle Ages. - (Medieval women : texts and contexts ; 14)
1.Women - Europe - Social conditions 2.Households - Europe
- History - To 1500 3.Christian women - Religious life -
Europe - History - To 1500
I.Mulder-Bakker, Anneke B. II.Wogan-Browne, Jocelyn
305.4'2'094'0902
ISBN-10: 2503517781
© 2005, Brepols Publishers n.v., Turnhout, Belgium
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of the publisher.
D/2005/0095/134
ISBN: 2-503-51778-1
Printed in the E.U. on acid-free paper.
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To Kari Børresen
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Contents
Acknowledgements ix
List of Abbreviations x
Introduction Part I: Household, Women, and Lived Christianity 1

ANNEKE B. MULDER-BAKKER AND JOCELYN WOGAN-BROWNE
The Household and the Desert: Monastic and Biological Communities 11

in the Lives of Melania the Younger
KATE COOPER
‘Oikos-Ecclesiology’ and ‘Church Order’ in Eastern Christianity 37

EVA M. SYNEK
The Icon Corner in Medieval Byzantium 71

JUDITH HERRIN
Household and Empire: The Materfamilias 91

as Miles Christi in the Anonymous Handbook for Gregoria
KATE COOPER
Faith, Family, and Fortune: 109

The Effect of Conversion on Women in Scandinavia
BIRGIT SAWYER
Introduction Part II: Medieval Households 125

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‘Our Steward, St Jerome’: Theology and the Anglo-Norman Household 133

JOCELYN WOGAN-BROWNE
The Monastery as a Household within the Universal Household 167

ELSE MARIE WIBERG PEDERSEN
The Household as a Site of Civic and Religious Instruction: 191

Two Household Books from Late Medieval Brabant
ANNEKE B. MULDER-BAKKER
The Bolton Hours of York: Female Domestic Piety and the Public Sphere 215
SARAH REES JONES AND FELICITY RIDDY
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Acknowledgements
T
his volume owes its existence to a series of conferences on Women in the
Christian Tradition from Late Antiquity to the Reformation, funded by the
European Union’s European Science Foundation (ESF) over 1992–98.
Uniquely in the experience of many of the participants, these conferences did not
demand immediate production of results in the form of conference papers: modelled
on science conferences, they were above all concerned to offer opportunities to hear
from as many researchers as possible. They combined generous time for structured
discussion with particular stress on communication between older and younger
scholars. All the participants in the ESF conferences, including the contributors and
editors of the present volume, remain indebted to the ESF for their funding and sup-
port of the conference series. The dedication of this volume expresses our gratitude
to an outstanding scholar and personality: Kari Børresen. Her scholarship has been
hugely influential in raising and articulating the problems of conceiving Christian
doctrine and history in simply androcentric terms, and it was her vision and energy
that inaugurated and sustained the ESF conference series, the first such to deal expli-
citly with women’s historical and cultural roles. All involved owe her a great debt.
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Abbreviations
EETS Early English Text Society

ES Extra Series
OS Original Series
PG Patrologia Cursus Completus, Series Graeca, ed. by J.-P.
Migne (Paris, 1861–64)
PL Patrologia Cursus Completus, Series Latina, ed. by J.-P.
Migne (Paris, 1861–64)
RS Rolls Series
SC Sources Chrétiennes
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Introduction Part I:
Household, Women, and Lived Christianity
The House of God and Women’s Churches
T
he church of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere is a striking example of the many-
layered history so often visible in central Rome. Lined with conventual build-
ings and overlooked by its high medieval Romanesque campanile, the court-
yard that serves both as enclosure and forum to the church is a palimpsest, at once
classical, medieval, and baroque. The church façade is early eighteenth-century
above classical columns, installed here in the twelfth-century. In the courtyard, one
used to see children on their tricycles and Trastevere women sitting in the sun, strik-
ing that note of public and quotidian domestic life characteristic of so much of
Southern Europe. Down in the church’s grander and more sombre interior, the com-
memoration of a wealthy patroness’s donations and death offers another mode of
public domesticity. The interior of the church dramatically focuses on the sanctuary
and on Stefano Di Maderno’s life-size alabaster carving of St Cecilia, made in 1600.
St Cecilia is an icon of powerful and elegant femininity as she lies prone in the
suave rhythmic wrappings of her robes and turban. Her statue is distant both from
medieval relics and from the baroque. It is a neoclassical representation of a
beautiful young Roman aristocrat, lying as if asleep in her own home. According to
her legend, Cecilia’s home was indeed the site of her execution: she was first unsuc-
cessfully stifled in her own sudatorium, and then clumsily beheaded by a soldier sent
to her house.
Medieval Christianity produced many chaste and virgin married saints, but Cecilia
manifests a particularly striking combination of virgin martyr status with a matron’s
role and influence in family and ecclesiastical networks. A resource in every sense
for the Church, she is efficacious through, and not only in defiance or transcendence
of, her family and household roles. She is said to have dedicated herself to virginity
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2 ANNEKE B. MULDER-BAKKER AND JOCELYN WOGAN-BROWNE
and on her wedding night to have converted her husband, Valerius, and subse-
quently his brother Tiburtius to Christianity. The two men were martyred for their
new faith and buried by Cecilia. She herself refused to sacrifice to the Roman gods
and was executed, as already noted, in her own house. Pope Urban, who is associ-
ated with Cecilia in the legend, is said to have dedicated her house as a church.
Santa Cecilia’s church is now, as for centuries past, a shrine for pilgrims, aesthetes,
and tourists and, as a site of early Christian meetings and one of the earliest Roman
churches, has always been part of Church institutional history. A millennium into
Santa Cecilia’s existence, for instance, Chaucer’s cardinal, Adam Easton (d. 1398),
was attached to the church as his titular base in Rome. The church in its origins is
indeed a house: the historicity of Cecilia’s legend may be dubious, but beneath the
current church is the baptistery of a third- or fifth-century church and beneath that a
house from Imperial Rome. The body now recognized as the saint’s was in fact
translated to Santa Cecilia from the catacombs in a ninth-century rebuilding by Pope
Paschal I (817–24). But the traditional, insistent identification of Cecilia and her
house/church (now more than ever focussed on Di Maderno’s statue, newly pristine
after its Estee Lauder–funded restoration of 2002), embodies the historically signifi-
cant donation of resources and status to the early church by Roman matrons. Santa
Cecilia’s blending of household and institutional site is repeated with variations in
many European Church and monastic foundations, while her public, politicized
model of the domus and its many affiliations is reproduced in hundreds of retellings
of the passion of the saint in which Cecilia, virgin and matron, converts her patrician
in-laws and repeatedly dedicates herself and her resources to the Church.
The histories embodied in this site and the figure of its patroness and icon suggest
something of the complexity of the field in which the present volume, for all the
tradition of scholarly work that now underpins reflections on women’s histories and
their interactions with everyone else’s history, is nonetheless still a preliminary
reconnaissance. After some thirty years of vigorous attention to the methodological
issues and practical outcomes of writing women’s history and/or histories inclusive
of women, two of the terms important to this volume do not need much underlining.
‘Women’ and ‘Christianity’ have been seen to be full of consequences for each
other, and few would now doubt that the first of these complicates the second.
Particularly since the fundamental work on later medieval women by Caroline
Bynum in the 1980s and early 1990s, but also in key developments in anthropology
and in classical and Renaissance and Reformation studies, questions of women’s
representation and roles have led to many shifts in thought about the European past
and its implications for European, and other, presents. The collection in this volume
bears traces of this history and of a particular collective working-out of the interac-
tions of the two terms over a decade of collaborative discussion in the 1990s. A third
important term, ‘Household’, exemplifies the continuing growth and evolution of
paradigms and models in this field: the historiography of the household has begun
recently to be rethought, the binaries of Duby’s Histoire de la vie privée have been
challenged and complicated, and the significance of the household in family,
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Introduction Part I 3
political, public, and religious life is currently the object of much new work, includ-
ing its deployment here as a focus for considering women and Christianity.
The present volume is one fruit of a series of conferences on Women in the Chris-
tian Tradition in Europe from Late Antiquity to the Reformation, funded by the
European Union’s European Science Foundation (ESF). Over three conferences
from 1992 to 1998, the positioning, image, role, and histories of women and Chris-
tianity were explored. The conferences’ initial question — was the Christian Church
structurally so androcentric as to in some final sense exclude women from meaning-
ful roles in Christianity? — was itself developed and modified as participants from
many disciplines produced and evaluated abundant evidence that women and Chris-
tianity had a larger history than was initially suggested by clerical dominance in the
records. As the conferences’ accounts of women’s roles developed, new genres of
evidence were looked at and our conceptions both of gender roles and gender itself
began to diversify. Graeco-Latin theology had necessarily to be supplemented by
vernacular theology; theology had to be supplemented by praxis, institutional
concepts by social practice. Women’s distinctive modes of reception, transmission,
and participation had to be examined. Separatist history eventually came to seem
increasingly unproductive: women were neither a repressed underside of Christianity
nor a minimal insertion into it, but a constant and crucial presence operating in ways
which the records and scholarship’s habitual interrogations of them had obscured.
The more fully women’s participation was examined, the more our sense of institu-
tional Christianity was modified. In seeking to investigate the role of women, the
grand narrative previously supposed to do duty for everyone’s history had to be
altered as our conception of the history of Christianity and to whom it belonged
changed. The present volume reflects the preoccupations of the latter stages of this
long and productive research conversation, and it also focuses importantly on
‘Household’, a term that was never part of the ESF conference titles, but which
came by the end of the series, to seem increasingly significant as a focus for all the
forms of newly conceived agency and influence on European Christianities revealed
on the part of women by the conferences.
A vast scholarly literature has been devoted to the history of the Church as an
institution in the development of European Christianity. This is by no means the
whole story of Christianity, and the present volume argues that on all levels — con-
ceptually, socially, politically, economically, in the rituals and doctrines and the
theology of the Church — the household has played a vital role. The Church itself in
its lexis and social and ideological organization is often a household. Conceiving the
Church only as a supranational institution masks the variety of what, this volume
concludes, we must call European lived Christianities. The Christian Church did not
develop simply as a structure imposed from above, but was itself formed by the
practices and beliefs of the communities and societies in which it grew. What Susan
Reynolds has written of medieval political thought applies with equal force to the
relations between institutional Christianity on the one hand and the household and
the roles of women on the other:
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[medieval political thought] is generally studied only, or largely, through the works of
systematic and academic writers, and it sometimes seems to be assumed either that lay
politics were power-struggles of value-free, rational self-interest, or that laymen picked
up what political ideas and principles they had from the clergy. [. . .] All the intellec-
tual achievements of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries — the study of Roman and
canon law, the rediscovery of Aristotle and so on — impressive as they were, made
very little difference to the fundamental political beliefs of the period, and cannot
account for the characteristic forms which so many medieval collectivities shared.1
In this volume, accordingly, we have chosen particularly to emphasize the social
structures of the household, while trying not to reconfine the notion of household to
the private side of an over-easy binary of public/domestic. Where we have focused
on the Church’s institutional pronouncements, we do so in relation to the social
structures in which they are received and modified. Considered in the context of
contemporary conceptions and household practices of the early Christian commu-
nity, even teaching as influential as that of the Pauline epistles, for example, can be
seen as but one strand of a complex mix of analysis and expectation, rather than a
matter of unambiguously authoritative fiat. Although marriage and household for-
mation remain a source of precept and regulation for Paul, eschatological expecta-
tion decentres their importance. Not the relegation of household to a private sphere,
but Paul’s conception of eschatological maleness in the community of the Jewish
male Jesus distributes women and household into a secondary dimension.2 Subse-
quent uses of Paul’s regulations for female conduct in the Church have by no means
been a necessary or definitive development.
In pursuit of Christian stories less frequently retold than the Pauline epistles, we
address the roles and functions of the household as a matrix of Christianity in several
ways. Documenting cult practices in households is naturally part of our enquiry, but so
too is exploring the idea of the household and its role in the formation of the Church
and Church members at all levels. There are obvious problems with deploying a
unitary concept such as household for a millennium and more of European history
with all the variation in concepts and practices of the household this entails. Yet
there are also continuities to be observed and there are gains as well as unhistoric
conflations in keeping the longue durée in view.3 Of course we freely acknowledge
1
Susan Reynolds, Kingdoms and Communities in Western Europe, 900–1300 (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1985), p. 4.
2
Lone Fatum, ‘Pauline Constructions of Gender and Sexuality in Christian Communities
and Households’, forthcoming.
3
A recent handbook notes, for instance, that ‘one puzzle for economists studying the
family is the consistency of gender roles in the face of massive economic change [. . .]. Most
Western countries have seen dramatic increases in female labour force participation over the
past 25 years, yet these have been associated with decidedly un-dramatic changes in the divi-
sion of household work, suggesting that something not captured in existing models strongly
influences what happens in families’ (Frances Woolley, ‘Family, Economics of’, in The Elgar
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the impossibility of a single definition of household and of adequate accounts of the

interactions of women, household, and Christianity in anything less than many vol-
umes. But it is important to retain something of the chronological frame which proved
so productive in the ESF conferences and which reminds us that, as in St Cecilia’s
story and cult, household and Christianity and thought about their organization and
practice have been imbricated from the beginnings. We have therefore included and
commissioned papers dealing with late antiquity and the early Christian centuries
(see the contributions to Part I below) as well as papers set in medieval Europe.
The formative model of the household for early Christian thought and practice is
that of the late Roman household (itself with roots and analogies in the Greek oikos
where the household is the unit of production and of the polis as well as a cult cen-
tre).4 The social structure of the household was profoundly ingrained in the societies
where Christianity was initially formed. The early Church draws on and adapts the
structures of secular households in organizing the economy of the house of God and
in designing its regulation; the medieval household, however, diverges in its devel-
opment from the patriarchal model of the oikos/domus in some of its manifestations
and hence recasts this heritage and many Church-household interactions. While high
and later medieval royal and aristocratic households continue to resemble the an-
tique domus in many respects, the urban household structures developed in the High
Middle Ages change the model. From the eleventh and twelfth centuries onward,
with the developing commerce and industry of the towns of Western Europe and
with the intensification of rural agriculture, the small conjugal household acquired a
crucial place in all sectors of society.5 As Heide Wunder argues in her pioneering
study of German women, life and work now became household-based, and this pro-
cess had a profound impact on the formation of late medieval and early modern
society: ‘society was created and sustained not so much through the institutions of
Companion to Feminist Economics, ed. by Janice Peterson and Margaret Lewis (Cheltenham:
Edward Elgar, 1999), pp. 328–35 (pp. 334–35)). A study comprehending pre-modern evi-
dence would contextualize these ‘dramatic increases’ in female labour force participation over
the last twenty-five years, if only because household labour is less invisible in the economics
of pre-modern societies than it is in twentieth-century models of the household.
4
Edith Specht, ‘The Greek oikos’, paper presented at the European Science Foundation
Strasbourg Series of Conferences on Women and the Christian Tradition in Europe, October
1998, Innsbruck, Austria.
5
Heide Wunder, He is the Sun, She is the Moon: Women in Early Modern Germany (Cam-
bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), pp. 37–113, also for the following. Cf. Ariadne
Schmidt, Overleven na de dood: Weduwen in Leiden in de Gouden Eeuw (Amsterdam:
Prometheus/Bert Bakker, 2001), pp. 11–22. See also among older studies, Martha Howell,
Women, Production, and Patriarchy in Late Medieval Cities (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1984); David Herlihy, Medieval Households (Cambridge, MA; Harvard University
Press, 1985); and Jack Goody, The Development of the Family and Marriage in Europe
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).
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the state [. . .] as through the succession of generations in the household’ (see further
Introduction to Part II below).6
Medieval religious and lay households shared many of each other’s functions
and, especially in the case of elite households conducted on an institutional scale,
could each be conceptualized in terms of the other. Episcopal and curial courts and
monasteries were as much foyers for the formation of young men as the king’s own
household or those of his barons: bishops were in any case often courtiers them-
selves.7 We still refer to monastic houses: a monastery is a community composed of
a voluntarily constituted familia living collectively in a version of household that
had much in common with the households of its lay peers. Hospitality and liturgy
played important, if differently proportioned, roles in monastic, curial, and secular
households. If religious enclosure sought to display a ritually confirmed separate
existence theoretically unavailable to laypeople, this nonetheless included innumer-
able ties of association and social interaction between monastery and community
and an increasing lay appropriation of monastic technologies, lifestyles, and claims
to contemplative forms of existence, as many studies have shown.8 Equally, church-
men, most notably the mendicants, could also be seen as breaching the enclosure of
the household (as in the English poet William Langland’s satirically named friar ‘Sir
Penetrans domos’).9 Research on prosopography, and the family and kinship net-
works often deeply integrated with the life of religious houses in foundation, dona-
tion, continuing relations, and exchanges of socio-spiritual benefits and services,
together with recent rethinking of Duby’s oppositional models of clerical and secu-
lar interests in marriage, further contributes to the perceived overlaps in secular and
religious households.10
6
Wunder, He is the Sun, p. 68. See also Martha Howell, The Marriage Exchange: Prop-
erty, Social Place, and Gender in Cities of the Low Countries, 1300–1550 (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1998).
7
Stephen Jaeger, The Envy of Angels: Cathedral Schools and Social Ideals in Medieval
Europe, 950–1200 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994).
8
See e.g. André Vauchez, Les Laïcs au moyen âge: pratiques et experiences religieuses
(Paris: Cerf, 1987), trans. by Margery J. Schneider as The Laity in the Middle Ages (Notre
Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993); David Postles, Lay Piety in Transition: Local
Society and New Religious Houses in England 1100–1280 (Leicester: Leicester University
Press, 1998); Nicole R. Rice, ‘Spiritual Ambition and the Translation of the Cloister: The
Abbey and Charter of the Holy Ghost’, Viator, 33 (2002), 222–62.
9
William Langland, The Vision of Piers Plowman: A Critical Edition of the B Text, ed by
A. V. C. Schmidt (London: Dent, 1995), Passus XX, line 340. On anti-mendicant satire, see
further Penn R. Szittya, The Anti-Fraternal Tradition in Medieval Literature (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1986).
10
For some current studies of lay participation in monastic life, see David Postles, ‘Reli-
gious Houses and the Laity in Eleventh- to Thirteenth-Century England: An Overview’,
Haskins Society Journal, 12 (2002), 1–14: for the nexus of familial consent in land donations
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The Present Volume
We begin with Kate Cooper’s study of the late antique secular and monastic house-
hold. Building on her own fundamental study of the Roman household, Cooper in-
terrogates the binaries of public and private, secular and monastic, and sets the scene
for early Christianity’s formation within a model of household in which powers and
meanings are already complexly distributed across public/private and individual/in-
stitutional boundaries. Synek’s extensive study of early Christian regulation then
asks how far the role of the paterfamilias or of the oikosdespotes determines the role
of the early Christian bishop and his powers, especially in relation to women and
slaves. Early Christian regulatory codes — Haustafeln — were, as Synek shows,
largely an application of household structure to the ordering of the first communities of
the Church, which materially, socially, and ideologically are indeed formed within
household structures. Judith Herrin’s account of the icon corners and household cult
practices of Byzantium brings to light traces of religious household practices so
pervasive and formative that they have passed without notice in many scholarly
accounts. The very quotidianness of household contribution to religious formation
and practice means that it is under-recorded, but by reading a range of sources, often
against the grain, Herrin is able to show a whole world of household-based female
influence and contribution.
In comparing a late antique manual for a military aristocrat with a manual for a
great landowning female aristocrat, Kate Cooper’s second contribution to this vol-
ume continues to explore the relations between Christian ethics and social practice,
this time in the pre-Carolingian period. Cooper shows how comparable the concerns
and pastoral responsibilities of the military leader Duke Reginus and the high-
ranking matron Lady Gregoria were, and how interchangeable some of the images
and themes of the handbooks composed for them. Cooper’s readings of these texts
suggest that we may be able to recover much more activity on the part of women in
the pre-Carolingian period than previously thought, perhaps eventually enabling us
to see Dhuoda’s famous manual for her son William less as a remarkable but
isolated phenomenon and more as part of a tradition of women’s formative influence
in the Christianities of male elites.
to monasteries, see Stephen D. White, Custom, Kinship and Gifts to Saints: The laudatio
parentum in Western France (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988); John
Hudson, Land, Law and Lordship in Anglo-Norman England (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1994). On prosopography, see K. S. B. Keats-Rohan, Family Trees and the Roots of Politics:
The Prosopography of Britain and France from the Tenth to the Twelfth Century (Wood-
bridge: Boydell, 1997); for discussion of Duby’s ‘two models’ theory of medieval marriage,
see Neil Cartlidge, Medieval Marriage; Literary Approaches 1100–1300 (Woodbridge:
Boydell, 1997), ch. 1; Christine Peters, ‘Gender, Marriage, and Ritual’, Past and Present, 169
(2000), 63–96.
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Conversion to Christianity is often largely represented through the documentation

and narratives of Christian missionaries. But such clerical emissaries are hosted by
women who then carry out the actual instruction and conversion, especially of the
children in their families, and who send their daughters to nunneries. Birgit Sawyer
examines the role of women in the conversion of Scandinavia and the interplay of
inheritance rights and patterns with women’s ability to function as hosts or sites of
resistance for the new faith, whose reception depended crucially on the attitudes of
leading householders and their willingness to finance church building.
In the second half of the volume, we begin with a brief introduction to the devel-
oping diversity of medieval households from the eleventh and twelfth centuries
onward. The first two essays in this second section study the elite institutional-scale
households which continued alongside the newly developing urban model. The
social practices and cultural influence of noble households have had much attention
in recent years, but the role of the household in the production of theological and
pastoral Christian works is still under-researched. Jocelyn Wogan-Browne rereads
twelfth- and thirteenth-century prologues to theological commentaries produced for
Anglo-Norman noblewomen to explore the collaborative roles of female patrons and
male clerics in the production of theology and doctrinal instruction in the Anglo-
Norman noble household. In their friendships among the episcopacy and their
tradition of commissioning vernacular theology, laywomen may have had a role in
what has often been conceived as a purely institutional, male, and clerical develop-
ment and distribution of pastoralia following Lateran IV.
Not only do Church and household contribute much to each other as social
models and structures, but religious organization continues to draw on the theology
of household. Else Marie Wiberg Pedersen examines the community of Helfta and
the way in which its identity specifically as a religious community is constructed as
a household. The nuns appear consciously to have drawn on household theology in
expressing their sense of how their community worked and how it signified. In
this way, Pedersen’s work is an important complement both to the archaeological
research of Roberta Gilchrist and to the social history of Christian theory and
practice discussed above.
The volume’s final two studies consist of detailed accounts of wide theoretical
implication focusing on the late medieval urban household’s formative role in edu-
cation and public values. Anneke Mulder-Bakker explores the evidence of manu-
script miscellanies as household books in the late medieval Netherlands, showing
how collections once assumed to be prescriptively made and used by clerics in lay
instruction can in fact demonstrate the role of female householders in religious and
cultural formation. Sarah Rees Jones and Felicity Riddy use an English book of
hours to break down public-private binaries and to show the role of the household as
a source of civic values in the wider life of neighbourhood, district, and city in
medieval York. By exploring the prosopography, especially the marriage choices, of
both the immediate and the related families around their chosen book of hours, Rees
Jones and Riddy show how household and household formation determine the very
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fabric, material and social, of civic life. The political implications of contemporary
saints’ cults, the training of the young, and the religious rituals of city and household
are an integrated spectrum here, not a dialogue between interiorized private virtue
and public political life.
These last two studies have particular representative as well as diagnostic value: by
fully contextualizing particular sources, they indicate how our accounts of medieval
religious formation can be extended by attention to the texts and practices of urban
households. Large numbers of books of hours and manuscript miscellanies from
medieval Europe’s cities remain to be investigated before the particular roles of
households and the women and men who inhabited them can be made fully visible. As
this continues to be done, the medieval centuries, with all their variations in practice,
seem likely to emerge as much more egalitarian, much more diverse in their Chris-
tianities, and much more shaped by women than they are usually imaged as being.
Propositions and Conclusions
In the light of these explorations we hypothesize the following:

(1) Whereas the antique household, as far as we have sources, is presented as an
extended aristocratic house, in the Middle Ages only the courts and great nobles’
houses are more or less comparable, not the family households in cities. Although a
nucleus of parents and children can be detected in the late antique domus it never
formed the organizational structure in which the political, socio-economic, and emo-
tional relationships in society took shape. In the Middle Ages, however, the conjugal
household grew into the basic cell of society from which all social, public, or civic
life in the larger community took its form. This process had a profound impact on
the formation of late medieval and early modern society.
(2) Whereas the antique house in its juridical structure was above all patriarchal,
with a patria potestas, the medieval family, certainly in Northern Europe, was more
egalitarian, as shown in the essays by Rees Jones and Riddy and by Mulder-Bakker
in this volume. This change in social structure will have influenced women’s roles in
houses of religion with their own equivalently complex overlapping of private and
public roles and domains: Pedersen’s study of Helfta in this volume is a case in
point, as are also Beguine houses and other informal women’s convents in the urban
centres of Northern Europe.
(3) Whereas the antique house was a cultic site (see the contributions by Synek
and Herrin), the urban family in the later Middle Ages went to the parish church to
give shape to their personal faith and devotion. Only in the very late Middle Ages
does devotion start to become a private matter.11
11
Henk van Os, The Art of Devotion in the Late Middle Ages in Europe: 1300–1500
(London: Holberton, 1994).
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(4) Whereas the official Church was modelled after the antique patria potestas,
medieval practice was more modelled after the family. This is in large part because
(5) as Synek and Cooper stress in their essays here, there had already been con-
siderable divergence between official Roman Law and actual practice. In the Middle
Ages daily life in the town was regulated by civil or common law much more than
by criminal Roman law and the canon law based on it (although in older studies
Roman and canon law are often seen as the norm). And civil law was much more
egalitarian and women friendly.
(6) Thus, even in Church initiatives such as missionary conversion, the household
and its inheritance structures are a crucial determinant of what happens.
(7) Given the role patterns and division of labour between man and wife in the
medieval household, both in the sphere of family life and in professional work, we
should steer our investigations in the direction of whether and how these various
areas for special attention in the household also shaped the public roles of man and
woman in society.
We conclude, then, that attention to the role of the household makes it impossible to
see European Christianity as a single monolithic entity or process. It is not simply
that there is an ‘alternative’ history of those coded as outside and below institutional
Christianity and its capacity for self-presentation in Latinate, clerical, institutional-
ized theory and administration. This would be to confirm the figures and materials
of such a history as a mere obverse or underside. It is rather that, on the one hand,
the history of institutional Christianity cannot be separated from its matrix in the
shaping structures of the household and the vital contributions of women, and on the
other, that the specific historical and social circumstances of the household and
women’s varying positions and powers show that Europe has not one, unitary
Christian history but a history of Christianities.
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The Household and the Desert:

Monastic and Biological Communities
in the Lives of Melania the Younger
KATE COOPER
Then [after the death of their daughter] both Melania and Pinian hastened to fulfil their
promises to God. They would not consent to their [own] parents’ desires, and were so
unhappy that they refused to eat unless their parents would agree with them and
consent to release them so that they could abandon their frivolous and worldly mode of
life, and experience an angelic, heavenly purpose.1
W ritten perhaps less than a decade after her death, the Life of the Roman
heiress Melania the Younger (c. 385–439)2 offers what to modern eyes
seems a chilling account of her reaction — and that of her husband — to
the death of their only surviving child, a daughter. Heiress to one of Rome’s most
powerful senatorial families at the turn of the fifth century, Melania the Younger has
long been celebrated for the single-mindedness of her ascetic intention. She is the
1
Gerontius, The Life of Melania the Younger, 6, ed. by Denys Gorce, Vie de Sainte Méla-
nie, SC, 90 (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1962), p. 136. Where the Greek version of the Life is
concerned I have here and throughout followed the translation of Elizabeth A. Clark, The Life
of Melania the Younger: Introduction, Translation, and Commentary (Lewiston: Edwin
Mellen, 1984), here p. 30.
2
On Melania’s birth date, which Clark gives as 385/6, see Gerontius, Life of Melania,
trans. by Clark, p. 196 n. 18; on dating her death to 439, see ibid., p. 140. Patrick Laurence’s
valuable La Vie Latine de Sainte Mélanie: Edition critique, traduction et commentaire (Jeru-
salem: Franciscan Printing Press, 2002) gives at pp. 316–19 a useful summary of his own
views on dating, which in the essentials coincide with, but refine and further develop, those of
Clark. On the Latin Life, see also Susanne Wittern, Frauen, Heiligkeit und Macht: Lateinische
Frauenviten aus dem 4. bis 7. Jahrhundert Ergebnisse der Frauenforschung 33 (Stuttgart:
Verlag J. B. Metzler, 1994), pp. 44–61.
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12 KATE COOPER
best documented of the wave of Roman senatorial women who joined the ascetic
movement in the late fourth and early fifth centuries. After a teenaged marriage and
the birth of two short-lived children, Melania was able to convince first her husband
and then her very reluctant parents that her body should be withdrawn from the
business of reproduction and her fortune put to use in service of the Church.
The Life sounds the theme of Melania’s reluctance to act on behalf of her biologi-
cal family’s reproductive needs from the beginning. Indeed, the text opens with a
scene anticipating the South Asian arranged-marriage melodramas of twenty-first
century Britain:
This blessed Melania, then, was foremost among the Romans of senatorial rank.
Wounded by the divine love, she had from her earliest youth yearned for Christ, had
longed for bodily purity (tou sōmatos hagneian).3 Her parents, because they were
illustrious members of the Roman Senate and expected that through her they would
have a succession of the family line, very forcibly united her in marriage with her
blessed husband Pinianus, who was from a consular family, when she was fourteen
years old and her spouse was about seventeen.4
Freed from the bonds of motherhood, the saint is absolved from moral obligation to
fulfil the desire of her own parents, that she raise children to inherit her family’s
splendid fortune. Rather than an occasion for grief, the child’s death is presented as
Melania’s liberation.
From her biographer’s point of view, Melania’s teenaged pregnancies, however
legitimate, were a distraction from her real mission. In this respect, the biographer’s
value system differed decisively not only from most ancient Romans, but from most
Roman Christians. Fortunately for Melania (as her biographer tells the story), she is
able to convince Pinian to cease sexual relations once two children have been con-
ceived. Her excessive fasts and vigils in pregnancy show her unwillingness to be
troubled by mortality. The children’s death (in one case after a premature birth brought
on by vigil-keeping)5 is put forward as a sign that God wishes to free Melania for her
ascetic calling. To a modern sensibility, the sentiment expressed here is alarming.
The view of bereavement as liberation expressed by Melania’s biographer bears the
odour of cruelty, if not of an unresolved and thus distorted grief. But though there is
evidence that they loved their children dearly, the Romans tended to show remarkable
3
VG 1 (ed. by Gorce, Vie de Sainte Mélanie, p. 130). In what follows where it is relevant
to distinguish between the Greek and Latin Lives I refer to them respectively in the notes as
VG and VL and give page citations from Gorce’s and Laurence’s editions. Laurence, Vie
Latine, offers a useful synopsis of the difference between the Greek and Latin Lives at pp.
301–15; see also Adhémar d’Alès, ‘Les deux vies de Sainte Mélanie la jeune’, Analecta
Bollandiana, 25 (1906), 401–50.
4
VG 1 (ed. by Gorce, Vie de Sainte Mélanie, p. 130; trans. by Clark, Life of Melania, pp.
27–28, slightly altered).
5
Vita, 5.
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The Household and the Desert 13
sang-froid in the face of the ever-threatening diseases of infancy and early child-
hood.6 We moderns have difficulty in remembering how insistently the spectre of
infant mortality hovered at the door of the ancient household. Ascetic culture re-
quired that both men and women take Roman sang-froid one step further. If we are
to believe her Life, Melania the Younger was blessed not only with self-control at the
loss of her children, but even with reluctance in the matter of having them to begin
with. She became mother not to biological children but to the children in Christ —
both sons and daughters — who lived within the religious communities she founded.
The present essay will explore this reinvention of the household as an institution
based on ascetic affinity rather than on blood ties. The Life of Melania, we will
suggest, reflects an experimental moment in the history of the household. Melania
lived through — and contributed to — a period of transition in which numerous
ascetic variations of the Roman domus, traditionally a unit based in biological kin-
ship and economic ownership, were in play. During this period the ascetic commu-
nity or coenobium evolved from a fluid context in which a Roman paterfamilias or
materfamilias could experiment with ascetic and communal ideas while living on his
or her own property with a group of kin, slaves, and other dependents, to the pre-
dominance of the early medieval monastery as an independent institution under a
rule and an abbot or abbess.
Melania’s biographer offers a picture of his subject which reflects the ambiguities
of this moment of experimentation. The narrative emphasis of the Life seems to be
placed in areas where the saint’s reluctance to honour the bonds of family might
seem more sympathetic or at least more understandable. So, for example, Melania’s
role as materfamilias is played down, while her evasive approach to the duties of wife
and daughter is highlighted in terms drawn from Christian romance. At the same
time, her activities as an institutional foundress are not fully documented; she is por-
trayed as an aspiring solitary reluctant to assume the role of teacher or leader of com-
munities. The seeming ambivalence of Melania’s biographer, we will suggest, may
well reflect the ambiguous position of Melania’s communities after her death.
The Life and its Author
Authorship of the Life of Melania has been ascribed by virtually all modern critics to
Gerontius, the abbot who assumed the care of Melania’s monasteries on the Mount
of Olives after her death.7 Cyril of Scythopolis refers to Gerontius as having been
6
The notable exception to this generalization — though it refers to an adult daughter and
not an infant — is the case of Cicero, who grieved pathetically and openly at the death of his
beloved daughter Tullia. See also Brent D. Shaw, ‘Latin Funerary Epigraphy and Family Life
in the Later Roman Empire’, Historia, 33 (1984), 457–97.
7
Gerontius, Life of Melania, trans. by Clark, p. 13; Gerontius, Vie Latine, ed. and trans. by
Laurence, pp. 117–21.
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14 KATE COOPER
abbot of the monasteries of the blessed Melania for forty-five years.8 Some time
between 436 and the Council of Chalcedon in 451 Gerontius seems to have become
archimandrite in charge of overseeing the monasteries within the district of Jerusa-
lem,9 a position created by Bishop Juvenal of Jerusalem (d. 458) around 428.10 But
Gerontius’s relationship with Juvenal foundered over his refusal to endorse the Chal-
cedonian definition of orthodoxy. After the reunion of the aposchists under Bishop
Martyrius around 482 he was expelled from Jerusalem along with Romanus and
other monks.11
However, difficulties remain with the hypothesis of Gerontius as author, since the
Life of Peter the Iberian attributed to John Rufus records that Gerontius himself had
told Peter that Melania had taken him as a child to live in her household while she
was still in Rome,12 while the Life is in fact somewhat hazy about the details of her
life before she came to Jerusalem. The manuscripts do not record the author’s iden-
tity, and the scholarly tradition identifying Gerontius seems to be based on the
instinct to assign authorship to a named person in the historical record wherever it
seems remotely plausible. Faced with the mismatch between the biographical data on
Gerontius and the internal evidence in the Life of Melania, however, we should
remember that founder’s lives were at least as likely to be written by someone else as
by the successor abbot himself. It may be wise, therefore, to return Melania’s biog-
rapher to anonymity. All we can safely say is that on the evidence of his prologue, he
spent many years at Melania’s side, was eyewitness to some of the events he
describes, and outlived Melania. The prologue also bears a dedication to a ‘holy
priest’13 who commissioned the work. While the scholarly tradition has assumed that
Abbot Gerontius produced the text at the request of his — or another — bishop, it is
equally possible that one of the Mount of Olives monks produced the text at the
request of Gerontius if he were a priest as well as abbot.
If the Life was produced by a Mount of Olives ascetic, its attitude to Melania’s
dead children may reflect genuine insensitivity to the cares of the married. Or there
may be something akin to sibling rivalry here, felt by Melania’s spriritual offspring
— the monks and nuns of the monasteries she founded — toward the blood heirs
8
Cyril of Scythopolis, The Lives of the Monks of Palestine, 67, 17 (Euthymius), trans. by
R. M. Price with an introduction and notes by John Binns (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publica-
tions, 1991), p. 64.
9
Joseph Patrich, Sabas, Leader of Palestinian Monasticism: A Comparative Study in
Eastern Monasticism, Fourth to Seventh Centuries (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks,
1995), pp. 10 and 289; Cyril, Lives, 62, 20 (Euthymius), trans. by Price, p. 59.
10
Patrich, Sabas, p. 287.
11
Cyril, Lives, 127, 19 (Sabas), trans. by Price, p. 136.
12
Gerontius, Life of Melania, trans. by Clark, p. 14, citing John Rufus, Life of Peter the
Iberian; cf. Gerontius, Vie Latine, ed. and trans. by Laurence, p. 119.
13
hiereu hosie (ed. by Gorce, Vie de Sainte Mélanie, p. 124).
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whose empty place they had filled. Two versions of the Life survive, preserved in
Greek and Latin respectively. In what follows, we will follow the Greek text, which
a consensus among modern scholarship posits as representing the earlier version of
the text. Finally, however, we will turn to ask whether the variations between the
Greek and Latin Lives can shed light on our problem. We will see that with regard to
the representation of Melania both as daughter and as foundress, the differences
between the Greek and Latin Lives are significant indeed.
Melania’s biographer is not without his idiosyncracies as a teller of her story in
other respects. If we compare the Life of Melania to the much briefer notice of Mela-
nia in the Lausiac History written by Palladius around 420, roughly two decades
before her death,14 a number of points become evident. Most striking is that while
Palladius saw Melania’s activities as ascetic and foundress as continuing a family
tradition established by her grandmother, the author of the Life, by contrast, writes
the saintly grandmother out of the picture altogether. Certainly the author of the later
Life would have known of Melania the Elder, the celebrated biblical scholar and
patroness, and (with Rufinus of Aquileia) foundress of the communities — one for
men and one for women — on the Mount of Olives where both ended their days,
respectively in 410 and 411. Indeed, as Palladius tells it, the younger Melania’s story
serves as an intermezzo between the two parts of her grandmother’s life.
The elision of Melania the Elder represents quite an achievement if the author of
the Life was writing from the Mount of Olives. Caroline Bammel and others have
argued that the elision of these predecessors constitutes a damnatio memoriae, pre-
sumably because of theological differences.15 It is also possible that the older estab-
lishments had failed to survive the deaths of Melania and Rufinus,16 and that the
failure to mention them reflects a polite reluctance to dwell on the older generation’s
failures. Finally, if the older foundations survived, rivalry between the foundations
of the grandmother and those of the granddaughter, or unwillingness on the part of
the younger institutions to acknowledge the seniority of the older establishments,
may have been in play.
14
The Lausiac History seems to have been written in 419 or 420; on the date, see Robert T.
Meyer, Palladius: The Lausiac History (New York: Newman Press, 1964), p. 7, and
Gerontius, Life of Melania, trans. by Clark, p. 92 n. 69.
15
Gerontius, Life of Melania, trans. by Clark, p. 89 n. 55, citing C. P. Hammond, ‘The Last
Ten Years of Rufinus’ Life and the Date of his Move South from Aquileia’, Journal of
Theological Studies, n.s., 28 (1977), 372–427 (p. 380 n. 3).
16
Gian Domenico Gordini, ‘Il monachesimo romano in Palestina nel IV secolo’, in Saint
Martin et son temps: memorial du XVIe centenaire des débuts du monachisme en Gaule, 361–
1961, Studia Anselmiana, 46 (Rome: Pontificium Institutum S. Anselmi, 1961), 85–107 (p.
88, citing V. Vaillhé, ‘Répertoire alphabétique des monastères de Palestine’, Revue de
l’Orient chrétien, 5 (1900), 19–48 (p. 30)), notes that no archaeological trace remains of
Melania and Rufinus’s foundations.
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16 KATE COOPER
The Ascetic Household
The present essay will attempt to understand why the Life of Melania places both
comparatively little emphasis on the saint as founder, and at the same time obfus-
cates the biological, economic, and social moorings which would allow us to ‘place’
her institutional experiments.17 What did it mean to join a monastery or ascetic
household in late antiquity? It was not new to be living together with a group. Nor
was it new to be living with a group across class boundaries. The cohabitation of
masters and (sometimes very numerous) slaves or other dependents was the norm in
antiquity, not the exception. What was unusual about the ascetic household was the
terms of engagement. The reconstitution of the household as an ascetic enterprise
opened possibilities for establishing a basis of government independent of — or at
least additional to — economic ownership of the premises.
It was the autonomous coenobium, given institutional continuity through adoption
of a monastic rule, which would be carried forward from late antiquity as a dominant
form in both Eastern and Western empires. In the West the monastery would play a
particularly important role in preserving cultural continuity across the far-reaching
political and social change that followed on the end of the Roman Empire and the
establishment of barbarian kingdoms. By the turn of the seventh century, ascetic
institutions had begun to gel into a recognizable pattern. Monks, as the Rule of St
Benedict put it, were those who followed a rule and an abbot. Obedience to a rule
stood as a general symbol of the community’s willingness to suspend the claims of
status that members might have carried with them from ‘the world’: obedience to an
abbot meant specifically that economic ownership was not the basis of authority.
Aristocratic families had a far more integral and interdependent role in the founda-
tion and maintenance of monasteries in the early medieval period than was acknowl-
edged in scholarship a generation ago,18 and it is clear that the fifth century was a
period of experimentation with different models of ascetic cohabitation. Still, by
reorganizing one of her estates under the authority of an abbot or abbess, a senatorial
landowner like Melania had taken the first step towards establishing the monastery
as an autonomous institution.
17
Lynda L. Coon, Sacred Fictions: Holy Women and Hagiography in Late Antiquity
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997), pp. 109–19, offers an interesting
discussion of the biographer’s ambivalence towards Melania’s wealth.
18
Among the landmark studies are K. J. Leyser, Rule and Conflict in an Early Medieval
Society: Ottonian Saxony (London: Edward Arnold, 1979); Barbara Rosenwein, To Be the
Neighbor of Saint Peter: The Social Meaning of Cluny’s Property, 900–1049 (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1989); Mayke de Jong, In Samuel’s Image: Child Oblation in the Early
Medieval West (Leiden: Brill, 1996); Pauline Stafford, ‘Queens and Nunneries in Anglo-Saxon
England’, Past and Present, 163 (1999), 3–35; John Nightingale, Monasteries and Patrons in
the Gorze Reform: Lotharingia c. 850–1000 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).
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What was at stake when early Christians talked about virginity and asceticism was
the social contract. Ascetic suspicion of the biological family reflected the ancient
tension between the family and the wider community, between private interest and
the common good.19 The real problem for proponents of asceticism was greed and
generosity, and how to tell whether a member of the community really held the
common good close to his or her heart. All of these ideas are linked to the question of
property relations and the transmission of property. But the ideological rejection of the
biological family did not always by any means result in practical rejection. Monas-
teries could and did function as an extension of the biological familia. It is well known
that male leaders of the ascetic movement frequently had a mother, a brother, or a
sister whom they cited as spiritual inspiration or collaborator. These allies among the
biological kindred were crucial to the success and longevity of ascetic initiatives.
Melania herself may well have acted the part of the ascetically minded heir with
respect to her grandmother, and her biographer allows that her mother, Albina, made
considerable efforts to support her project. Indeed, until the death of Albina in 431 or
432, Melania seems to have spent most of the year with her mother in the city centre
of Jerusalem when she was not travelling. Only in the last decade of her life did she
adopt the Mount of Olives — the site of her mother’s burial — as her own principal
residence and establish a community for virgins there.20 When Pinian died in 432, he
was buried alongside Albina, and a community for men followed in 435 or 436. The
death of her mother and husband seems to have triggered Melania’s final foundations.
In this sense the process begun by the death of her own children had come full circle.
Models of Ascetic Authority
Elizabeth Clark has argued that the Life of Melania is modelled on a literary theme
of identity transgression found in ancient romance.21 Whether pagan or Christian,
romance narratives took as their starting point the idea of an individual or pair of
characters suddenly displaced from the identity structure of city and family. So, for
example, the Ethiopian Tale of Heliodorus, written in Greek in the third or fourth
century, tells the story of an Ethiopian princess raised among the Greeks as a priest-
ess of the oracle of Delphi, who, when she reaches maturity, travels back to Africa to
19
Kate Cooper, ‘Insinuations of Womanly Influence: An Aspect of the Christianization of
the Roman Aristocracy’, Journal of Roman Studies, 82 (1992), 113–27.
20
Vita, 41.
21
Gerontius, Life of Melania, trans. by Clark, pp. 153–70; see also Kate Cooper, The
Virgin and the Bride: Idealized Womanhood in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1996), pp. 36–38, and David Konstan, Sexual Symmetry: Love in the Ancient
Novel and Related Genres (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994) pp. 226–31, for dis-
cussion of whether Hellenistic romance itself was a meditation on the problem of whether ‘the
individual’ can be extracted from ‘the group’.
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18 KATE COOPER
be reunited with her family. The third-century Pseudo-Clementine Romance explores

— from a Christian perspective — what happens when a young man from a good
Roman family comes into contact with a Christian apostle, and the role which his
mother Matthidia’s longing for family unity plays in the conversion of his family.22
The comparison to these legendary heroines is important for our understanding of
the context of attitudes to gender, family, and female agency which the author of the
Life would have taken as his starting point.
The Model of the Solitary
But it is equally important to consider Melania in light of the male models of ascetic
authority inherited by her biographer. A gap exists in the scholarly literature where
comparison between the Life of Melania the Younger and other contemporary
accounts celebrating founders of monastic institutions is concerned. Since these texts
were usually written by or at the request of an heir to the founder’s institutional
authority, the comparison should be valuable to an assessment of the biographer’s
context and motivation for writing. While a sustained assessment of this issue is be-
yond the scope of this essay, we will consider the two main narrative types for
ascetic biography that would have been available to a mid-fifth-century author, that
of Pachomius, the paradigmatic founder of a monastic instituion, and that of Antony,
the individualist hermit, suggesting that Melania’s story borrows more from the
latter type. Even though one might reasonably expect the Mount of Olives monks to
remember her as a foundress, her biographer places emphasis on her pursuit of the
solitary life.
By Melania’s time, the debate around kinds of ascetic virtue seems to have been
distilled into two ‘types’, exemplified by the two great Desert Fathers of Egypt,
Abba Antony and Abba Pachomius.23 Antony (d. 356) has often been referred to as
the father of asceticism, although this is untrue for a number of reasons: in the Life of
Antony, the ‘founder of monasticism’ places his sister ‘with a community of virgins’
before he embraces the ascetic life.24 But the Life of Antony, written by the fourth-
century Egyptian bishop Athanasius of Alexandria, was one of the most influential
texts of its day (in his Confessions, for example, St Augustine attributes his own
conversion to Christianity to the fact that a friend had visited him in Milan and told
him the story of Antony, whose Life he had recently read).
22
Kate Cooper, ‘Matthidia’s Wish: Division, Reunion, and the Early Christian Family in
the Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions’, in Narrativity in Biblical Studies, ed. by George J.
Brooke and Jean-Daniel Kaestli (Leuven: Peeters, 2000), pp. 243–64.
23
Abba is simply a title of respect meaning ‘father’; similarly, the great women of the
desert were called Amma or ‘mother’.
24
Athanasius, Life of Antony, 3 (English trans. by Robert C. Gregg, Athanasius: The Life of
Antony and the Letter to Marcellinus (London: S.P.C.K., 1980), pp. 31–32).
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Athanasius’s Life of Antony begins with Antony as a rich young man from a
Christian family, left as the guardian of his sister after the death of both parents. One
day in church Antony hears Chapter 19 of the Gospel of Matthew read aloud, in
which a rich young man who asks Jesus how he can become perfect is told, ‘If you
wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and
you will have treasure in heaven; then, come follow me’ (Matthew 19. 21). On hear-
ing this, Antony settles his sister with the local community of virgins, though we are
given no indication of whether this represented a concern for her own spiritual life or
whether the community was simply being used as an orphanage. Then he disposes of
his inheritance and strikes off into the desert to try to live the ascetic life. This means
first apprenticing himself under various old men who have gone before him, and
finally withdrawing alone to a mountain to do battle with the demons who are sent to
tempt him. For our purposes, the important points here are, first, that the death of his
parents — which may imply the attainment of sui iuris status — is the turning point
in Antony’s path to ascetic commitment and, second, that in order to fulfil this
commitment he must free himself from responsibility for his sister.
There are two further points that it is particularly important to notice. The first —
a very different emphasis from what we will see in a moment in the case of Pacho-
mius — is that, as Athanasius tells the story, when Antony attempts to attain spiritual
advancement, he feels compelled to strike out alone rather than staying close to the
elders from whom he had learned the ascetic way of life.25 The solitary life is pre-
sented as representing the ascetic ideal. Secondly, and in some ways more impor-
tantly, Athanasius clearly sees Antony’s body as one of the pitches on which his
demonic enemies line themselves up to battle against him. This is very different
from a rejection or devaluation of the body per se.26 We are very far here from a
dualistic vision of the body as evil matter dragging the spirit downwards away from
the light and into the darkness. Rather, the holy man’s body is a vehicle through
which his spirit can be tested, but a vehicle that in and of itself is part of God’s
creation and, in this sense, a force for good even as the saint wrestles with it. Athana-
sius’s theme of striking out in solitude would stand as a compelling model for later
ascetics and their biographers. Indeed, a figure such as Melania, who seems never to
have travelled without an entourage, could be assimilated to the model of the heroic
solitary. Thus the emphasis on Melania’s rejection of her reproductive role, on her
choice to embrace unusually harsh physical conditions, and on the long periods
which she spent in isolation as a solitary.
25
From the Greek word eremos, or desert, this solitary way of life comes in English to be
known as eremetism and its practitioner as a hermit.
26
Peter Brown’s evocative chapter on the Desert Fathers in his The Body and Society:
Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia Univer-
sity Press, 1988), ch. 11, pp. 215–40, which discusses at length the practices of bodily self-
mortification of the Egyptian monks, should not be misunderstood on this point. The mortifi-
cation of the body was understood as a way of combating the demons who besieged the monk
through the body, not of combating the body itself.
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20 KATE COOPER
The Model of the Founder
By contrast Antony’s slightly younger contemporary, Abba Pachomius, was remem-

bered, after his death in 347, as a comparably iconic figure where coenobitic life was
concerned. (This mode of ascetic life drew its name from the Greek coenobium, the
residential ascetic community.) His foundations were the first great monasteries of
Egypt and though he founded both male and female communities, his signal contri-
bution seems to have been that of offering men a communal life similar to that
traditionally enjoyed by women under the protection of the Church. It is not clear
how self-consciously Pachomius and the men who joined his male communities saw
themselves as modelling their common life on the ancient communalism of the
virgins and widows of the Church.
Leadership in these communities was ideally based in ascetic expertise rather than
economic ownership. But this was not always successful, a point which is reflected
in the Life of Pachomius himself, in which one of the benefactors of the Pachomian
community of monasteries, Petronius, who had begun living in an ascetic commu-
nity founded on his own privately owned land, joins the community and is fast-
tracked into a management position despite his comparative inexperience in the
ascetic life.27 (Indeed, at Pachomius’s death and on his recommendation, Petronius
became the second abbot of the community.) Because of the survival of papyrus
sources for that region, it is possible to deduce from tax and other records that a
monastery such as that of Pachomius at Tabennisi had become a major regional
landowner within a generation of its founder’s death.28
Our reading of the Life of Melania should attempt to account for why, if its author
was indeed a member of the Mount of Olives community, he did not place greater
emphasis on Melania’s role as founder. Certainly the issue of institutional autonomy
would have been a problem facing his own institution; perhaps this is a motivating
factor in his discussion of the challenges to Melania and Pinian’s inheritance. But
there are some anomalies. First, it is noticeable that Melania’s biographer makes no
mention of a rule being adopted by her communities. Further, the institutional
27
Robin Lane Fox, ‘Power and Possession in the First Monasteries’, in Aspects of the
Fourth Century A.D., ed. by H. W. Pleket and A. M. F. W. Verhoogt (Leiden: AGAPE, 1997),
pp. 68–95 (p. 69). Philip Rousseau, Pachomius: The Making of a Community in Fourth
Century Egypt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985; updated edn, 1999) remains
invaluable as an introduction to the Pachomian tradition.
28
Lane Fox, ‘Power and Possession’, p. 71, citing E. Wipszycka, ‘Les terres de la congre-
gation pachomienne dans une liste de payements pour les Apora’, in Le monde grec:
hommages à Claire Préaux, ed. by Jean Bingen and others (Brussels: Éditions de l’Université
de Bruxelles, 1975), pp. 625–36, with discussion of subsequent scholarship. See also
G. Gould, ‘Basil of Caesarea and the Problem of the Wealth of Monasteries’, in The Church
and Wealth, ed. by W. Sheils and D. Woods, Studies in Church History, 24 (Oxford:
Blackwell for the Ecclesiastical History Society, 1987), pp. 15–24.
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arrangements within Melania’s communities receive far less emphasis than they
might. Melania herself is presented rather as an aspiring solitary than as the founder
of an enduring institution.
The reasons can only be guessed at. Part of the problem may have been that the
Pachomian model carried with it the not entirely edifying figure of Petronius the
enthusiastic benefactor, a figure perhaps too close to Melania for comfort. Another
possibility is, of course, that some point of doctrinal or other tension was being
finessed, reflecting perhaps the same circumstances as those which led her relation-
ship to her biological family to be portrayed in a negative light. Finally, it may be
that the biographer is attempting to mediate anxieties around the issue of female
authority. But looking forward to the late sixth century, an intruiging comparison is
possible with the two Lives of Radegund of Poitiers (d. 587). John Kitchen has
argued that the narrative differences between the two texts, one written by the cleric
Venantius Fortunatus and the other by Baudonivia, a sister of Radegund’s monastery
of the Holy Cross, can be accounted for by the differing situations of the two writers
with respect to Radegund’s foundation, with Baudonivia working to harness the
memory of the foundress to foster the monastery’s continuation, while Venantius
portrays the foundress with reference to the hagiographical ‘type’ of the holy Bishop
Martin of Tours.29 Kitchen’s work suggests that in the case of Radegund gender
anxiety per se is not at the root of the differing treatments of Radegund offered by
her male and female biographers. Rather, the crucial issue is the writer’s position
vis-à-vis an institutional memory of the foundress and her authority.
In the last part of the present essay, we will return briefly to look for the elements
of institutional memory which were so central to the monastic biographers of
Pachomius and Radegund in the two versions of the Life of Melania. We will ask
whether, in the case of Melania, what drives the concessive representation of her ties
to the biological family is an equal and opposite desire to claim her memory on
behalf of her monastic foundations, or whether what might be called a ‘weak’
treatment of the saint’s biological ties stands in parallel to an equally concessive or
‘weak’ treatment of her institutional position. Before turning to the comparison,
however, we will try to understand more clearly how the Greek (i.e. earlier) version
of the Life represents Melania’s relationship to her biological family, especially with
regard to her roles as daughter and as materfamilias.
Melania as Materfamilias
The structure of the Roman household holds some surprises for those not familiar
with it. The first is that a woman in Roman law was not dependent on her husband in
the way that she would have been in England in the nineteenth century. What legal
29
John Kitchen, Saints’ Lives and the Rhetoric of Gender: Male and Female in Merovin-
gian Hagiography (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 147–50.
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22 KATE COOPER
dependence she experienced was normally focused on her father, to whose familia
she belonged whatever her marital status. (In cases where the paternal grandfather
was still living, legal dependence could in fact focus on the grandfather rather than
the father, but this was rare.) In practice, sui iuris status was often conferred well
before the father’s death, through the ritual of emancipatio. If the father was alive
and the daughter was still under patria potestas she could be granted a peculium, an
expense account to manage on her own behalf, though ownership remained in the
father’s name. In the later empire, a Roman woman would usually on the death of
her father be sui iuris — able to act as an independent entity, rather than an appen-
dage of her father, in legal matters — though up to the early fourth century she was
subject to the appointment of a guardian, even if she was an adult.30 Throughout the
Roman period both men and women were subject to guardianship up to twenty-five,
the age of majority.31
Since primogeniture was unknown to the Romans, Roman law required that each
daughter must have her share if there was property in the family. Each child had a
right by law to the share of piety, as it was called, which represented at minimum a
quarter of what would be due if the estate were split equally among legitimate
offspring.32 In circles such as Melania’s, the estate in question would have been
comparable to the assets of a modern multinational corporation, and if she was an
only child, as there is reason to believe, piety would thus have assigned her at mini-
mum a quarter of the estate of each of her parents.33
30
Antti Arjava, Women and Law in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), p.
118, suggests that tutela mulierum disappeared in the 320s.
31
The age of majority seems to have been twenty-five from the early third century (Arjava,
Women and Law, p. 116), but at eighteen and twenty respectively, women and men could
request venia aetatis, a personally granted majority (pp. 117–18). At p. 115, Arjava notes that
even the ius trium liberorum did not exempt women from guardianship during their minority;
at p. 143 he notes that a law of Constantine that exempted married women from tutela was
repealed by Julian in 362.
32
Richard P. Saller, ‘Pietas, Obligation and Authority in the Roman Family’, in Alte
Geschichte und Wissenschaftsgeschichte: Festschrift für Karl Christ, ed. by Peter Kniessl and
Volker Losemann (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1988), pp. 393–410;
Richard P. Saller, Patriarchy, Property, and Death in the Roman Family (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1994).
33
Gerontius, Vie Latine, ed. and trans. by Laurence, pp. 178–79 n. 7, gives an overview of
debates surrounding the possibility of other siblings for Melania, but concludes that the
fragmentary evidence of their existence is not compelling. Gerontius, Vie de Sainte Mélanie,
ed. by Gorce, pp. 150–51 n. 3, suggests that the only substantial evidence for the existence of
siblings, the reference at VG 12 to Publicola’s desire to ‘take [Melania and Pinian’s] property
and hand it tois allois teknois’ (ed. by Gorce, Vie de Sainte Mélanie, p. 150; trans. by Clark,
Life of Melania, p. 36) should not be read as evidence that Publicola had other children, but
rather that he had in view other possible heirs.
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Important for our purposes, however, is the fact that, from the mid-fourth century,
gifts from parents to children could be recovered ‘if it could be proved that the
children had not shown proper pietas toward them’.34 This means that while the
officium pietatis meant that children could take action to retrieve the inheritance
which piety required their parents assign to them, it also meant that children who
themselves failed in piety could be cut off, even retrospectively. The reciprocal
obligations of parents and children were based in the ideology of pietas, and in many
instances these obligations were void where it could be demonstrated that either
party — but especially the child — had failed in this virtue.
Reciprocal pietas between children and parents, not the concordia of the conjugal
unit, stood at the centre of the Roman ideology of the household. Although the
husband had de facto responsibility and authority in the domus, the wife remained
independent of him juridically. When a daughter married, a dowry would pass from
her father to her husband, to be administered by him on her behalf. But she retained
ownership and it was kept distinct from the individual property of both husband and
wife, to be returned to her in the event of divorce or widowhood. The important
point where husbands and wives are concerned is that the establishment of the
materfamilias and that of her husband were distinct; the husband did not control that
of the wife. Even the term materfamilias, a much-misunderstood term, did not
depend on marital status, at least in late antiquity. If we follow Ulpian, it referred to
one of two kinds of exemplary woman. The first was the female head of household, a
woman who lived as the senior representative of her own (i.e. her father’s) familia,
holding her own property and managing her own business, whether she was married
to a paterfamilias or not.35 The second, wider definition was a woman of honorable
character. It was not necessary to be wife or mother to attain this status.
Christian emphasis on the inclusion of the wife as part of the husband’s household
must be read as an innovation in the Roman context. There is in late Roman law no
direct equivalent of the passing of mundium from father to husband in Germanic law,
and no ideological equivalent of the Chiristian emphasis on the marriage pair as the
paradigmatic fida societas.36 But at the same time that Christian bishops were en-
couraging the faithful to stop reproducing, they were also asking women to reassign
34
Arjava, Women and Law, p. 85.
35
Richard P. Saller, ‘Pater familias, mater familias, and the Gendered Semantics of the
Roman Household’, Classical Philology, 94.2 (1991), 182–97 (p. 194), notes that while Pauli
Festus opined that to be a materfamilias a woman must be married to a paterfamilias, the early
third-century jurist Ulpian argued that materfamilias should be defined either as a woman sui
iuris irrespective of marital status, or more broadly as a woman of honorable character. See
also Susan Treggiari, Roman Marriage: Iusti Coniuges from the Time of Cicero to the Time of
Ulpian (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), pp. 35 and 280.
36
Cooper, ‘Insinuations of Womanly Influence’, pp. 158–59, citing Augustine, Letter 262,
although the ideology of homonoia or concordia between marriage partners reached back as
far as the Odyssey.
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24 KATE COOPER
their domestic allegiance from father to husband. Whether the rise of asceticism was
a cause or an effect of this development remains an open question.
The juridical lack of interdependence between husband and wife has important
implications for our reading of Melania’s story. To begin with, it explains why it was
so important that Melania fulfil her parents’ wishes. One motivation may have been
that of inheritance. At death, her parents were only legally bound to accord her the
‘share of piety’. Her biographer may have been indulging in an obvious untruth
when he claimed that Melania craved poverty, if poverty was to be defined as a lack
of economic means. Parental consent in this case would be necessitated by a desire
to keep the parents from disinheriting her, even if her intent was then to channel the
inheritance to the Church. Even the ‘share of piety’ could not be claimed from the
parents’ estate if it could be shown that her conduct towards her parents had been
impious, and refusal to marry or to bear children, unless she had her parents’ permis-
sion, would have been impious indeed.
If Melania was not emancipated at the time of her marriage, her father controlled
her finances, even if a peculium was assigned to her. The parents would still have
had something like control if she was emancipated at the time of her marriage, but
her source of funds derived from (revocable) parental gifts rather than from another
source not controlled by her parents. Since she was a minor until after her father’s
death, she would have had a guardian even if she was sui iuris and had inherited
substantial wealth from an (unnamed) party other than her parents. While she was a
minor, the parents while living and her guardian afterwards would have had recourse
to the praefectus urbi, who acted as judge for disputes involving the guardianship of
minors of the senatorial class, if it was felt that she was mismanaging her affairs.37
In any case, economic or legal dependence provides the context for the biog-
rapher’s emphasis on the death of Melania’s father, Publicola. Whether Melania was
significantly wealthier than Pinian is not absolutely certain, since the Life seems
intentionally to conflate the two fortunes.38 But it is clear that the couple’s dedication
to the ascetic life, and subsequent foundation of monasteries, depended on the inheri-
tance bequeathed to her by her father’s death.
37
See André Chastagnol, La prefecture urbaine à Rome sous le Bas-Empire (Paris: Presses
Universitaires de France, 1960), pp. 113–15. There may be confusion reflected in VL 34, 3 (cf.
VG 19) when reference is made to a praefectus urbi who had tried to confiscate their goods.
Laurence (Gerontius, Vie Latine, p. 215 n. 5) argues on the basis of Codex Iustiniani X.15 that
the introduction of confiscation to the fisc into this episode must mean that a criminal case had
been brought against Melania and Pinian. The episode may also, however, reflect a muddled
transmission of the episode in which the prefect ruled in a case involving the disinheritance of
impious minors.
38
At VG 15 there is a discussion of Pinian’s report to the biographer of his own wealth,
‘not counting his wife’s fortune’ (ed. by Gorce, Vie de Sainte Mélanie, pp. 156–58; trans. by
Clark, Life of Melania, p. 38) and annual rents collected, which leads directly into a discussion
of ‘their’ benefactions.
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They heard these words with much joy. Right away they felt free from fear; they left the
great city of Rome and went to her suburban property where they devoted themselves
to training in the practice of the virtues. They clearly recognised that it was impossible
for them to offer pure worship to God unless they made themselves enemies to the
confusions of secular life, just as it is written, ‘Hear, daughter, and see; turn your ear
and forget your people and your father’s house, and the king will desire your beauty’.39
Her father’s blessing meant that his death brought Melania not only accession to a
sizable inheritance and the scope to act as a patroness in her own right, but also,
perhaps more importantly, the security that a charge of impiety would not be brought
on his behalf.
Some confusion comes into the picture through the biographer’s handling of the
episode in which Severus, the brother of Pinian, seems to have urged their slaves to
approach the holy pair, asking that if they were planning to sell off the slaves, they
should sell them (presumably at a discount) to Severus, rather than getting the best
price on the open market and offering it to the Church (VG 10–12). The biographer
interprets this action as part of a wider scheme by ‘their senatorial relatives’ to ‘make
themselves richer’ by arguing that one or both of the pair was unfit as an heir.40
The text continues with what might be characterized as a pious spending spree,
with the holy couple giving away funds and properties to Christian causes across the
empire, from Spain to Mesopotamia. After Alaric’s sack of Rome, the two arrived on
the shores of North Africa (another major concentration of their estates), where the
local bishops — none other than Augustine of Hippo and his colleagues Alypius of
Thagaste and Aurelius of Carthage — helpfully suggest that their benefaction pro-
gramme needs to become more strategic, saying: ‘“The money that you now furnish
39
VG 7 (ed. by Gorce, Vie de Sainte Mélanie, pp. 138, 140; trans. by Clark, Life of
Melania, p. 31).
40
Here the biographer loops back to discuss grievances from the period before the death of
Melania’s father. Unhelpfully, he discusses the two families as if they were one, shifting back
and forth in Section 12 between discussion of Pinian’s brother, Severus, and Melania’s father,
‘who had completely prevented them from associating with the saints’, and ‘who had
committed a great sin under pretext of good’. Gorce’s translation seems unnecessarily to
muddy the waters even further, by referring to ‘leur père (their father)’ and ‘sa père (her
father)’ in turn, when the Greek has ‘the father’ and ‘her father’, and in context clearly intends
Melania’s father, Publicola: VG 12 (ed. by Gorce, Vie de Sainte Mélanie, pp. 150–51). It is
this last, Melania’s father, of whom ‘it was suspected that he wanted to take their possessions
and give them to the other children, because he was eager to hinder them from their heavenly
project, as we related earlier’: VG, 12 (ed. by Gorce, Vie de Sainte Mélanie, p. 150; trans. by
Clark, Life of Melania, p. 36). Having visited the augusta Serena, sister of the Emperor Hono-
rius, the two are given an imperial guarantee that their desire to dispose of their property will
not be interfered with. It is likely that the relatives’ right to interfere had its basis in the pair’s
underage status, but the biographer gives no specifics regarding the legal basis of Severus’s
challenge to Pinian, or why Melania’s father, who had died three years earlier in 405, was
brought into the episode.
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26 KATE COOPER
to monasteries will be used up in a short time. If you wish to have a memorial for-
ever in heaven and on earth, give both a house and an income to each monastery.”’41
But no great interest is shown in the details. Melania’s own ascetic practice is
subsequently conflated with her foundation of monastic establishements, a narrative
strategy which obscures the question of the economic and institutional basis of her
benefactions.
They also constructed two large monasteries there [in Thagaste, North Africa], provid-
ing them with an independent income. One was inhabited by eighty holy men, the
other by 130 virgins [. . .]. Then after that she began to mortify her body with strenu-
ous fasting [. . .] it was only on Saturday and Sunday that she ate some moldy bread.
She was zealous to surpass everyone in asceticism.42
We see in Chapter 19 that reports circulated years later among the clergy in Constan-
tinople that Melania and Pinian were at this period buying up islands and other sites
in order to make them over to the monks and virgins who wished to live there, but
the details are passed over.43
More than once, Melania is portrayed as ‘giving away all her property’ or ‘assign-
ing authority to another’ so that she can be divested of responsibility and power, only
to reappear in the next episode with a full purse and full authority — though in the
context of yet another of her properties. The confusion can be explained on the theory
that Melania and Pinian were travelling across the empire with a view to personally
supervising the liquidation of their estates.44 But even at the very end of their iter from
Rome to North Africa to Jerusalem, new sources of funds appear after her resources
had already been exhausted, sufficient to undertake substantial new building pro-
grammes, including the establishment of the biographer’s own monastery.45 Melania,
it seems, could never fully extricate herself from property ownership.
Melania’s ascetic practice, in turn, does not straightforwardly reflect a ‘retreat from
the world’, whatever the exertions of her biographer. What we witness in the Life of
Melania is a continuous career in estate management, with the later phase of reor-
41
VG 20 (ed. by Gorce, Vie de Sainte Mélanie, p. 170; trans. by Clark, Life of Melania,
p. 43).
42
Melania, p. 44).
43
VG 19; VL 19, 3.
44
Paul Allard, ‘Une grande fortune romaine au cinquième siècle’, Revue des questions
historiques, 81 (1907), 5–30, explores the practical difficulties involved in dissolving an
economic empire as far-reaching as Melania’s.
45
The dismissive reference to the arrival of late funds from the earlier sale of goods in
Spain cannot account for the funding of the substantial building programme in Jerusalem.
However, it is possible that new resources became available by bequest as the older generation
died off. It may be more than a coincidence, for example, that Albina’s death immediately
precedes the foundation of the first Jerusalem monastery.
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ganization of the estates even more strategically complex than the initial phase as a
traditional Roman senatorial landowner. What changes, of course, is the ideological
basis of participation by the dependents on the estates, from biological kinship and
economic ownership to shared ascetic intention. If it is obvious that a number of
Melania’s estates were reorganized along ascetic lines, this would not have changed
her role as materfamilias. If we look, for example, at Melania’s older contemporary
Macrina, we see that re-establishing a household as a monastery could have little or
no impact on the structure of responsibility or authority within the estate; rather, in
Macrina’s case, it seems fundamentally to have consisted more or less in a new layer
of strictures imposed on the dependents living under her roof.46 If one looks at the
virgins and widows of the Aventine in Macrina’s generation — made famous by their
correspondence with St Jerome — we can similarly see that what distinguishes the
ascetic household is largely in the self-understanding of its inhabitants.47 In this sense,
they should be compared to Petronius before he joined the Pachomian community.
Jerome’s well-known Letter 22 to Eustochium reflects a situation in which the
ascetic ladies of the Aventine were practicing an informal urban asceticism, with a
reinterpretation of daily rituals and the moral instruction of female servants the
decisive element. These ‘household monasteries’ rarely seem to have outlived their
founders, or if they did, it was because ascetically minded biological heirs were
waiting in the wings. After Paula’s death in 404, for example, the monastic enter-
prise of Jerome and Paula in Bethlehem was taken over first by Paula’s daughter
Eustochium, and then after Eustochium’s death in 418, by Paula the Younger, the
daughter of Toxotius, Paula’s son who had remained in Rome as a married aristocrat
according to the more venerable traditions of the senatorial aristocracy.48
But this, of course, was where Melania tried to differ from her peers. In the case
of Melania and Pinian, there were no surviving children, and there seem to have
been no ascetically minded nieces and nephews. (This may well be why both ver-
sions of the Life give so much attention to the hostile attitude of Pinian’s siblings.)
But the Life suggests that Melania anticipated the problem. We have seen that in the
Life’s Chapter 22 the communities in Thagaste were provided with an independent
income (p. 26 above), which would have required that they be established as
corporate entities distinct from the private property of their founder. Similarly, the
career of Gerontius himself as abbot of Melania’s monasteries on the Mount of
46
Philip Rousseau, ‘The Pious Household and the Virgin Chorus: Reflections on Gregory
of Nyssa’s Life of Macrina’, Journal of Early Christian Studies, 13.2 (2005), 165–86; see also
Raymond Van Dam, Families and Friends in Late Roman Cappadocia (Philadelphia: Univer-
sity of Pennsylvania Press, 2003).
47
The women friends of St Jerome should be seen as his patronesses, not his protegées. See
now Anne N. Kurdock, ‘The Anician Women: Patronage and Dynastic Strategy in a Late Roman
Domus, 350 CE–600 CE’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Manchester, 2003).
48
On the dates for Paula, Eustochium, and Paula the Younger, see Gordini, ‘Il monache-
simo’, p. 100.
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28 KATE COOPER
Olives after her death — even if he was not the author of the Life of Melania — was
living proof that Melania’s community in Jerusalem was organized institutionally in
a way robust enough to survive the death of founder and patroness.
Melania the Younger and the Problem of the Ascetic Founder
With this issue of the institutional afterlife in mind, we will conclude by turning to
the problem of the difference between the Greek and Latin versions of the Life of
Melania. An initial census of the divergences between the Greek Life, understood by
scholars to represent the more faithful of the two versions to a lost original, and the
revised version of the Life now preserved in Latin suggests that the tension between
biological family and monastic institution was a factor in motivating the production
of the second version.49
A recent study by Patrick Laurence suggests that the Latin version, longer than
the Greek, includes interpolations emphasizing Melania’s link to Roman traditions,
both liturgical and senatorial.50 But where the issue of household and monastery is
concerned, we see that the Latin version represents a half-step away from the cozy
representation of Melania and the female network of friends and relations that
included her mother Albina, her niece Paula the younger of Bethlehem, and the
Empresses Serena and Eudokia. We have seen, for example, that in the Greek Life,
pointed attention is given not only to Melania’s need to win the approval of her
father, Publicola, but also to her mother Albina’s approval of, and participation in,
Melania’s monastic venture. The Latin Life, by contrast, makes a number of modest
additions and subtractions which, viewed as a whole, tend to play down Albina’s
centrality to Melania’s enterprise. In Chapter 37 of the Greek Life, for example,
Melania asks her mother to build her a cell, while the Latin suppresses the episode.
In Chapter 25, where the Greek Life recounts Albina’s hard-won success in convinc-
ing Melania to give up fasting during the feast of Easter, Albina in the Latin version
is joined in her efforts by Pinian and ‘all the holy men’ (sanctis omnibus viris).51
In one instance, the Latin Life seems to offer a context for Albina’s participation
in Melania’s ascetic project that is missing in the Greek. Chapter 33 of the Greek
49
Whether the Latin version was originally a translation or whether it represents a later
translation of a revised Life initially produced in Greek is not important for the argument.
50
Gerontius, Vie Latine, ed. and trans. by Laurence, p. 139: unveiling in the presence of
the empress (VL 11, 5), prohibiton of senatorial daughters drinking wine (VL 22, 3), reference
to the pope as the ‘prince among bishops’ (VL 44, 2), daily communion (VL 62, 7), and the
celebration of Christmas on December 25 (VL 63, 3); Laurence however notes that this Roman
practice seems to have been introduced to Jerusalem by Bishop Juvenal, between 422 and 439.
To these examples I would add the Roman custom of communion at death (VL 68, 5).
51
VL 25, 5–7 (ed. and trans. by Laurence, Vie Latine, p. 202).
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Life gives the following account of the relationship between daughter and mother,
once they had settled into an ascetic routine on the Mount of Olives:
And sometimes when her mother, full of compassion for her daughter, went to enter
Melania’s little cell when she was writing or reading, Melania would not even recog-
nise her or speak to her until she finished her usual office. Then she would speak to her
as much as was necessary. Albina, embracing Melania in such a manner, said amid
tears, ‘I trust that I, too, have a share in your sufferings, my child. For if the mother of
the seven Maccabean children, who in a single hour saw the tortures of her sons, had
eternal joy with them, how is it not that I, who have been more tortured every day than
she was, will have that joy, when I see you thus wearing yourself out and never giving
yourself any pause from such labours?’ And again Albina said, ‘I thank God that I
have received a daughter such as this from the Lord, unworthy as I am.’52
Melania is here ‘transposed’ in identification, from the position of the grieving
mother (hers by right as having lost two children of her own) to that of one of Han-
nah’s seven martyred sons. Melania’s biographer would certainly have been aware
of the significant fifth-century cult of Hannah, mother of the Maccabees.53 But the
Latin Life goes one step further, revising Albina’s reference to Melania’s ‘labours’,
referring to her ‘great martyrdom’ (magnum martyrium).54 The Latin translator may
correctly have imagined that Albina’s comment reflected a specifically Roman
tradition of devotional interest in the Jewish heroine Hannah as a model of Christian
martyrdom. Other sources linked to the city of Rome, such as the Liber ad Grego-
riam and the passiones of Felicitas and Symphorosa, make a similar link between
Hannah, Christian martyrdom, and post-Constantinian devotional practice.55
Laurence has also noted that the Latin text shows less enthusiasm for the Empress
Eudokia than does the Greek.56 While Laurence has rightly called attention to the
suspicion that may have attached to Eudokia’s name — especially in the West —
because of her support for the Monophysite cause, there may also be reflected here a
52
Melania, pp. 49–50).
53
Martha Vinson, ‘Gregory Nazianzen’s Homily 15 and the Genesis of the Christian Cult
of the Maccabean Martyrs’, Byzantion, 64 (1994), 166–92.
54
VL 33, 4 (ed. and trans. by Laurence, Vie Latine, p. 212).
55
Kate Cooper, ‘Concord and Martyrdom: Gender, Community, and the Uses of Christian
Perfection in Late Antiquity’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Princeton University, 1993),
p. 264. See also the appendix on Latin sermons on the Maccabees provided by A. Chavasse,
‘Le sermon prononcé par Léon le grand pour l’anniversaire d’un dédicace’, Revue Béné-
dictine, 91 (1981), 46–104 (101–04).
56
Gerontius, Vie Latine, ed. and trans. by Laurence, p. 139. To Laurence’s comments I
would add, for example, the comparison of the Latin and Greek versions of 58, 4 where Eudo-
kia’s statement in the Greek that one of her principal motivations in visiting the Holy Land
had been ‘to see my mother [Melania]’ is diluted by paraphrase.
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30 KATE COOPER
more fundamental discomfort with the unpredictability of lay and especially imperial
authority. One can see reflected in the treatment of Eudokia a concern for institu-
tional authority and continuity within Melania’s own foundations. The prime exam-
ple here is a curious reference in Chapter 65, 5 of the Latin Life to Eudokia’s attempt
to lure one of Melania’s virgins away from the Mount of Olives, which leads to a
post-mortem apparition by a jealous Melania. But it is worth noting that the episode
is brought forward as part of a more sustained discussion, missing from the Greek
Life, of Melania’s instructions to the Jerusalem virgins for maintating order after her
death and the post-mortem visitations by which she guides them when they stray.
With these elements, we see the editor of the Latin Life moving closer to the institu-
tional concerns of other founders’ Lives.
At the same time, it can also be said that the Latin version’s interpolations under-
line Melania’s cooperation with episcopal authority, for example in Chapter 36, 3,
where her deference to bishops is emphasized, or the scene in Chapter 68, 6 where
she kisses the bishop’s hand while on her deathbed. The Latin emphasis on Mela-
nia’s episcopal authority may perhaps be linked to its failure to join the Greek
version in celebrating her efforts to combat Nestorianism during her visit to Constan-
tinople in the winter of 436/7. Even though Nestorianism was condemned as a
heresy at Ephesus in 431, if the Life was written after Chalcedon too much emphasis
on anti-Nestorian efforts could sound too sympathetic to what by then had become
the Monophysite heresy. Indeed, these alterations to the text could have represented
an effort to distance Melania from her successor Gerontius, known to have broken
with Bishop Juvenal over precisely this point.
Although the divergences noted are certainly evocative, many questions remain to
be asked. First is the question of language. Was the interpolated version of the Life
produced in Latin, or is its transmission in Latin a historical accident, reflecting the
simple fact that it was the version available at the time of translation? Or does its
stronger interest in monastic institutions mean that it would have had a greater op-
portunity for circulation along the monastic networks that fostered the circulation of
texts? It should be remembered that, in addition to the opposition between biological
and monastic ‘families’, another tension was at work in the case of Melania’s Mount
of Olives foundations. This was the often fraught relationship between monasteries
and their bishops. The death of Melania the Younger took place only a decade before
Chalcedon, the council at which both theological and organizational decisions were
taken that would have far-reaching implications for the Palestinian monasteries. In
this sense, the Mount of Olives communities were part of a generation marked by
episcopal and monastic improvisation in the face of new conciliar directives.
Where polity was concerned, the most significant outcome of Chalcedon was its
resolution that monasteries should be brought under the authority of the bishop
within whose diocese they found themselves, even though — or perhaps because —
they might be linked to alternate networks of power, patronage, and authority. Where
theology was concerned, the result of Chalcedon was a deeply painful schism be-
tween Chalcedonian and Monophysite theologies. The schism undermined political
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unity both between the Eastern and Western Empires and among the Eastern
provinces. Although the East-West repercussions of the schism would be more or
less settled in the early sixth century, the divisions within the Eastern Empire were
never resolved.
Naturally, polity influenced the consequences of theological choices. We know
from the sixth-century writer Cyril of Scythopolis that Gerontius rejected the Chal-
cedonian theology, and that although he had been appointed as archimandrite
overseeing the monasteries of Jerusalem, he was eventually excommunicated for his
theological views. According to Cyril’s Lives of the Monks of Palestine, completed
after 558,57 Gerontius is last seen in the mid-480s, wandering ‘hither and thither’
after being expelled from his monasteries, and dying excommunicate.58 Had it not
been for the Chalcedonian integration of monasteries under episcopal authority, he
might have expected to live out a comfortable if ascetic old age as abbot. We have
suggested above that the more bishop-friendly Latin Life may have been intended to
distance Melania’s memory from that of her controversial successor; equally it may
have been designed to reinforce relations between the Mount of Olives communities
and their Western allies.
Further textual study of the Greek and Latin versions of the Life of Melania may
shed light on how Gerontius and others attached to the Mount of Olives foundations
attempted to navigate through the stormy aftermath of Chalcedon. Thanks not only
to the theological controversies of the fifth and sixth centuries, but also the Persian
and Arab conquests of the seventh, Jerusalem did not offer fertile ground for institu-
tional continuity. In the absence of an archaeological record and since there is no
evidence for survival or even memory of the Mount of Olives monasteries after the
time of Cyril of Scythopolis, it seems likely that they foundered eventually, although
how and when is unknown. If the Life of Melania was written — or revised — in an
attempt to consolidate the memory of Melania in order to assist the Mount of Olives
communities in surviving the death of their founder, it may have failed in its mis-
sion. Where the fate of the Mount of Olives was concerned, Melania perhaps needed
her long-dead children, or a like-minded niece, far more than she needed a biog-
rapher. In the fifth century, even a monastic founder had use for a biological heir.
There is certainly still be more to be discovered from revisiting the Life’s account
of aristocratic — especially female — networks of lay patronage, an area of inquiry
developed by Elizabeth Clark in the 1980s. If Melania’s spiritual genealogy reached
back to her grandmother, it reached forward to the patrician women of sixth-century
Constantinople such as Anastasia and Anicia Juliana, a group whose contribution to
ecclesiastical politics has yet fully to be understood although it is recorded by Cyril
of Scythopolis and others. Fragmentary evidence of these networks can also be
57
John Binns, ‘Introduction’, in Cyril, Lives, p. xi.
58
Cyril, Lives, 67, 14–20 (Euthymius), trans. by Price, p. 64; see also Patrich, Sabas, pp.
9–10.
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32 KATE COOPER
found in other lives, such as John Rufus’s Lives of Peter the Iberian59 and Severus of
Antioch,60 or the little-understood letters of the sixth-century Collectio Avellana,61
and a census remains an urgent desideratum.
Neither of the suggested lines of inquiry, however, is likely to produce definitive
answers. We are left, finally with the enigma of the two Lives of Melania. It can be
said that the saint herself seems to have failed in establishing an institution that
would survive the end of antiquity, and that her biographer seems to have failed in
an attempt to safeguard her legacy. But what he succeeded in is valuable in its own
right, in that he captured for posterity the experimental quality of a crucial moment
in the history of the ascetic movement, a moment at which so little had been resolved
definitively, and so much was at stake for the future.62
59
Petrus der Iberer: Ein Charakterbild zur Kirchen- und Sittengeschichte des fünften Jahr-
hunderts: Syrische Übersetzung einer um das Jahr 500 verfassten griechischen Biographie,
ed. by Richard Raabe (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1895).
60
Sévère, Patriarche d’Antioche, 512–518: textes syriaques, ed. and trans. by M. A. Kuge-
ner, Patrologia Orientalis, 2 (Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1907), pp. 203–400.
61
Epistulae Imperatorum Pontificum Aliorum inde ab a. ccclxvii usque ad dliii datae
avellana quae dicitur collectio, ed. by Otto Günther, Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum
Latinorum, 35 (2 parts) (Vienna: Tempsky, 1895–98).
62
The present study has benefited greatly from the advice of Julia Hillner, Conrad Leyser,
Anneke Mulder-Bakker, and Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, although none bear responsibility for its
shortcomings.
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‘Oikos-Ecclesiology’ and ‘Church Order’

in Eastern Christianity*
EVA M. SYNEK
I
n I Timothy 3. 14–15 Ps.-Paul tells the recipient of his epistle, ‘These things I
write to you [. . .] so that you may know how you ought to conduct yourself in
the house(hold) (oikos) of God, which is the Church of the living God.’ Current
interest on the part of African theologians and canonists in the ‘new’, ‘African’
concept of the ‘Church as God’s family’ thus has a long history as an ecclesiological
approach, though one of which the full implications have not always been explicit.1
New Testament scholars have long been aware of the existence of a specific oikos-
ecclesiology in biblical source material,2 while for legal historians and legal
* ‘Church Order’ is the literal translation of the German term Kirchenordung, a term with
a relatively broad spectrum of meanings. (1) When it came into use in the time of the German
Reformation, it denoted a law enacted by the secular authorities. The same term was also used
in a broader sense for (2) older source-material, in particular denoting specific patristic texts
on Church Law (e.g. the Didache, the Didascalia, the Apostolic Constitutions) which are not
canons enacted by councils nor imperial laws (nomoi). Moreover, in the twentieth century,
Kirchenordnung became the terminus technicus for (3) a specific group of new legal sources
of the Protestant Churches as well as (4) an equivalent for ‘Church Law’ in general and (5) a
key-word for special concepts of a theology of law. Cf. the chapter ‘Zur Geschichte des
Kirchenordungsbegriffs’ in Eva M. Synek, ‘Dieses Gesetz ist gut, heilig, es zwingt nicht ....’:
Zum Gesetzesbegriff der Apostolischen Konstitutionen, Kirche und Recht, 21 (Vienna: Plöchl,
1997), pp. 12–20 (with literature). In the present essay, ‘Church Order’ refers mainly to
patristic texts (sense 2), but I also use it for ‘Church Law’ in a more general sense (sense 4).
1
See e.g. Hilary Odili Okeke, ‘Church-as-God’s Family: From African Ecclesiology to
African Canon Law’, Studia Canonica, 32 (1998), 387–414; Syvain Kalamba Nsapo, ‘Une
théologie de l’ “Église-famille” en Afrique sub-saharienne’, Ephemerides Theologicae Lova-
nienses, 75 (1999), 157–74 (with literature).
2
See e.g. Philipp Vielhauer, Oikodome: Das Bild vom Bau in der christlichen Literatur
vom Neuen Testament bis Clemens Alexandrinus (Karlsruhe-Durlach: Verlagsdruck Tron,
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38 EVA M. SYNEK
ethnologists it is commonplace that early ‘constitutional law’ depends closely on

family law. This general observation fits perfectly with many early Christian com-
munities as far as we can reconstruct their self-image. In recent times some patrolo-
gists have elaborated the influence of the ancient household on the organization of
the Church.3 Reconsidering their research under the perspective of ‘gender studies’,
as I shall try to do in this essay, may give still further insight into this historical
development.4
Before considering the main canonical consequences of the shaping of the church
as an oikos,5 the reader is invited to take a brief look at the historical setting of
oikos-ecclesiology as it develops. In the last part of the essay I shall turn to some
alternative lines of development obscured by the main historiographical narrative. In
principle, the issues dealt with here concern Western Christianity as well as the
Christian East. Biblical ecclesiology is a Christian heritage common to West and
East and so is monarchic episcopacy. This essay will, however, consider mainly
1940 = Diss., Heidelberg, 1939); Vielhauer, Oikodome, Aufsätze zum Neuen Testament, 2,
Theologische Bücherei, 65 (Munich: Kaiser, 1979); Daniel von Allmen, La famille de Dieu:
La symbolique familiale dans le Paulinisme, Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis, 41 (Fribourg: Uni-
versitätsverlag, 1981), or the recent studies of Ulrike Wagener, Die Ordnung des ‘Hauses
Gottes’: Der Ort von Frauen in der Ekklesiologie und Ethik der Pastoralbriefe, Wissen-
schaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament, series 2, 65 (Tübingen: Mohr, 1994), and
Taeseong Roh, Die familia Dei in den synoptischen Evangelien: Eine redaktions- und
sozialgeschichtliche Untersuchung zu einem urchristlichen Bildfeld, Novum testamentum et
orbis antiquus, 37 (Fribourg: Universitätsverlag, 2001 = Diss. theol., Heidelberg, 1997). See
also the contribution of Else Marie Wiberg Pedersen to this volume.
3
See further Ernst Dassmann, Ämter und Dienste in den frühchristlichen Gemeinden,
Hereditas, 8 (Bonn: Borengässer, 1994). His work is continued by Harry O. Maier, The Social
Setting of the Ministry as Reflected in the Writings of Hermas, Clement and Ignatius, Disser-
tation SR 1 (Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfried Laurier University Press, 1991), and Georg Schöllgen,
who reflects on the bishop as oikonomos and house-father in Die Anfänge der Professional-
isierung des Klerus und das kirchliche Amt in der syrischen Didaskalie, Jahrbuch für Antike
und Christentum, Suppl. 26 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1998). See also Schöllgen’s article ‘Haus-
gemeinden, oikos-Ekklesiologie und monarchischer Episkopus’, Jahrbuch für Antike und
Christentum, 31 (1988), 74–90. Rosmarie Nürnberg recently outlined some ‘basics’ in her
contribution to the acta of the German Conference on Female Deacons 1997: Rosmarie
Nürnberg, ‘Das Lehrverbot für Frauen im Rahmen der altkirchlichen Oikos-Ekklesiologie’, in
Diakonat: Ein Amt für Frauen in der Kirche – ein frauengerechtes Amt?, ed. by Peter Hüner-
mann and others (Ostfildern: Schwabenverlag, 1997), pp. 72–185.
4
A preliminary version of this essay was published under the title ‘The Church as “oikos”:
Main Canonical Consequences’, in Gender and Religion – Genre et religion, ed. by Kari
Elisabeth Børesen and others, Quaderni, 2 (Rome: Carocci, 2001), pp. 143–53.
5
Much information on the ancient oikos is compiled by Ernst Dassmann and Georg
Schöllgen, ‘Haus II (Hausgemeinschaft)’, in Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum, vol. XIII
(Stuttgart, 1986), pp. 801–905.
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‘Oikos-Ecclesiology’ and ‘Church Order’ 39
Eastern Christianity. One reason is that in the West there exist only comparatively
few sources for the formative centuries; most (if not all) of the so-called ‘Church
Orders’6 are of eastern origin.7 But on the other hand, the specific development of
the papacy in the West in the wake of the Gregorian Reform and all its conse-
quences for the Western Church Order take us beyond the space available here.
The Historical Setting for the Development of Early Christian Oikos-

Ecclesiology
Private Houses as Nuclei of the Jesus-Movement
‘Greet Priscilla and Aquila, my fellow workers in Christ Jesus. [. . .] Likewise greet
the church that is in their house’ (Romans 16. 3, 5). We have to keep in mind that
the private houses of sympathizers played an important role in the development of
the Jesus-movement.8 The house as the nucleus of a religious community is not ex-
clusive to Christianity: in the Graeco-Roman as well as in the Jewish tradition the
house is generally a place of worship, and the members of a household are consid-
ered to be a cultic community.9 Though religious homogeneity was not necessarily
reached in all households in Graeco-Roman antiquity, a tendency to the conversion
of entire households can be observed as early as the Lukanian Acts.10
On the other hand religious communities differing from the official state cult
already had their nuclei in private houses before (and also continuingly alongside)
6
See note 1 above. For an introduction to these texts see Bruno Steimer, Vertex traditio-
nis: Die Gattung der altchristlichen Kirchenordnungen, Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die neu-
testamentliche Wissenschaft und die Kunde der älteren Kirche, 63 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1992).
7
For the highly controversial setting of the so called Traditio Apostolica, see Christoph
Markschies, ‘Wer schrieb die sogenannte “Traditio Apostolica”? Neue Beobachtungen und
Hypothesen zu einer kaum lösbaren Frage aus der altkirchlichen Literaturgeschichte’, in
Tauffragen und Bekenntnis: Studien zur sogenannten ‘Traditio Apostolica’, zu den ‘Interroga-
tiones de fide’ und zum ‘Römischen Glaubensbekenntnis’, ed. by Wolfram Kinzig and others
(Berlin: de Gruyter, 1999), pp. 1–74; Eva M. Synek, ‘Traditio Apostolica, geschichtlich’, in
Lexikon für Kirchen- und Staatskirchenrect, vol. III, ed. by Axel van Campenhausen and
others (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2004), pp. 695–96.
8
See, for example, Dassmann, Ämter und Dienste, pp. 75–95 (with proofs and literature);
Maier, Social Setting, passim.
9
See the introduction to this volume. For more information, see the survey of Peter Stuhl-
macher, ‘Exkurs: Urchristliche Hausgemeinden’, in his Der Brief an Philemon, 3rd edn,
Evangelisch-Katholischer Kommentar zum Neuen Testament, 18 (Zürich: Benzinger-Neun-
kirchener Verlag, 1989), pp. 70–75, or the English summary of Maier, Social Setting, pp. 15–28.
10
See Acts 11. 1–18, the conversion-story of the centurion Cornelius and his house, or
Acts 16. 13–15, the conversion of the purple-dealer Lydia and her house.
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40 EVA M. SYNEK
Christianity.11 Pagan cultic associations were quite often set up in private houses.
People chose an influential patron or patroness who was expected to provide a suit-
able venue for meetings.12 For the Jewish communities — which within the Roman
Empire were considered to be collegia from the legal point of view — private
houses seem also to have served as substitutes for special synagogue buildings
where necessary. The organizational form of what, in German, is called Hausge-
meinde (literally ‘community’ or ‘congregation’) may have its direct model in
contemporary diaspora-Judaism, but can also be explained without such a model.
The so-called ‘itinerant-charismatic’ (wandercharismatisch) character of the Jesus-
movement has often been overestimated in the wake of the influential sociologist
Max Weber. But from the time of the early Jesus-movement onward, resident sym-
pathizers formed in various ways the condicio sine qua non for the radical lifestyle
of the itinerant circle of Jesus’s followers.13 The dual shaping of the movement —
itinerant agents of the movement on one side, locally resident communities on the
other — observable in the first period after Jesus’s violent death had its roots in the
pre-Easter period. Some of the oldest Gospel traditions, for instance, refer to Jesus’s
promise to those who left their houses and families as individuals on behalf of the
kingdom of God: they would be rewarded with new houses and a new kinship net-
work. However the interpretation of the presumptively original Jesus-logion should
not be reduced solely to its eschatological dimension, though the Matthean version
points in this direction.14 Mark 10. 28–31 as well as Luke 18. 28–30 presuppose a
11
When Christianity won the battle and had become the leading religion in the Roman
Empire the same pattern was transferred to Christian communites dissenting from the ‘offi-
cial’ interpretation of Christianity fostered by the emperor. Cf. Harry O. Maier, ‘Religious
Dissent, Heresy and Households in Late Antiquity’, Vigiliae Christianae, 49 (1995), 49–63.
12
For convergences of Christian communities with private associations, see the excellent
scholarship of the nineteenth-century church-historian Edwin Hatch, The Organization of the
Early Christian Churches: 8 Lectures, Delivered before the University of Oxford, in the Year
1880, Philosophy and Religious History Monographs, 94 (New York: Burt Franklin, 1972;
repr. from 1881). A survey of new scholarship is presented in the study of Thomas Schmeller,
Hierarchie und Egalität: Eine sozialgeschichtliche Untersuchung paulinischer Gemeinden
und griechisch-römischer Vereine, Stuttgarter Bibelstudien, 162 (Stuttgart: Katholisches
Bibelwerk, 1995). See also Voluntary Associations in the Graeco-Roman World, ed. by
John S. Kloppenborg and Stephen G. Wilson (London: Routledge, 1996).
13
See e.g. Thomas Schmeller, Brechungen: Urchristliche Wandercharismatiker im Prisma
soziologisch orientierter Exegese, Stuttgarter Bibelstudien, 136 (Stuttgart: Katholisches
Bibelwerk, 1989), passim.
14
See Matthew 19. 27–30. For the eschatological interpretation, see e.g. Karl O. Sandnes,
‘Equality within Patriarchal Structure: Some New Testament Perspectives on the Christian
Fellowship as Brother- or Sisterhood and a Family’, in Constructing Early Christian Fami-
lies: Family as Social Reality and Metaphor, ed. by Halvor Moxnes (London: Routledge,
1997), pp. 150–65 (p. 154).
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fulfilment of the promise ‘in this time’.15 One is tempted to take this as a reflection
of the actual experience of itinerant followers of Jesus at least to some extent.
As far as the further consolidation process of the Jesus-movement is concerned,
there is sound historical consensus about the outstanding significance of private houses
for the institutional shaping of Christianity.16 The more or less mobile propagandists
of the euangelion of Jesus did not initiate a major itinerant movement, but rather set up
the nuclei of growing local communities in the Mediterranean towns. In the Pauline
letters and the Lukanian Acts of the Apostles the formulae he kat’oikon [. . .] ekklesia
(the convention/the church in the house of N.N.) and ‘the oikos of N.N.’ each turn up
several times, indicating that private houses provided the institutional framework for
the communities of the new believers. Insofar as the Jesus-movement was implanted
in household networks, the adoption of their organizational structures was ready to
hand. Obviously it was mainly the homes of the more well-to-do sympathizers with
the Jesus-movement that could serve as meeting places and communication cen-
tres.17 This needs to be kept in mind when dealing with positive perceptions of
traditional social patterns. Though certainly fostered in the post-Constantine period,
the Church’s inculturation in traditional social patterns did not only commence when
the emperor discovered his responsibility for the Church, and when dominant bishops
were chosen from the leading families of the empire. One can already perceive these
patterns in Christian sources as early as the first and second centuries of the
Christian era in the so-called Haustafeln.18
Wives, submit to your own husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your
wives and do not be harsh towards them. Children, obey your parents in all things, for
this is well pleasing to the Lord. Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they be-
come discouraged. Slaves, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh, not
only when you are under their eye, as if you had only to please men, but in sincerity of
heart, fearing God. And whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men
[. . .]. Masters, give your slaves what is just and fair, knowing that you also have a
Master in heaven. (Colossians 3. 18–4. 1)
15
See Gerhard Lohfink, Wie hat Jesus Gemeinde gewollt? (Freiburg in der Breisgau:
Herder, 1987), pp. 50–57.
16
See e.g. the summary of Wayne A. Meeks, The First Urban Christians: The Social
World of the Apostle Paul (London: Yale University Press, 1983).
17
In addition, Christian nuclei seem also to have developed early in houses where the mas-
ter and the mistress did not establish a relationship to the movement. For example, members
of the imperial household — slaves or freed-persons — seem to have found their way to the
Jesus-movement long before Constantine.
18
The term Haustafeln refers to the codes for correct behaviour of (married) men and
women, parents and children, masters and slaves, e.g. in Colossians 3. 18–4. 1, Ephesians
5. 21–6. 9, I Peter 2. 13–3. 7, I Clement; for preliminary information, see Peter Fiedler,
‘Haustafel’, in Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum, XIII, 1063–73.
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42 EVA M. SYNEK
Oikos-ideology is highly significant for the hierarchical development of the ‘house

of God’ (and the conservative ideal of ‘profane’ Christian houses as well). As Ernst
Dassmann has argued,
oikos does not remain a term for the community only in the realm of metaphor, but
participates in the formation of ecclesiastical structures. [. . .] At the head of the house
stands the paterfamilias as lord of the household, not of an assembly of prominent
family members, nor a collegiate group of persons with responsibilities. If the commu-
nity is increasingly understood as the house of God, must it not then also have a
paterfamilias at its head, God himself, or as a visible image the bishop, if not actually
as oikosdespotes [master of the house], at least as the oikonomos [steward] of God?19
Dassmann thus sees the pastoral epistles in their oikos-ecclesiology as ‘Schrittmacher’
(pace-setter(s)) for the monepiscopal development.20 In the 1980s Franz Laub
argued that the ethical codes of the Haustafeln were of autonomous Christian origin,
without analogies, and exclusively due to the importance of great houses in early
Christianity.21 But this thesis was not accepted in subsequent scholarly discussion.
For instance, Marlis Gielen demonstrated convincingly that the authors of the first
Haustafeln were committed to the classical rhetorical topos peri oikonomias, known
from Xenophon and Aristotle:22 that is, in the contemporary social controversy con-
cerning oikos-relations, the Haustafeln did not undermine traditional social ideals
but took a moderate conservative stance.23 Church Order was shaped according to
their model. Thus we read in I Timothy 3. 4–5 that the episkopos (bishop)24 must be
19
Dassmann, Ämter und Dienste, p. 93: ‘Oikos bleibt als Bezeichnung für die Gemeinde
nicht im Bereich der Metaphorik, sondern ist beteiligt an der Ausformung kirchlicher Struktu-
ren [. . .]. An der Spitze des Hauses steht der pater familias als Hausherr, keine Versammlung
von angesehenen Familienmitgliedern, kein Kollegium von Verantwortlichen. Wenn nun aber
die Gemeinde zunehmend als Haus Gottes verstanden wird, muß sie dann nicht auch einen
pater familias an ihrer Spitze haben, Gott selbst, oder als ein sichtbares Abbild den Bischof,
wenn schon nicht als oikodespotes des Hauses so doch als oikonomos Gottes?’
20
Dassmann, Ämter und Dienste, pp. 93–94.
21
See Franz Laub, ‘Sozialgeschichtlicher Hintergrund und ekklesiologische Relevanz der
neutestamentlich-frühchristlichen Haus- und Gemeindetafelparänese – ein Beitrag zur Sozio-
logie des Frühchristentums’, Münchner Theologische Zeitschrift, 37 (1986), 249–71.
22
Marlis Gielen, Tradition und Theologie neutestamentlicher Haustafelethik: Ein Beitrag
zur Frage einer christlichen Auseinandersetzung mit gesellschaftlichen Normen, Bonner
Biblische Beiträge, 75 (Frankfurt: Hain Verlag, 1990).
23
On the one hand this was a controversy about women’s participation in traditional male
prerogatives and roles within Hellenistic society and on the other hand also about slavery and
slave rights. For a critical analysis of the Haustafeln within their social context, see David C.
Verner, The Household of God: The Social World of the Pastoral Epistles, SBL Dissertation
Series, 71 (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1983).
24
Of course, the term episkopos in the pastoral-epistles does not yet point to the developed
perception of episcopal office as provided in normative sources of the third or fourth century.
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a man ‘who rules his own house well, having his children in submission with all
reverence, for if a man does not know how to rule his own house, how will he take
care of the church of God?’.
Jewish Roots of Oikos-Ecclesiology and its Transfer to Church Order
Some elements of the traditional theology of Israel undoubtedly favoured the per-
ception of the Church as a ‘household’. The metaphors of the ‘house of God’ and
the ‘family of God’ were inherited by the Jesus-movement from Israel together with
the Holy Scriptures of Israel. As is well known, the metaphor was adopted by early
Christian theologians who saw the Christian community as the new Israel. Therefore
it is not possible to reduce the oikos-ecclesiology especially elaborated by the author(s)
of the pastoral epistles to the social influence of the ‘houses’ where the communities
were established: some kind of oikos-ecclesiology already existed in ancient Israel.
In addition, typical elements of the organizational structure of the ‘Great Church’
seem to come from synagogue organization. Though there is no question that the
implementation of early Christianity in (private) houses strongly influenced the
developing Church Order, other factors have to be taken into consideration as well,
for example, the analogies between the early Christian communities and the political
public meeting (the latter being the profane Greek meaning of ekklesia). Striking
parallels between early Christian communities and Greek thiasoi (eranoi) and
Roman collegia were extensively studied in the nineteenth century, for instance.
Other significant analogies are revealed in comparisons with contemporary philo-
sophical schools.
First of all, however, the Jewish roots of formative Christianity need to be
stressed.25 James Tunstead Burtchaell’s approach, drawing on source material from
disparate centuries, is not beyond criticism, but nonetheless his study From Synagogue
to Church suggests a productive path for further research.26 Not least, many analogies
in Christian Church Order with other social institutions, such as religious associa-
tions and the political public meeting, might directly derive from the synagogue. For
an example, consider the analogy between the archisynagogos and the bishop: al-
though the consolidation of the monepiscopal organization is mainly a phenomenon
Terminological identity in spite of quite different perceptions is one of the problems with
which institutional history has to cope.
25
Moreover, the itinerant-charismatic element did not come to an end in the second
century. Certainly, there was a paradigmatic change in its general disfavour. But there remain
significant traces of an unbroken tradition in late antique Syrian monasticism. The latter
seems to have influenced the Irish-Anglo-Saxon Church, from which originated the impulse
for the so called peregrinatio religiosa in medieval continental Europe.
26
See James T. Burtchaell, From Synagogue to Church: Public Services and Offices in the
Earliest Christian Communities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), passim.
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44 EVA M. SYNEK
of the second century (and was not completed even in the third century), the first
traces of this leadership model are already to be found in the pluralism of the first
century. The community of Jerusalem seems most significant for this. Later sources
picture James, the brother of the Lord, as the first ‘bishop’ of Jerusalem.27 From a
comparative legal perspective one could speak of a Caliphate structure, as James’s
position in the church of Jerusalem was connected with a kinship relation to Jesus.
This specific tradition was upheld in Pella for quite a time.28 In the Graeco-Roman
context29 as well as in the early Armenian30 and in the East Syrian Church31 we can
observe the hereditary episcopacy as a model related to the Jerusalem way.
The Principal Consequences in Canon Law of the Shaping of the

Church as Oikos
The Male Head of the House
For it is not just, that you, the bishop, who is the head, should obey the tail, who is a
layman, a contentious man, to the destruction of each other, but God alone. For it is
necessary for you to command the subjects and not be commanded by them; as the son
does not command the father according to the order of procreation (kata ton tes
geneseos logon), neither does the slave command his master according to the order of
27
References and further literature are provided by John Painter, Just James: The Brother
of Jesus in History and Tradition, Studies on Personalities of the New Testament (Columbia:
University of South Carolina Press, 1997).
28
See Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica (Hist. eccles.), 3, 5, 2–3, in Die Kirchengeschichte,
ed. by Eduard Schwartz, Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten Jahrhunderte
(GCS), n.s., 6 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1999), p. 196; Epiphanius, Adversus haereses, 29, 7, 7–
8, ed. by Karl Holl, GCS, 25 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1915), p. 330.
29
In the first paschal controversy (whether Easter should be celebrated on the day of the
Jewish Passover or on the following Sunday) Polycrates of Ephesus can boast of seven
kinsmen who had been bishops before him; cf. Eusebius, Hist. eccles. 5, 24, 6: ed. by
Schwartz, GCS 6, p. 492. Origen worries about hereditary episcopal sees: Origen, Homilia in
Numeros XX–XXVIII, XXII, 4, ed. by Luis Doutreleau and Wilhelm A. Baehrens, SC, 461
(Paris: Cerf, 2001), pp. 92–96, For the Western context, see Josef Fellermayr, Tradition und
Sukzession im Lichte des römisch-antiken Erbdenkens – Untersuchungen zu den lateinischen
Vätern bis zu Leo dem Großen (Munich: Minerva, 1979 = Diss. Munich).
30
See e.g. the survey of Wolfgang Hage, ‘Armenien I’, in Theologische Realenzyklopädie,
vol. IV (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1979), pp. 40–57.
31
From 1450 onwards, the see of the katholikos (patriarch) was hereditary (from the uncle
to the nephew) in the family of Bar Mama. Cf. e.g. Bertold Spuler, Die morgenländischen
Kirchen (Leiden: Brill, 1964), pp. 162–63.
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authority/power (exusias), nor the pupil the teacher, nor the soldier the king, nor, then,
the layman the bishop.32
In recent years much has been written about the rising ecclesiastical class system
(that is, the lay-discriminating division of the people of God in orders within the Ro-
man world) and on the influence of the Roman cursus honorum on the development
within the clergy.33 Therefore I will concentrate here specifically on convergences
between House Order and Church Order.
A significant feature of the ancient house, not confined to the Roman concept
with its specific legal institution of patria potestas, is the strong position of the
father. Slaves, sons, and daughters, and also wives, were under his regime.34 In re-
turn he was considered responsible for their welfare and their good conduct. The
shaping of Church Order in accordance with House Order and the adoption of exist-
ing forms of organization which were themselves influenced by the model of the
house has had consequences to this day. Dassmann was earlier quoted with the the-
sis that biblical oikos-ecclesiology already points to the monepiscopal development
of the second and third centuries. Eventually local ‘houses of God’, the Christian
communities, were put under ‘(house)-fathers’ (i.e. bishops), just like every ‘normal’
family. The bishop’s outstanding position correlates with paternal responsibility and
with the lesser legal status of all other members of the household, as was the case in
the secular sphere. Nevertheless the monarchical position of the father is only part of
the truth. Certainly not all ancient canonical sources present the extremely hierarchi-
cal ideal of Church Order quoted, in the passage at the head of this section, from the
32
Apostolic Constitutions (AC), 2, 14, 12, ed. and trans. by Marcel Metzger, SC, 320
(Paris: Cerf, 1985), p. 178.
33
See e.g. Kenan B. Osborne, Ministry. Lay Ministry in the Roman Catholic Church: Its
History and Theology (New York: Paulist Press, 1993); John St. H. Gibaut, The Cursus Hono-
rum: A Study of the Origins and Evolution of Sequential Ordination, Patristic Studies, 3 (New
York: Peter Lang, 2000); or the various works of Alexandre Faivre such as Naissance d’une
hierarchie: Les et premières étapes du cursus clérical, Théologie historique, 40 (Paris:
Beauchesne, 1977); Les laïcs aux origines de l’Église (Paris: Le Centurion, 1984); English
trans.: The Emergence of the Laity in the Early Church, trans. by David B. Smith (New York:
Paulist Press, 1990); a new edition of this study appeared under the title Les premiers laïcs
lorsque l’Église naissait au monde (Strasbourg: Édition du Signe, 1999); see also Faivre’s
‘summa’, Ordonner la fraternité: Pouvoir d’innover et retour à l’ordre dans l’Église
anciènne (Paris: Cerf, 1992). For a critical estimation, see Eva M. Synek, ‘Laici – viri aut
mulieres: Bemerkungen zum patristischen Laienbegriff’, Österreichisches Archiv für
Kirchenrecht, 43 (1994), 102–34.
34
In traditional Roman civil law the equivalent of the father’s patria potestas is the hus-
band’s (or the father-in-law’s) manus. However, manus-marriages had already become rare in
late republican times. When ecclesiastical structures developed, Roman women were fre-
quently emancipated from their father’s patria potestas before wedlock and did not become
subject to their husbands’ manus. So as persons sui iuris they enjoyed a kind of independence
(e.g. they were entitled to hold property).
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46 EVA M. SYNEK
so-called Apostolic Constitutions (a Church Order from the end of the fourth cen-
tury, probably from Antioch). To some extent at least, church officials were granted
some influence on decisions in ecclesiastical affairs. Even the Apostolic Constitu-
tions have to admit some subsidiary jurisdiction of presbyters and deacons. As far as
Church Order in actual life is concerned, there is no question at all that lay persons
of both sexes often played a very important role as well. But all the post-biblical
canonical tradition (of the Great Church at least) agrees upon the necessity of the
bishop’s headship, specifically, of a male bishop’s headship.35
The Apostolic Constitutions are of particular interest, since there the reference to
House Order is quite explicit. This source was not only of high-ranking influence in
the further development of Eastern canon law, but by its nature as a compilation
reflects previous developments as well. It may therefore be useful to compare the
quoted passage with its basic text in the Didascalia.36 The Greek original of this
Church Order is lost, but it seems that the Syrian translator kept close to his text:
For it is not necessary for you, o bishop, that being the head you should obey the tail,
that is a layman, a contentious man who wants the destruction of another — but regard
only the word of the Lord God.37
As in the reworked Apostolic Constitutions version, the context of this forthrightly
anti-lay statement is the restriction of penitential discipline to the bishop’s compe-
tence alone. In editing his text, the compiler not only stressed this concern of his
predecessor but made the theological reference-system visible.
This observation is even truer in the context of norms which explicitly refer to
women. The author of the Didascalia worried a lot about women who taught —
presumably widows — who would discredit the Christian message in the missionary
context:38
35
The specific Western adaptations and alterations of the late-antique concept of epis-
copacy in the churches and Christian communities originating in the sixteenth-century
reformation are beyond the limits of this essay. But it might be recalled to mind that the
reformed churches, though more or less changing the ‘catholic’ and ‘orthodox’ model of
episcopacy respectively, did not drop it in principle.
36
Early third century, probably from a Greek-speaking Syrian milieu.
37
Didascalia, 6, trans. by Arthur Vööbus, Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium
(CSCO), 402/Scriptores syri (Script. syr.), 176 (Louvain-la-Neuve: Secrétariat du Corpus
SCO, 1979), p. 56.
38
See Eva M. Synek, ‘In der Kirche möge sie schweigen’, Oriens Christianus, 77 (1993),
151–64, and (with partly differing interpretations) Cornelia Schlarb, ‘Die (un)gebändigte
Witwe: Exegetische Überlegungen zur Entwicklung eines Frauenamtes in der syrischen
Didaskalia’, in Syrisches Christentum weltweit: Studien zur syrischen Kirchengeschichte.
Festschrift Wolfgang Hage, ed. by Martin Tamcke and others, Studien zur Orientalischen
Kirchengeschichte, 1 (Münster: Lit, 1995), pp. 36–75.
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Indeed, when the gentiles, those who are being instructed, hear the word of God spoken
not firmly, as it ought to be [. . .] and especially because it is spoken to them by a
woman [. . .] they will deride and mock, instead of praising the word of doctrine.39
Quoting I Corinthians 11. 3, the Apostolic Constitutions uncover the ideological
conviction of men — Christians as well as Jews and pagans — who feel uneasy with
the religious instruction of women: ‘For the man is the head of the woman; it is not
just that the rest of the body commands the head.’40 Already Paul — arguing for
women covering their heads when praying and prophetizing in the assembly — had
reproduced classical gender ideology in his epistle to the Corinthians. In order to
undermine egalitarian rebellions in the fourth century it was wise policy to refer to
the head and body comparison. For the argument, though anything but specifically
Christian, could boast of apostolic dignity. The compiler of the Apostolic Consti-
tutions makes use again of the Pauline expression of gender hierarchy when he
touches upon another stumbling block already topical in the Didascalia — baptism
by women.41 Going beyond his text, he draws the ultimate conclusion: (only) man,
who is the head of the woman according to I Corinthians 11. 3, is called to priest-
hood. Drawing on the procreation story of Genesis he arrives at this point once
more: ‘For the man has the authority over the woman (arche gar gynaikos aner), as
he is the head.’42
The Paternal Power — Law and Practice
‘One of the most peculiar features of Roman law was the father’s dominant position.
In theory, he exercised an almost absolute authority, patria postestas, over his
descendants until his own death.’ As pointed out by Antti Arjava, ‘this characteristic
structure of the Roman family had far reaching consequences for the position of
women in Roman law’.43 From the legal point of view a Roman pater familias en-
joyed even the ius vitae necisque, the right to decide upon life and death for the
members of the family. In practice, his legal omnipotence was limited by custom and
by social supervision. Not every legally possible decision was accepted by society
nor would it have been enforceable within the family. In imperial times some moral
limits of the father’s legal powers were even considered to be legally valid. For ex-
ample, in Republican times it would theoretically have been possible for a father to
interfere in his daughter’s marriage. But in practice, a father who forced a happily
39
Didascalia, 15, trans. by Vööbus, CSCO, 408/Script. syr., 180, p. 145.
40
AC, 3, 6, 2, ed. by Metzger, SC, 329 (Paris: Cerf, 1986), p. 131.
41
See AC, 3, 9, ed. by Metzger, SC, 329, pp. 124–44.
42
AC, 3, 9, 2. Consequently priestesses would be against nature, a perversion of the Greek
‘atheism’ (or rather, pagan religion) (cf. AC, 3, 9, 3, ed. by Metzger, SC, 329, p. 144).
43
Antti Arjava, Women and Law in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), p. 28.
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48 EVA M. SYNEK
married woman to divorce would risk being strongly criticized.44 In the course of time,
this traditional right was more and more limited by the praetorian jurisdiction, and in
late antiquity (i.e. the context for the basic shaping of ecclesiastical structures) it ceased
to exist at all. Besides, one has to be aware of different legal systems within the
Empire. The Constitutio Antoniana granted citizenship to almost all free inhabitants
of the Empire in the early third century (212) thus introducing Roman civil law in
principle. But one should not imagine that legal practice changed completely from
one day to the next. It seems that in the Eastern provinces ‘people would not have
recognized patria potestas in the absolute form described by Roman jurists’.45
In general the fathers of antiquity did not terrorize their families but tried to be
wise rulers, taking into consideration the wishes and advice not only of their male
relatives but also of their wives, grown-up children, and even of trusted slaves. The
unofficial power of the mater familias could be great. As John Chrysostom put it in
his homily to Ephesians: ‘She is a second king’ in the house.46
In the late antique Empire men learned to share some of their ancient legal privi-
leges with women. In practice, a woman (particularly a widowed woman) could
manage the household47 and had a de facto power over her children though she did
not enjoy any formal maternal power comparable to the traditional patria potestas.48
In this regard, jurisdiction and adoption are highly significant: while the Roman
patria potestas included judicial power within the family there was no formal
equivalent for women. Furthermore, women were not granted the ability to adopt a
child on their own according to Roman law. Nevertheless there is late antique source
material that implies that women played a considerable role in informal ways of
‘adopting’ a child (which of course would not have counted as such within Roman
law framework) at least in the Eastern provinces.49 It was generally accepted that
44
Arjava, Women and Law, pp. 44–46.
45
Arjava, Women and Law, p. 49. Social practice is well documented by Joelle Beaucamp,
Le statut de la femme à Byzance (4e–7e siècle), vol. II: Les pratiques sociales, Travaux et
mémoires du Centre de recherches d’histoire et civilisation de Byzance, Monographies 6
(Paris: de Boccard, 1992). For classical and Hellenistic Greece, see Sarah B. Pomeroy,
Xenophon, Oeconomicus: A Social and Historical Commentary (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1994; repr., 1995); Pomeroy, Families in Classical and Hellenistic Greece: Representations
and Realities (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997; repr., 1998).
46
Cf. John Chrysostom, In Eph. hom., 22, 2, in Opera, 1–13, PG, 62, 158.
47
Most evidence we have is from Egypt where women traditionally held a relatively
strong legal position.
48
See Arjava, Women and Law, pp. 84–94.
49
See e.g. Palladios, Historia Lausiaca, 6, in The Lausiac History, ed. by Cuthbert Butler
(Hildesheim: Olms, 1967; repr. from Cambridge, 1904), p. 22; for further proofs, see Leopold
Wenger and Albrecht Oepke, ‘Adoption’, in Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum, vol. I
(Stuttgart, 1950), pp. 99–112 (pp. 102–03). See Arjava, Women and Law, p. 88; Eva M.
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free women decided about the punishment of disobedient slaves or children. They
could be head of a fatherless household in an informal way, at least in Egypt. In
other words, though legal restrictions remained, a de facto participation in headship
was possible in the late Roman Empire for free women, and even for unfree persons.
(Slaves, for instance, were frequently entrusted with the high-ranking job of the
oikonomos, the steward.)
A similar ambiguity can be observed on the political level: free women and slaves
could exercise influence. As epigraphic sources from Hellenistic times inform us, in
the East (best documented for Asia Minor) women were occasionally even tolerated
in official positions — especially when their promotion served family politics.50
Sometimes public interest in the money of elite women was greater than traditional
prejudices against women. Extraordinary circumstances served the political careers
of ambitious queens and empresses such as the Egyptian Cleopatra, Zenobia of
Palmyra, or the Roman (Byzantine) Augusta Pulcheria.51 However, the status of
politically successful women remained ambiguous and vulnerable. Eirene (d. 802)52
demonstrated her claim to full rulership by using the male title basileus in her laws,53
but, as the argument over Charlemagne’s elevation as Emperor suggests, even her
legitimacy was not beyond discussion.
Synek, Zum Ehe- und Familienrecht der Apostolischen Konstitutionen, Kirche und Recht, 22
(Vienna: Plöchl, 1999), pp. 235–36.
50
See e.g. Johannes Nollé, ‘Frauen wie Omphale? Überlegungen zu “politischen” Ämtern
von Frauen im kaiserzeitlichen Kleinasien’, in Reine Männersache? Frauen in Männerdomänen
der antiken Welt, ed. by Maria H. Dettenhofer (Cologne: Böhlau, 1994; repr., Munich: Dt.
Taschenbuchverlag, 1996), pp. 229–59; Mary Taliaferro Boatwright, ‘Plancia Magna of Perge:
Women’s Roles and Status in Roman Asia Minor’, in Women’s History and Ancient History, ed.
by Sarah B. Pomeroy (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992), pp. 249–72;
Werner Eck, ‘Die Präsenz senatorischer Familien in den Städten des Imperium Romanum bis
zum späten 3. Jahrhundert’, in Studien zur antiken Sozialgeschichte: Festschrift F. Vittinghoff,
ed. by Werner Eck and others (Cologne: Böhlau, 1980), pp. 283–322; Riet van Bremen,
‘Women and Wealth’, in Images of Women in Antiquity, ed. by Averil Cameron and Amélie
Kuhrt (London: Croom Helm, 1983; rev. 2nd edn: Routledge, 1993), pp. 223–42; Richard A.
Bauman, Women and Politics in Ancient Rome (London: Routledge, 1992), passim.
51
See Kenneth G. Holum, Theodosian Empresses: Women and Imperial Dominion in Late
Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982; repr., 1989), pp. 79–228.
52
Judith Herrin, Women in Purple (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001); also
Ralph-Johannes Lilie, Byzanz unter Eirene und Konstantin VI (780–802), Berliner Byzanti-
nische Studien, 2 (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1996); Liz James, Empresses and Power in Early
Byzantium (London: Leicester University Press, 2001), esp. pp. 126–27; Eva Synek, ‘Weib-
liche Autorität in Byzanz’, in Formen weiblicher Autorität: Erträge historisch-theologischer
Frauenforschung, ed. by Anne Jensen and Michaela Sohn-Kronthaler (Vienna: LIT, 2005),
pp. 27–52 (with further literature).
53
See Elisabeth Bensammer, ‘La titulature de l’impératrice et sa signification’, Byzantion,
46 (1976), 243–91.
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50 EVA M. SYNEK
The Absence of Formal Headship for (Free) Women in the Ecclesiastical Context
For we have to receive everyone whom the master of the house (oikodespotes) sends
to be over the household (eis idian oikonomian) as [we would do to] him that has sent
him. It is manifest, therefore that we should look upon the bishop as [we would look]
upon the Lord himself.54
The problems briefly mentioned above are highly significant in our particular con-
text. The position of the paternal head of the household in traditional civil law sheds
light on the concept of episcopal power (including its restriction to males). And it is
equally helpful for understanding the more complicated actuality.55 The ambiguities
of practice referred to in the previous section have to be considered in confronting
the puzzling phenomenon in the development of early Christian communities that, as
long as early Christian community life mainly developed in the comparative
‘privacy’ of family houses, slaves could exercise leadership, and this was not
completely impossible for women either.56 We have some parallels in pagan cultic
associations under female patronage57 and, as Bernadette Brooten demonstrates,
probably in the Jewish diaspora, too.58
54
Ignatius, Ep. Eph., 6, 1, in ‘Authentic Epistulae’, ed. by Joseph A. Fischer, Die Apos-
tolischen Väter, Schriften des Urchristentums, 1 (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesell-
schaft, 1986), p. 146.
55
See e.g. the classic survey of Max Kaser, Das römische Privatrecht, I./II. Abschnitt:
Rechtsgeschichte des Altertums, HAW, part 3, 1 and 2 (Munich: Beck, 2nd rev. edn, 1971;
1975); Jane Gardner, Being a Roman Citizen (London: Routledge, 1993); Yan Thomas, ‘Die
Teilung der Geschlechter im römischen Recht’, in Geschichte der Frauen, vol. I: Antike, ed.
by George Duby and Michelle Perrot (Frankfurt: Campus, 1993), pp. 105–71, and Thomas,
‘Rom: Väter als Bürger in einer Stadt der Väter (2. Jahrhundert v. Chr. bis 2. Jahrhundert n.
Chr.)’, in Geschichte der Familie, vol. I: Altertum, ed. by André Burguière and others
(Frankfurt: Campus, 1996), pp. 277–326. Thomas tends to overdo the male legal status by
underestimating developments in favour of women’s rights; for a more adequate evaluation,
see Joelle Beaucamp, Le statut de la femme, vol. I: Le droit impérial (Paris: de Boccard,
1990); Nikolaus Benke, ‘Why Should the Law Protect Roman Women? Some Remarks on the
Senatus Consultum Velleianum’, in Gender and Religion – Genre et religion, ed. by Kari
Elisabeth Børesen and others, Quaderni, 2 (Rome: Carocci, 2001), pp. 41–56; and particularly
Arjava, Women and Law.
56
See Karen Torjesen, When Women Were Priests: Women’s Leadership in the Early
Church and the Scandal of their Subordination in the Rise of Christianity (San Francisco:
Harper, 1996). The title of this book is misleading: Torjesen cannot prove priestly ordination
of women though she gives examples for female activities in Christian communities which
were considered episcopal and priestly prerogatives in the normative tradition of the Great
Church.
57
Selected references are provided by Meeks, First Urban Christians, p. 31.
58
See Bernadette Brooten, Women Leaders in the Ancient Synagogue: Inscriptional Evi-
dence and Background Issues, Brown Judaic Studies, 36 (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1982).
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De facto a woman could act as head of a Christian household (together with her
husband or even alone) and might therefore have been accepted as head of the church
established in her house.59 She could succeed in exercising great influence on male
theologians and male clerics, including the bishop, even when the church gradually
left the intimacy of private houses and became an integral part of late antique society.
High-ranking examples of the fourth and fifth centuries respectively are Olympias,
John Chrysostom’s financially potent confidante,60 and later, Augusta Pulcheria.61
As was particularly evident at the synods of Ephesos, Chalcedon, and Nicea II, at
least some women’s voices remained quite audible in imperial Church policy. But,
exactly as in Roman law, even the most influential women had no chance of becom-
ing ‘fathers’ of the ‘house of God’ (i.e. being promoted to an episcopal see). Thus
the more the Christian communities found their way in the wider public, the more
the traditional household model won the battle. Nevertheless tensions between the
legally defined status of women and their actual power in (late) antique and medie-
val ecclesiastical contexts should not be underestimated.62 They precisely cor-
respond with the ambivalence of gender roles in Graeco-Roman society in general.
Some examples will be helpful in following the convergences on both levels, the
lack of formal potestas and the operations of power in actuality. As far as we are
able to reconstruct Christian history, baptism has been considered as the legal act of
full adoption into the Christian community (or in other words: as the making of a
new ‘child of God’). Normative sources from the second century onwards, for exam-
ple, the so-called ‘authentic’ Ignatian epistles, define baptismal competence mainly
as a prerogative of the bishop.63 ‘It is not lawful either to baptize or to hold an agape
59
For prominent women in the first Christian communities, see e.g. I Corinthians 16. 19;
Romans 16; Colossians 4. 14; Acts 16; etc. A nice example from later times is the patroness
of the young Origen; see Eusebius, Hist. eccles., 6, 2, 13, ed. by Schwartz, GCS 6, p. 522. It
seems that even as late as the fourth century the author of the letter of ‘Mary the Proselyte’
conserved in the Ps.-Ignatian corpus has a Hausgemeinde under female patronage in mind.
60
Cf. Eva M. Synek, Heilige Frauen der frühen Christenheit: Zu den Frauenbildern in ha-
giographischen Texten des christlichen Ostens, Das östliche Christentum, n.s., 43 (Würzburg:
Augustinusverlag, 1994), pp. 173–90; Wendy Mayer, ‘Constantinopolitan Women in
Chrysostom’s Circle’, Vigiliae Christianae, 53 (1999), 265–88.
61
See Holum, Theodosian Empresses, pp. 79–228.
62
In order to make basic patterns more clearly visible I omit here the specific case of the
Christian queens or empresses. At times they succeeded in representing the Christian people
in public as their male counterparts — the (male) emperors. I am also omitting the differentia-
tion of ‘simple’ bishops and the tenants of the most influential sees: metropolitans, katholikoi,
patriarchs, in the Eastern Empire particularly the Patriarch of Constantinople.
63
The question of authenticity has become topical again with an article by Reinhard M.
Hübner, ‘Thesen zur Echtheit und Datierung der sieben Briefe des Ignatius von Antiochien’,
Zeitschrift für antikes Christentum, 1 (1997), 44–72.
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52 EVA M. SYNEK
without the bishop.’64 Usually the subsidiary performance of baptism by a presbyter

(sometimes by a deacon) is granted as well.65 But as Roman law has no provisions for
adoption by women, the ancient canon law sources do not permit women to perform
baptism, though women — preferably deaconesses or widows — were often ex-
pected to assist the baptism of female adults.66 Even medieval East Syrian liturgical
law which grants female deacons the performance of almost the whole rite of baptism
(including the pouring of water), reserved the pronunciation of the baptismal formula
to a male cleric.67 As I have tried to show above in the case of the Didascalia and
the Apostolic Constitutions, the same is true for ecclesiastical judicial power: in Church
Orders and synodical canons it was clearly defined as the bishop’s prerogative
(together with baptizing, offering holy Eucharist, and ordaining other clerics).
But like the lack of patria potestas for a Roman matrona, the lack of episcopal
power for a Christian woman highly involved in Church affairs is only one aspect of
the reality. The limited jurisdiction of the deaconess over other women (widows, lay-
women) hesitantly admitted by the Apostolic Constitutions68 can serve as a good exam-
ple of this ambiguity in the ecclesiastical sphere. More controversial was the question
of the reconciliation of sinners:69 de facto confessors of both sexes as well as widows
played an important part in this context at least up to the fourth century when the epis-
copal monopoly won the battle. However, canonical penance does not seem to have
played an important role in the life of laypersons from the fifth to the ninth centuries.70
And in the monastic context, where the judicial connotation of confession was much
less important than personal spiritual guidance, unordained persons, including women,
could still preserve competencies as charismatic ‘confessors’. The same authorities
who denied women judicial competence generally did not question spiritual
64
Ignatius, Ep. Smyr., 8, 2, ed. by Fischer, p. 210.
65
See Didascalia, 16, trans. by Vööbus, II, 155–60. For the lay theologian Tertullian, even
baptism by a layman was acceptable in cases of necessity (cf. De baptismo 17, in Traité du
baptême, ed. by R. F. Refoulé and M. Drouzy, SC, 35 (Paris: du Cerf, 1952), pp. 89–91). This
opinion became standard in medieval western canon law. In the East, however, it cannot be
taken for granted that emergency baptism by laypersons would be considered as valid in any
given case.
66
Evidence is provided by Roger Gryson, Le ministère des femmes dans l’Église ancienne,
Recherches et Synthèses de Sciences Religieuses, Section d’Histoire, 4 (Gembloux: Éditions
J. Duculot, 1972).
67
For the East Syrian Liturgy, see, Die nestorianische Taufliturgie ins Deutsche übersetzt,
trans. by Gustav Diettrich (Giessen: J. Ricker’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1903), pp. 97–98.
68
See Synek, Heilige Frauen, pp. 185–86.
69
See Charlotte Methuen, ‘Widows, Bishops and the Struggle for Authority in the Didas-
calia Apostolorum’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 46 (1995), 197–213.
70
See e.g. Robert Barringer, ‘The Pseudo-Amphilochian Life of St. Basil: Ecclesiastical
Penance and Byzantine Hagiography’, Orthodoxia, 51 (1980), 49–61.
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guidance by gifted women. What seems illogical at first glimpse becomes much
more reasonable in the framework of the household model. While formal judicial
power is traditionally defined as a male prerogative of public interest, there is no
comparable gender prejudice on the level of ‘private’ counselling. So ‘private con-
fession’ of monks and nuns in particular did not necessarily require an ordained
confessor. Quarrels about competencies returned only when spiritual guidance by
monks (and nuns) had become more and more attractive for laypersons from the
ninth century onwards. Laypeople began increasingly to look for spiritual guidance
by a monastic ‘guru’ as had been usual among monastics themselves for a long time.
Laypeople had also to confess more frequently than monks and nuns such transgres-
sions as were subject to formal ecclesiastical penance under the old canons. So
spiritual guidance was mixed up with formal penitential discipline. Canonists from
the twelfth century onwards again argued strongly for the penitential monopoly of
the bishop, at least as far as canonical sins were concerned.71 For Balsamon, whose
legal opinion became highly influential, only a priest with episcopal delegation is
competent to grant reconciliation.72 But to this day, orthodox believers have not
stopped seeking the spiritual guidance of gifted monks and nuns and confessing to
them (though without necessarily asking for formal reconciliation, if the person to
whom they confess lacks formal penitential competence).
As far as baptism is concerned I have already mentioned interdictions of its per-
formance by women. ‘Indeed, if it were lawful to be baptized by a woman, our Lord
and teacher Himself would have been baptized by Mary His mother.’73 Besides the
negative reproof of a controversial practice which can be found in the Didascalia
and the Apostolic Constitutions among other sources, there is also some positive evi-
dence. For example, a significant report is provided by Bishop Firmilian of Caesarea
for the year 235: a letter in the epistularium of Cyprian of Carthage testifies that
71
See Eva M. Synek, ‘Rechtsgeschichtliche Anmerkungen zur Bußdisziplin im CCEO’, in
Ius Canonicum in Oriente et Occidente: Festschrift Carl Gerold Fürst, ed. by Hartmut Zapp,
Andreas Weiß, and Stefan Korta, Adnotationes in ius canonicum, 25 (Frankfurt: Peter Lang,
2003), pp. 385–402 (with sources and literature).
72
See Balsamon, Commentary to cc. 6 and 7 of Carthage, in Syntagma ton theion kai
hieron kanonon, ed. by G. A. Rhalles and M. Potles, vol. III (Athens: G. Chartophylakos,
1853), pp. 311–12 and pp. 314–15; and Balsamon, Commentary to c. 52 of the Apostolic
Canons, in ibid., II (1852), 68–70; see also Balsamon, Responsa ad interrogationes Marci (=
canonical answers to questions which the Patriarch of Alexandria had submitted to the Synod
of Constantinople. It seems that Johannes Kastamonites was initially commissioned to write
the answers. However, Balsamon seems to have taken the responsibility for the final
redaction): Responsum 37 ad Interrogationes Marci, in ibid., IV (1854), 477; also Responsum
22 ad Interrogationes Marci, in ibid., IV, 465; and Responsum 21 ad Interrogationes Marci, in
ibid., IV, 464–65.
73
Didascalia, 15, ed. and trans. by Vööbus, CSCO, 408/Script. syr., 180, p. 151; cf. AC, 3,
9, ed. by Metzger, SC, 329, pp. 142–44.
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54 EVA M. SYNEK
Firmilian felt scandalized by an anonyma performing baptism (and Eucharist).74

Until nowadays, ordinary baptism has been reserved to the (male) bishop and priest
by orthodox canon law, though there is a tendency to accept private baptism by
laymen and women in emergencies. But there are no comparable clear provisions for
such cases as were already to be found in medieval Western canon law.75
Nevertheless one cannot be certain that lay baptism did not occur in the medieval
East too: there is, for instance, a hagiographical tradition of Coptic origin dealing
with this issue. Thus we read in the Life of Patriarch Peter of Alexandreia (d. 311)
about a woman who baptizes her two children when they are in danger of dying
unbaptized in a tempest.76 The hagiographer tries to justify this on several levels: he
refers to miracles (the immediate stilling of the storm after the children’s baptism by
their mother; the inability of the patriarch, unaware of their prior baptism as he is, to
administer the sacrament to them). The narrative also includes speeches by the
Patriarch that interpret the occurrences as signs of divine benevolence and suggest
formal ecclesiastical approval: ‘None can be baptized twice, for there is one baptism
only; and these two have already been baptized once by the intention and faith of
their mother, and by what she did.’77
74
See Cyprian, Epistula 75, in Epistularium, ed. by G. F. Diercks, Corpus Christianorum,
Series Latina, 3C (Turnhout: Brepols, 1996), pp. 581–604; trans. by Graeme W. Clarke, The
Letters of St Cyprian of Carthage, Ancient Christian Writers, 47 (New York: Newman Press,
1989), pp. 78–94. See the commentary of Anne Jensen, Gottes selbstbewußte Töchter:
Frauenemanzipation im frühen Christentum? (Freiburg: Herder, 1992), pp. 352–58; English
translation by O. C. Dean, Jr, God’s Self-Confident Daughters: Early Christianity and the
Liberation of Women (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996).
75
This seems due in the first place to the fact that only the ancient canons of the first
millenium are considered to constitute the ‘real’ canon law. But in the old canons there are no
pertinent remarks on cases which would allow laypersons to baptize when no priest is avail-
able. Second, one has to take into consideration the principle of oikonomia — ‘the departure
from or suspension of strict application (acribeia) of the Church’s canons and disciplinary
norms’; see John H. Erickson, ‘The Problem of Sacramental “Economy”’, in The Challenge of
Our Past: Studies in Orthodox Canon Law and Church History, ed. by Erickson (Crestwood,
NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1991), pp. 115–32 (p. 116): when akribeia seems
impossible, or at least to obscure God’s mercy, Oikonomia (economy) allows for a lot of
flexibility outside casuistic norms for extraordinary situations.
76
I am referring to the Arabic redaction of the Life, preserved in the history of the patri-
archs of the Church of Alexandria ascribed to a tenth-century bishop, Severos Al-Ašmunayn
(Severos ibn al-Muqaffa). Parallel-texts are provided by the Arabic (and the dependent
Ethiopic) synaxar-tradition; see Severos Al-Ašmunayn (Severos ibn al-Muqaffa), The History
of the Patriarchs of the Coptic Church of Alexandria, vol. I, ed. and trans. by B. Evetts,
Patrologia Orientalis, 1, fasc. 2 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1907).
77
Severos Al-Ašmunayn, History of the Patriarchs of Alexandria, ed. and trans. by Evetts,
ch. 6 ‘Peter I’, p. 389.
Page 64
This medieval story is not the only testimony to flexibility in extraordinary situa-
tions. But one should be aware that one or the other compromise did not undermine
the enforcement of the household model in the Church. The opposite seems true:
occasional compromises helped to avoid impracticable situations and by these means
kept the system working.
The Case of Slaves
We do not permit slaves to be elected to the clergy without their masters’ consent
[. . .]. For such a thing causes an upheaval in the households. But if any slave should
appear to be worthy of ordination to any rank [. . .] and their masters consent and give
him freedom and dismiss him from their house, let him be ordained.78
Unlike womanhood, slavery was not considered to be an absolute obstacle to priestly
ordination. If the dominus (or the domina) emancipated a slave, ordination could
legally take place.79 Nevertheless it seems noteworthy in this context that nomoi
(imperial laws) and kanones (synodical norms, normative texts extracted from the
writings of respected late antique bishops and from pseudepigrapha such as the so-
called Apostolic Canon quoted above) tried to exclude unfree men completely from
Church offices when they excluded women in general.80
Richard Klein, however, shows that they often failed to be successful in practice.
Especially in the country, slave-clerics did not necessarily excite prejudice. Cases of
the promotion of slaves to the episcopacy (and thus to the full position of ‘father’ in
the church) are testified to as late as the second half of the fourth century. The ongo-
ing discussion of the problem in middle Byzantine legal sources points to its con-
tinuous topicality. Though the ordination of slaves was contested by affected slave-
owners and disliked by civil as well as mainstream ecclesiastical authorities, the
social practice of entrusting slaves with high-ranking positions in civil life certainly
had some impact on Christian communities. Some bishops — the famous Cappado-
cian Church Father Gregory of Nazianzus, for example, and probably Basil of
Caesarea — did not refuse to ordain an unfree man, thus acting against civil law
78
From the eighty-second Apostolic Canon, ed. by Metzger, SC, 336 (Paris: Cerf, 1987),
p. 306. The so-called Apostolic Canons are first testified as an appendix of the AC but were
later transmitted as independent canonical material as well. While most of the AC was ruled
out as ‘Arian-influenced’ by the medieval Byzantine Church, the series of ps.-Apostolic
Canons at the end of the eighth book of this Church Order has always been considered as a
canonical source.
79
Furthermore, ordination of an unfree person contra legem was considered to be valid in
general.
80
For references, see The Rudder [English trans. of the Pedalion], trans. by D. Cummings
(Chicago: Orthodox Christian Educational Series, 1957), pp. 141–43.
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56 EVA M. SYNEK
(and proposing an alternative for rising canon law).81 On the whole it seems that it
took much more effort on the part of the Great Church to enforce legal restrictions
concerning unfree men than those concerning women.82 Medieval law met the
problem with the favor libertatis: silence of the master was interpreted as consent
and a slave thus being admitted to the clergy was considered as being liberated ex
ipso facto.83
Hidden Alternatives
Alternative Models from Political and Religious Life
The strong impact of the model ‘house’, ‘household’, and family on women’s
legally defined status in the Great Church may become still clearer in comparison
with other possible models for shaping Church Order. The monarchic ideal of rule of
the local community suggested itself within the ancient world. But was it really the
only imaginable possibility?
The church’s self-image was not only expressed in the metaphor of a family or a
house(hold). There are many other metaphors, such as for instance those of (God’s)
people and the self-determination of ecclesia. Current models of collegial political
leadership, for which traces are to be found in early Christian sources, could have
also been adopted, such as some kind of senatorial system or the consular model of
shared responsibility. With the development of the monarchical system, collegial
forms were not let drop completely, but were to some extent transferred from the
single local church to the level of the regional as well as the universal Church. The
local bishops understood their office not only as the responsibility for their local
church but also as a shared responsibility for the whole Church. Since (different
types of) synods are the most significant expression of this understanding, this fea-
ture of Church Order is often described by the term ‘synodality’. But the household
model influenced also the regional and universal level of the Church. It is note-
worthy that ‘patriarch’ and papa (pope) became common titles for the representatives
of the ecclesiastical bodies of wider domains.84 Besides, the collegial (synodical)
81
See Gregory of Nazianzus, Epistula 79, in Epistulae, ed. by Paul Gallay, GCS, 53 (Berlin:
Akademie Verlag, 1969), pp. 69–71.
82
See Richard Klein, ‘Die Bestellung von Sklaven zu Priestern: Ein rechtliches und sozi-
ales Problem’, in Klassisches Altertum, Spätantike und frühes Christentum: Adolf Lippold zum
65 Geburtstag gewidmet, ed. by Karlheinz Dietz, Dieter Hennig, and Hans Kaletsch (Würz-
burg: Selbstverlag des Seminars für Alte Geschichte der Universität Würzburg, 1993), pp.
473–93; Klein, ‘Die Bestellung von Sklaven zu Priestern – ein rechtliches und soziales
Problem in Spätantike und Frühmittelalter’, Klio, 73 (1991), 601–05.
83
See The Rudder, trans. by Cummings, p. 143.
84
Not only for the Bishop of Rome but for the Bishop of Alexandria as well.
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idea found a special expression: the ‘pentarchy’, the collegial responsibility of the
heads of the sees of Rome and of Constantinople (the ‘new Rome’ in the East), of
Alexandria, of Antioch, and of Jerusalem for the whole Church (or at least the
‘catholic’ Church within the Roman empire) was born.85 Though more a theory than
an efficient practice of ecclesiastical governance, the pentarchy shows that collegial
structures continued.86
It is beyond the limits of this essay to elaborate on the multiple traditions of collegial
elements in the constitutional law of the churches. But we have to be aware that po-
litical structures in antiquity do not point to any better chances for legally provided
headship of women within a more collegial conception of diocesan government than
the one which made its way in history. Some pagan cults might, however, have pro-
vided models for less androcentrism. There were several cults where priestesses held
an important role.87 In some cults the power of the deity had to be represented by a
man and a woman together: in Athens, for instance, the wife of the archon basileus
participated in her husband’s cultic office.88 And in Rome, for the priesthood of
Jupiter, a couple was chosen.89 The non-reception of such models is less self-evident
than is insinuated by canonical sources. On the one hand, pagan models did play a
certain role in the shaping of Christian cultic offices: the celibacy of the Roman
vestal virgins, for instance, could serve as an argument for unmarried deaconesses.90
On the other hand, early Christian sources testify to apostolic couples — Priscilla and
Aquila; Andronicus and Junia. Clement of Alexandria, an early Church Father deeply
85
See Ferdinand R. Gahbauer, Die Pentarchie-Theorie: Ein Modell der Kirchenleitung
von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart, Frankfurter theologische Studien, 42 (Frankfurt:
Knecht, 1993).
86
Not even the Western conception of the papacy was completely hostile to collegial
reminiscences. William of Ockham (d. 1357/50) reflected on the possibility that there might
be several equally qualified candidates for the papal office. In that case, he held a plurality of
popes to be thinkable. Ockham’s constitutional model was obviously following the aristo-
cratic or oligarchic model of Aristotle. Cf. Wolfgang Klausnitzer, Das Papstamt im Disput
zwischen Lutheranern und Katholiken: Schwerpunkte von der Reformation bis zur Gegen-
wart, Innsbrucker theologische Studien, 20 (Innsbruck: Tyrolia, 1987), pp. 104–05.
87
For an initial survey, cf. Elizabeth S. Holderman, A Study of the Greek Priestess
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1913).
88
Ps.-Demosthenes, In Neaeram, ed. and trans. by Augustus Murray, Loeb Classical
Library, 351 (London: Heinemann; repr. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1964), p.
59 and p. 73. See Luise Bruit Zaidman, ‘Die Töchter der Pandora: Die Frauen in den Kulten
der Polis’, in Geschichte der Frauen, ed. by Duby and Perrot, I, 375–415 (p. 412).
89
John Scheid, ‘Die Rolle der Frauen in der römischen Religion’, in Geschichte der
Frauen, ed. by Duby and Perrot, I, 417–49 (p. 442).
90
See Justinian, Novellae, 6,6: ed. by Rudolf Schoell, Corpus Iuris Civilis, 3 (Dublin:
Weidmann, 1972), 45,5–11; see also the comparison of the vestal virgins and the Christian
virgins in canon 21 (20) of the council of Tours (567).
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58 EVA M. SYNEK
rooted in stoic traditions, points out the practical use of the missionary cooperation
of men and women.91 In the fourth century John Chrysostom comments on female
participation in apostolic hardship in his commentary to Romans 16.92 This means
that a specific Christian tradition existed, one that could have served as a starting point
for the cooperation of women in their husbands’ ecclesiastical office. But the churches
dropped this possibility — at least at the level of episcopacy, which became reserved
to unmarried men not only in the West, but also in the Christian East.93
On the level of the deaconate, various early canon law sources entrust women
with functions complementary to those of the male clergy. The late antique institu-
tion of the deaconess emerged in a context of dichotomized structures. It is beyond
question that it was followed up in Byzantine monasticism as well as in the medieval
Syrian churches. Whether it ever completely disappeared in the second millennium
is a matter of current academic discussion: for modern times the practice of ordained
deaconesses in the Armenian Apostolic Church, at least, has to be admitted.94 But
also in other orthodox churches the question of revivification of the female
deaconate has been topical for decades.95
91
Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, 3, 53, in Stromata I–VI, ed. by Otto Stählin, GCS, 15
(Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1985), p. 53; English trans. by John Ferguson, Fathers of the
Church, 85 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1991), p. 289.
92
Cf. John Chrysostom, In Rom. hom. 31, 2, in Opera, 1–13, PG, 62, 669–70.
93
In the Byzantine Empire it was Emperor Justinian who made celibacy compulsory for
bishops (thus contradicting older Church Law such as the so-called Apostolic Canons for
which marriage was not an obstacle to episcopal ordination). The Council in Trullo confirmed
the Emperor’s decision (cf. cc. 12, 48) and ordered that a married man could only be elevated
to an episcopal see after his wife accepted separation from her husband and retired to a
monastery. Cf. e.g. Spyros N. Troianos, ‘Zölibat und Kirchenvermögen in der früh- und
mittelbyzantinischen kanonischen Gesetzgebung’, in Eherecht und Familiengut in Antike und
Mittelalter, ed. by Dieter Simon, Schriften des Historischen Kollegs. Kolloquien, 22 (Munich:
Oldenbourg, 1992), pp. 133–46; Constantin Pitsakis, ‘Clergé marié et célibat dans la
législation du Concile in Trullo: le point de vue oriental’, in The Council in Trullo Revisted,
ed. by George Nedungatt and Michael Featherstone, Kanonika, 6 (Rome: Pontificio Istituto
Orientale, 1995), pp. 263–306.
94
See Eva M. Synek, ‘Der Frauendiakonat der Alten Kirche und seine Rezeption durch die
orthdoxen Kirchen: Lösungsansätze für die katholische Ordinationsdiskussion?’,
Ostkirchliche Studien, 48 (1999), 3–21.
95
See The Place of the Woman in the Orthodox Church and the Question of the Ordina-
tion of Women: Interorthodox Symposium Rhodos, Greece 30 October – 7 November 1988,
ed. by Gennadios Limouris (Katerini: ‘Tertios’ Publications, 1992); Dorothea Reininger, Dia-
konat in der einen Kirche (Ostfildern: Schwabenverlag, 1999), pp. 461–574 (with literature);
Evangelos D. Theodorou, ‘Weibliche Kleriker aus orthodoxer Sicht unter besonderer Berück-
sichtigung der Empfehlung der panorthodoxen Theologenkonferenz von 1988’, in Mutter,
Nonne, Diakonin: Frauenbilder im Recht der Ostkirchen, ed. by Carl G. Fürst and Richard
Potz, Kanon, 16 (Egling: Kovar, 2000), pp. 190–212.
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As far as priesthood is concerned, there is a significant difference between

Eastern and Western development. While in the Latin tradition, celibacy could be
more and more enforced, in the Eastern churches the ordinary parish priests always
remained married men. Moreover their wives often played an important role in the
parish. The fact that, during the Middle Ages, the Eastern Church authorities started
to formulate special duties for a priest’s wife seems to be an indirect confirmation of
this practice. The Greeks began to forbid the remarriage of a widowed priest’s wife,
drawing a parallel between the impediment to marriage caused by ordination. The
famous twelfth-century canonist Balsamon argued that ‘the wives of priests, who are
reckoned one body and one priestly flesh through union with priests, [. . .]
consequently also are ordained, so to speak’.96 In the Syrian Orthodox context the
wife of the parish priest has also been seen as a partner (within limits) in her
husband’s office.97 The canonical approbation is not only implied by the interdict of
remarriage for the widow. Thus one can read in the Canons of Johannan of Marde
(which became part of the Synodicon):
A bart qeyama [in this context referring to the wife of a priest] of a presbyter who dies
is absolutely not allowed from God that she may have this in mind and enter second
marriage after her widowhood from a priest — because she is the spiritual mother of
all the believers.98
The pastoral vocation of the priest’s wife is also confirmed by a special blessing which
recalls the ordination of deaconesses. In parishes of the Syrian Orthodox Church the
priest’s wife is expected to take up the functions for which in ancient times the
church provided the institution of the female deacon: to help with the baptism of a
grown-up girl or an adult woman.99 Another task of the priest’s wife inherited from
96
See Balsamon, Commentary to c. 44 of Basil the Great, in Syntagma, ed. by Rhalles and
Potles, IV, 191–93; see also Balsamon’s Commentary to c. 48 of the Council in Trullo, in
ibid., II, 420–23.
97
See Patrick D. Viscuso, ‘The Prohibition of Second Marriage for Women Married to
Priests’, Byzantine Studies Conference, Abstracts of Papers, 22 (1996), 71; Heinz Ohme, ‘Frauen
im Niederen Klerus und als Ehefrauen von Klerikern in den östlichen Traditionen’, in Mutter,
Nonne, Diakonin, ed. by Fürst and Potz, pp. 167–89 (pp. 186–88). But see also Konstantinos
Pitsakis, ‘Zetemata kolymaton gamou apo ten nomologian kai ten praktike tou Despotatou tes
Epeirou’, in Praktika Diethnous Symposiou gia to Despotatou tes Heteirou, Arta 27–31 Maiou
1990 (Arta, 1992), pp. 355–74, for the non-reception of Balsamon’s legal opinion in Epiros.
98
Johannan of Marde, Canon 29, in The Synodicon in the West Syrian Tradition, trans. by
Arthur Vööbus, CSCO, 376/Script. Syr., 164 (Leuven: Secrétariat du Corpus SCO, 1976),
p. 263.
99
The rubrics of the order of baptism explicitly refer to these duties. See The Sacrament of
Holy Baptism According to the Ancient Rite of the Syrian Orthodox Church of Antioch, trans.
by Murad Saliba Barsom, ed. and publ. by Metropolitan Mar Athanasius Yeshue Samuel
(Hackensack, NJ, 1974), p. 9.
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60 EVA M. SYNEK
the ancient deaconess is to teach women, especially when the social context favours
gender-separating structures. Hence the legally fixed patria potestas was kept alive
by the social acceptance of the de facto powerful position of the mater familias. In
some ways, the practice of the churches seems to perpetuate the old Roman way of
keeping true to traditional structures: one or another compromise is found.
The Monastic Context
There remains another point to be investigated. As shown by Kenan B. Osborne in

his valuable study of lay ministry, the episcopal church is not the only productive
field for research on ecclesiastical structures. It is possible to speak ‘of a sort of
“alternative” church structure’ in connection with monasticism.100
Both of these forms of Christian life [the monastic and the clerical] enjoyed a leader-
ship role. Clearly, the clerical church exerted leadership and authority, and the local
episkopos enjoyed great prestige and obedience by the Christians in his community.
Within the monastic enclave, the superior or abbot was willingly given a position of
leadership and authority by the monks. However, even beyond the confines of the
monastery, the superior or abbot was often held in the highest esteem. Even the rank
and file of monks themselves were held in no little repute.101
Though a more detailed survey concerning the ascetic wing of the Church is not the
aim of this essay, the most significant points should at least be mentioned. Tradi-
tional principles of order relatively quickly entered the ascetic communities as well
as the ‘normal’ local Christian communities. Like the bishop, the abbas and hegu-
menos respectively were not only regularly called ‘father’, but indeed adopted the
role of pater familias for the artificial alternative family, the responsibility as well as
the rights. Unlike ‘normal’ communities, within a monastic community, the pater
familias could (and can) be a mother. As stressed above, according to Roman law a
woman was never able to become a pater familias though she might be the head of a
household. In the monastic context she could (and can) be so to a large extent.102 To
put it in another way: the egalitarian provocation of the household model as found in
the Gospel tradition gave way to the monarchic family structure even in the ascetic
context. But there was an important modification insofar as the top position was no
longer completely gender-fixed. From the eighth century onwards, the Western
monasteries for men were more and more clericalized, with the result that two alter-
native clerical structures were created on the one hand, and an increasing discre-
pancy between male and female monasticism developed on the other. In the East we
100
Osborne, Ministry, p. 262.
101
Osborne, Ministry, p. 263.
102
At times, female ascetics were even called ‘fathers’, thus stressing that they were con-
sidered equal in virtue to their male colleges. Cf. e.g. the preface of Palladius’s Lausiac History.
Page 70
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can speak of a monasticization of episcopacy but not of a clericalization of (male)

monasticism comparable to the Western development. Thus at least in some ortho-
dox churches as the Rumanian Orthodox Church, for example, female monasticism
has remained a significant counterpart to the dominant male hierarchic structure.
This alternative leadership model within the female houses is the most remarkable
aspect from a structural point of view. But in practical terms other aspects, such as
an unbroken tradition of female theological formation and pastoral care provided by
women, do not seem less worth mentioning.
Biblical Aspects
Let us now return to the beginning of this essay and to the basis of all further Chris-
tian developments, the biblical heritage. I have already noted Jesus’s promise to
those who leave their houses and families respectively on behalf of the kingdom of
God. According to the Gospel the disciples are to find new mothers, brothers, sisters.
The striking point is that the relevant logia do not mention fathers. What is envisaged
is not a society without men. There are brothers. But the patriarchal fathers are
missing. This signifies a critique of the contemporary household system. The social
model of the Gospel is in principle egalitarian. This becomes explicit in other parts
of the Gospel tradition which voice open criticism of different forms of dominion:103
But you, do not be called ‘Rabbi’: for One is your Teacher, the Christ; and all are
brethren. Do not call anyone on earth your father: for One is your Father, He who is in
heaven. And do not be called teachers: for One is your Teacher, the Christ. But he
who is greatest among you shall be your servant. And whoever exalts himself will be
humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted. (Matthew 23. 8–12)
Some Old Testament traditions had already questioned the political system of king-
ship in their time. The first book of Samuel harshly criticizes Israel’s request for a
king. Asking for a worldly king means rejecting the kingship of God (cf. I Samuel 7. 7;
10. 19). To opt for a king is to change freedom under God for slavery under a man.
New Testament household critique appears as the radicalized rereading of the old
message. All traditional forms of human dominion — including fatherhood as well as
teacherhood — are questioned in regard to the male and female followers of Jesus.
The early Christian sources which refer to the bishop within the concept of oikos-
ecclesiology were aware of this. The sharp distinction between the heavenly father
and his representative on earth was lost in late antiquity. Seeing him as the typos of
the heavenly father, the bishop became a father himself. But this is not strictly bibli-
cal tradition. Originally, the epithet ‘father’ is only applied to God.104 The fatherless
103
See Mark 10. 35–45 (par.: Matthew 20. 20–28; Luke 22. 24–27).
104
See Klaus W. Müller, ‘König und Vater: Streiflichter zur metaphorischen Rede über Gott
in der Umwelt des Neuen Testaments’, in Königsherrschaft Gottes und himmlischer Kult im
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62 EVA M. SYNEK
society and the kingless society are correlated with the idea of the fatherhood and
kingship of God. In the light of subsequent development, the pastoral epistles can be
read as the first link in the chain making the bishop the father of the house of God,
but it has to be stressed that they themselves continue to avoid this terminology.
Instead, the addressee of I Timothy is ordered to treat an older man respectfully —
like a father (and mutatis mutandis, older women like mothers). I Timothy correlates
the ‘house of God’ to the private house of the episkopos, insofar as being a vir
probatus in domestic concerns is seen as a prerequisite for being able to care for the
Church (cf. I Timothy 4. 4, 5). But this applied not only to the bishop but also to
deacons (cf. I Timothy 4. 12). In Titus 1. 5 the bishop is definitely referred to as
oikonomos, steward. The steward can only act in the name of his lord; he is not the
lord himself. In contradistinction to the pater familias he is always responsible to a
higher authority. It is significant that being an oikonomos was typically considered
to be a slave’s job in antiquity.
Conclusion
The change of metaphors bears witness to the victory of contemporary social struc-
tures over the social criticism and emancipatory impact of the original biblical
message. As pointed out in this essay, a conception of Church Order focusing on
patriarchal heads of the local churches was at hand within the late antique context.
The historical setting of early Christian communities certainly helps to explain the
perception of the episcopal office as ‘fatherhood’. Nevertheless one cannot speak of
a consequent transfer of the biblical oikos-ecclesiology to ecclesiastical structures.
The actual development of Church Order has to be justified with regard to the Bible:
thus one cannot say that the particular historical development of Church Order is a
logical consequence of all oikos-ecclesiology.
Judentum, Urchristentum und in der hellenistischen Welt, ed. by Martin Hengel and Anna M.
Schwemmer, Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament, 55 (Tübingen: Mohr,
1991), pp. 21–43.
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The Icon Corner in Medieval Byzantium
JUDITH HERRIN
F
rom classical times onwards, one of the basic tasks of women was to take care
of the household lares, representatives of the ancient gods, whose presence was
felt to protect and assist the family. In every dwelling with a hearth, female
members attended these deities with appropriate rituals. Even though it might require
no more than a token offering of incense or a gesture of respect, such actions helped
to guarantee the well-being of the entire family. In the form of statuettes, often
gilded, as well as framed wooden panel paintings, local deities occupied a prominent
domestic space long into the Christian era. The suggestion of this essay is that when
the family converted to Christianity the ancient household gods were replaced by
Christian icons, which took over the same role and protected the same space. It
seems likely that women’s responsibility for, and devotion to, the household protec-
tors was transferred from the old deities to the new Christian God. Although there is
no direct evidence for a removal of the older representations in order to institute new
ones, when icons are later found in a domestic setting, they are in precisely that part
of the home which is the particular preserve of women. It is this association between
domestic cult and the veneration of icons in Byzantium that I wish to explore.
The sources for such an investigation are very patchy. Archaeological evidence
for the layout of late antique houses in the East Mediterranean rarely includes fur-
nishings, and no free-standing Christian icons have been found in situ. In the 1980s
excavations in Alexandria revealed a unique fresco of the Mother of God and Christ
Child, very poorly preserved in the main area of a private house.1 This rare instance
confirms the decoration of households. but it remains most unusual. Fortunately,
there are many references to similar icons and frescoes in literary sources, mainly
1
Mieczyslaw Rodziewicz, Les habitations romaines tardives d’Alexandrie à la lumière des
fouilles polonaises à Kom el-Dikka (Warsaw: Editions Scientifiques de Pologne, 1984), pp.
195–204; Christopher Haas, Alexandria in Late Antiquity: Topography and Social Conflict
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), pp. 199 and 201–02.
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72 JUDITH HERRIN
writings about saints (hagiography) and miracle collections. While the earliest pre-
served icons are now in museums and monastic collections, such as the monastery of
St Catherine on Mount Sinai, in many cases their date, place of origin, and means of
transfer there are unknown. These examples appear to date from the fifth and sixth
centuries. And literary references of the same period to the use of icons in a domestic
setting imply the practice of maintaining an icon corner in early Byzantine houses.
By bringing together these disparate sources from the sixth to the tenth century, I
wish to draw attention to the private context of much Christian devotion, both in
households and in public shrines.
The earliest preserved Christian icons are painted on thin boards of wood either in
tempera (pigment ground in water-miscible medium and applied to several layers of
wet gesso) or encaustic, the technique of using heated, coloured wax to mould and
highlight the personal features. Both were used for painting portraits all over the
Roman world, but it is only in the dry heat of Egypt, particularly in the area of the
Fayum, that they have survived. Images of the ancient gods were also executed in
both techniques. Recently, Professor Tom Mathews has assembled over thirty exam-
ples of these earlier portraits, chiefly of Egyptian deities.2 While several had been
known for a long time, they had not previously been accorded detailed investigation
as a body, which is now being expanded by the addition of many fragmentary sam-
ples from the depots of different museums of classical archaeology. These paintings
of pagan gods and heroes form a newly recognized body of household protectors
distinct from the more common statuettes.
What is particularly interesting, however, is that some of these pagan representa-
tions were also framed and displayed on the walls of private houses. Through anal-
ysis of these portraits and their find-spots, Mathews has added another dimension to
this discussion: a domestic aspect of the cult. One of his most revealing discoveries
has been the placing of these cult objects in the inner rooms of houses preserved in
Egypt.3 In these larger complexes, images of the protecting deities seem to have been
hung on the walls of rooms which were not generally accessible to visitors. This
custom suggests a private cult of the god, celebrated by the owner of the image and
his family in the privacy of a family room. The image may even have been displayed
over the bed where the couple slept, an obvious form of protection.
2
Thomas F. Mathews gave a paper on these ancient portraits at the conference Mother of
God, held in Athens, January 2001. The printed version by Thomas F. Mathews and Norman
Muller, ‘Isis and Mary in Early Icons’, in Images of the Mother of God: Perceptions of the
Theotokos in Byzantium, ed. by M. Vassilaki (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), pp. 3–11, concen-
trates specifically on the connection between Isis and Mary. Many of the images were also
excavated in the Fayum, but were never considered particularly significant.
3
Thomas F. Mathews, The Clash of Gods: A Reinterpretation of Early Christian Art, rev.
edn (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), pp. 177–90, which constitute a new chapter
entitled ‘The Intimate Icon’.
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The use of such cult images in inner rooms of private houses takes the traditional
notion of the household lares one step further. In addition to statuettes and symbols
of the deities, specific gods are depicted in their human form. Only five out of
Matthews’s group of thirty-one pagan icons were found in their original settings. But
four of these five come from domestic areas inside houses. In contrast to the cult
statues, which formed the main focus of pagan worship in public temples, this do-
mestic cult was on a smaller and less extravagant scale. It is characterized by framed
images, which often have grooves for a cover; by triptychs, with outer wings hinged
to the central panel, which they cover when closed; by the presence of donor figures
(in three cases); by the frequent depiction of military deities, often identified by
inscriptions; and above all by the full-length, frontal pose of the god, sometimes with
a halo, carrying the symbols of power. All these features suggest that images such as
Isis and Suchos enthroned in an encaustic portrait were for private use and served a
personal need.4 And women may have been responsible for covering or closing
them, for decorating them with flowers, incense, and other offerings, even for
commissioning them. The fact that this cult appears in private inner chambers may
perhaps imply that it set a precedent for the icon corner of later Christian houses.5
Private Veneration in Coptic Egypt
This continuity can be traced in at least one Egyptian household, where the Christian
archangel took the place of the older deities. In a Coptic sermon on St Michael, an
elderly man realizes that he is about to die and his wife, Euphemia, asks him to com-
mission the painting of an icon.6 They order a wooden icon of the archangel, which she
4
Mathews, Clash of Gods, pp. 180–81, pl. 139.
5
The account of Lycomedes, who commissioned a portrait of the Apostle John, preserves
many of these features: the image was secretly painted, displayed in the owner’s bedroom, and
honoured with garlands and candles on an altar; see Montague R. James, The Apochryphal
New Testament: being the apochryphal Gospels, Acts, Epistles and Apocalypses with other
fragments and narratives (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924), rev. edn by James K. Elliott
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), ‘The Acts of John’, pars. 26–28, pp. 313–14.
6
My attention was drawn to this sermon by a partial translation by Leslie MacCoull,
Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik, 32 (1982), 407–14; repr. in her Coptic Perspec-
tives on Late Antiquity, Variorum Collected Studies Series, CS 398 (Aldershot: Variorum,
1993), no. XXII. It was published with a translation by E. A. Wallis Budge, St Michael the
Archangel: Three Encomiums (London: Kegan, Paul, 1894). This sermon has recently been
studied by Lucy-Ann Hunt, ‘For the Salvation of a Woman’s Soul: An Icon of St Michael
Described within a Medieval Coptic Context’, in Icon and Word: The Power of Images in
Byzantium, ed. by A. Eastmond and L. James (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), pp. 205–32. While
Euphemia begs her husband to make St Michael her guardian for the rest of her life, the image
becomes a strategy for her empowerment, and she is much stronger in her devotions because
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74 JUDITH HERRIN
intends to put in her bedroom, ‘so that when you die it will watch over me and save
me from the wiles of the Unjust One [the Devil] and every human temptation’. And
the painter came and was instructed how to make the image, and ‘they gilded it with
fine gold inlaid with precious stones of great value and she rejoiced over it like one
who has found great riches’. So when the hour came for Aristarchus to pass away,
the husband took her hand and put it upon the hand of the archangel Michael whose
image was depicted [. . .] and he cried out saying: ‘O Archangel Michael [. . .] behold, in
thy hands I place my wife Euphemia as a deposit, so that thou mayst watch over her.’
Once this was done he died. And she continued offering the icon of St Michael in-
cense, keeping a lamp lit before it at all times, and making proskynesis before it three
times a day she asked him to help her. The Archangel continued to protect Euphemia
in her widowhood, thwarting all the Devil’s attempts to corrupt her, which are re-
corded in lively detail. When she realized that she was dying, she kissed the icon and
it was placed over her eyes. St Michael himself then appeared in magnificent cloth-
ing to carry her soul up to heaven.
In this vignette of concern about the safety and well-being of the widow Euphemia,
which is to be dated to the seventh century, after the Arab conquest of Egypt, a num-
ber of issues relevant to early Christian icon veneration are underlined. This icon
was commissioned from an artist for a particular purpose; it was hung in the couple’s
bedroom, the innermost space of their house; the dying husband entrusted his wife to
the archangel depicted on it, so that he would protect her and prevent any evil coming
near her. After his death she gained much strength from her regular veneration of the
icon, which eventually became a wonder-working icon in the local bishop’s church.
A similar association of icons with bedroom furniture is preserved in a seventh-
century inventory of furnishings for a house in Oxyrhynchus, which records a great
variety of decorative as well as functional pieces.7 The first item is a large bed, and
the list continues with two small icons (ikonidia), one of St Kollouthos, gilded
around the head, and one of the Mother of God (Theotokos), gilded all over. Wooden
panels, small wooden columns, balustrades, door panels, and marble capitals, as well
as a couch and another bed, complete the list. How all this was to be assembled by
the servant Onouphrios in an inner triklinium (normally the word for dining room) is
not clear. The combination of gilded icons and a bed, however, suggests some sort of
devotion made by the family in private.
The replacement of gods represented on wooden icons in Egypt must have taken
centuries, but the gradual transformation points to an abiding concern for household
protection which appears to have been shared by women. Beyond the dry climate of
North Africa less evidence for such painted panels is preserved, so it is much harder
of it. Her husband, Aristarchus, wanted to ensure that she would be protected after his death
by the icon they had commissioned.
7
The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, ed. and trans. by Bernard P. Grenfell, Arthur S. Hunt, and
H. Bell (London: British Academy, 1925), XVI, 203–05, no. 1925.
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to trace a similar process. Elite women in early medieval Byzantium probably lived
in houses where the space was divided between that open to the street and the public,
and the more private family quarters.8 In both rural and urban settings the wealthiest
families maintained separate areas for their womenfolk, in a manner similar to em-
presses in their numerous palaces. In most households some space was more public
than others — and the chamber where the family slept was considered more private.
Reference to such a room is made in a collection of miracles attributed to St Symeon
the Younger (521–92). According to the Life of the saint, a woman who had bene-
fited from a miraculous cure commemorated the event in a painting, which she put
up in an inner chamber of her house (en to endotero autes oiko). There it worked
wonders and cured another woman who came and made her prostrations in front of
it.9 This late sixth-century reference relates to the place where the icon corner might
be found, where the images of pagan gods had once been displayed, and where
women kept their own few belongings.
Personal property is mentioned in the wills drawn up by Byzantine women. Beds,
covers, cushions, personal clothing, and jewellery feature among the objects typi-
cally stored in bedrooms, and these are often bequeathed to female relatives and to
freed female slaves. It is also clear that women might own icons. A seventh-century
collection of miracles documents the expectation that a mother named Sophia could
realize enough money to pay the doctors’ fees by selling an icon, possibly one with a
silver-gilt cover (chrysargyron).10 But this woman was genuinely poor and had no
assets, nothing she could sell to pay the medical charge. Fortunately she was directed
to the shrine of St Artemios, who like the anargyroi Sts Kosmas and Damianos
(‘those without silver’), did not charge for healing her son. The relatively low cost of
cheaper painted icons and impressed metal ones made it possible for many ordinary
people to own them. They carried them on journeys and wore miniature ones called
enkolpia around their necks.11 Female ownership is not in doubt, and it seems quite
likely that icons were passed from mother to daughter, as were certain female arti-
cles of clothing, belts, headscarves, or gems, for example.
8
Helen Saradi, ‘Privatization and Subdivision of Urban Properties in the Early Byzantine
Centuries: Social and Cultural Implications’, Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrolo-
gists, 35 (1998), 17–43; Geneviève Husson, ‘Houses at Syene in the Patermouthis Archive’,
Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists, 27 (1990), 123–37; see also her study of
late antique houses, OIKIA: Le vocabulaire de la maison privée en Egypte d’après les papyri
grecs (Paris: Publications da la Sorbonne, 1983).
9
See La Vie de S. Syméon Stylite le Jeune (521–94), vol. I, ed. by Paul Van den Ven,
Subsidia hagiographica, 32 (Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1962), par. 118, p. 98, line 45.
10
See also the many examples from the late Byzantine period collected by Nicolas Oikono-
mides in his fascinating article ‘The Holy Icon as an Asset’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 45
(1991), 35–44.
11
Anna D. Kartsonis, ‘Protection against All Evil: Function, Use and Operation of Byzan-
tine Historiated Phylacteries’, Byzantinische Forschungen, 20 (1994), 73–102.
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76 JUDITH HERRIN
The Public Cult of the Theotokos

However, the written sources that document the earliest use of Christian icons asso-
ciate them overwhelmingly with public celebrations. In Constantinople, capital of
the Byzantine Empire, we can analyse the way in which icons of the Virgin become
an established part of her cult, and this can serve as a paradigm of the public mani-
festation of icon veneration. The forceful personality of Pulcheria, older sister of the
Emperor Theodosius II who ruled through the first half of the fifth century, is asso-
ciated with this process. But the Empress Verina may have played a more significant
role in the construction of three churches dedicated to the Virgin Mary, as well as the
development of her feasts.12 Interestingly, since Pulcheria had pledged herself to
virginity, her identification with the Mother of God was not constructed through the
maternal role. She had no interest in maternity and only agreed to a marriage of
convenience with an elderly general when her brother died and the senators of
Constantinople demanded a male ruler for the empire.
A major impetus to the development of Christian representations of the Virgin
stemmed from the debate over her theological significance. Before the Council of
Ephesus, held in 431, the precise role of Mary had not been established in any great
detail — beyond the Gospel stories. But once that universal council of bishops had
agreed that Mary should be honoured by the title Theotokos, ‘she who bore God’,
new liturgies were developed to celebrate it. At the churches dedicated to her, the
Hodegetria, Chalkoprateia, and Blachernai, weekly vigils, processions, and services
devoted to her feasts established a very public celebration of the Mother of God in
Constantinople, which rapidly became popular and is documented in the sermons of
Proclus, the bishop of the capital.13
These new structures were presumably decorated with images of the Virgin and
Child, which commemorated her role as Theotokos. A later story connects the devel-
opment of Marian iconography with a discovery made in Jerusalem by Eudokia, the
estranged wife of Theodosios II. She had found an icon of Mary and the Christ child
painted from life, it was claimed, by St Luke.14 She is said to have sent this icon to
12
Christine Angelidi, Pulcheria: La castità nel potere (c.399–455) (Milan: Jact Books,
1996); cf. Cyril Mango, ‘The Origins of the Blachernae Shrine at Constantinople’, in Acta ad
XIII Congressus Internationale Archaelogiae Christianae (Split: Arheoloski Muzej, 1998), II,
61–75.
13
Averil Cameron, ‘The Early Cult of the Virgin’, in Mother of God: Representations of
the Virgin in Byzantine Art, Catalogue of the exhibition, ed. by Maria Vassilaki (Milan: Skira,
2000), pp. 3–15; Cyril Mango, ‘Constantinople as Theotokoupolis’, in ibid., pp. 17–25;
Vasiliki Limberis, Divine Heiress: The Virgin Mary and Creation of Christian Constantinople
(London: Routledge, 1994). See also Vassilaki, Images of the Mother of God, and Judith
Herrin, ‘The Imperial Feminine in Byzantium’, Past and Present, 103 (2000), 3–35.
14
Theodore Lector, Historia ecclesiastica (as excerpted by Nikephoros Kallistos Xantho-
poulos), PG, 86, 165A; Robin Cormack, Painting the Soul: Icons, Death Masks and Shrouds
(London: Reaktion, 1997), pp. 44–59.
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Pulcheria, her sister-in-law, and Pulcheria installed it in the Hodegetria Church.

Whether anyone believed that the picture was so old that it could really have been
painted by the apostle or not, it may well have stimulated group representations of
the Holy Family. But as nothing survives of this original painting, it is difficult to
establish the origins of the iconography now made familiar by images such as the
sixth-century encaustic portrait at Sinai.15
A generation later, Leo I and his wife, Verina, added a magnificent chapel within
the church at Blachernai, just beyond the walls of Constantinople, to house the pre-
cious soros, the girdle of the Virgin, and her veil, the only two surviving relics of her
earthly life. They were laid in a gold- and jewel-encrusted reliquary of great splen-
dour, and above the emperor and his wife had their portraits painted together with
their children before the enthroned Mother of God. Another icon commemorated the
two donors, aristocratic officials who had acquired the holy relic, some said by
theft.16 They had themselves depicted together with angels and saints on either side
of an enormous image of the Theotokos. In the absence of any surviving artistic
record of this shrine, the commemoration of another rich patron, Turtura, in the cata-
combs at Rome, may perhaps provide a comparable image. In this fresco commis-
sioned by her son, the pious widow is shown with the Virgin and Child enthroned,
flanked by saints. The force of these paintings is that they claim a role for the
donors/patrons of the icon as people particularly close to the holy persons depicted,
friends of the saints, beneficiaries of their holy powers. Normally they are public
statements made by wealthy and powerful members of the ruling class of their time.
In their new shrines in Constantinople imperial patronage ensured that these icons
of the Theotokos would be incorporated into a popular aspect of Christian worship:
weekly vigils, liturgies, and processions designed to enhance their power as interces-
sors. This is an essentially public activity which involves the inhabitants of the
capital, so that by the sixth century a developed ritual can be extended by the addi-
tion of a Friday procession from Blachernai to Chalkoprateia modelled on the cult
activity of Jerusalem.17 Similar developments in other urban centres result in the
adoption of particular saints and their icons by communities, for example, Symeon in
Antioch, Glykeria in Herakleia, Demetrios in Thessaloniki.18 Through public rituals
15
Sinai icon: André Grabar, ‘Remarques sur l’iconographie byzantine de la Vierge’,
Cahiers Archéologiques, 26 (1977), 169–78.
16
Cyril Mango, The Art of the Byzantine Empire 312–1453: Sources and Documents
(Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1972), pp. 34–35.
17
Michel van Esbroeck, ‘Le culte de la Vierge de Jérusalem à Constantinople aux 6e–7e
siècles’, Revue des études byzantines, 46 (1988), 181–90.
18
Marie-France Auzépy, ‘L’iconodoulie: défense de l’image ou de la dévotion à l’image?’,
in Nicée II. 787–1987: Douze siècles d’images religieuses, ed. by François Boespflug and
Nicolas Lossky (Paris: Cerf, 1987), pp. 157–65 (p. 163); Charalambos Bakirtzis, Hoi sylloges
Archiepiskopou Ioannou kai Anonymou: O bios, ta thaumata kai he Thessalonike tou Hagiou
Demetriou (Thessaloniki: Agra, 1997).
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78 JUDITH HERRIN
such holy protectors receive veneration, which is often orchestrated by the local
bishop. Because of their healing powers, these icons are copied so that they can be
paraded around the walls, fixed to shop fronts, erected in public squares, and set up
in churches dedicated to their presence, where lamps are lit in front of them and
miracles occur.19
The popular acclaim of icons based in specific public shrines, however, results in
a particular aspect of icon veneration, a type of worship which is essentially private.
Here is a source of passion, recorded in the prayers of individuals who beseech the
holy person depicted to intercede for them, to provide them with success in love and
marriage, fertility, conception, and offspring, with cures, or with some reward for their
devotion to the Christian images. It can be entirely individual or it can involve a group,
such as a family. Often it does not act through the official channels of church ser-
vices or liturgies at the shrine. Yet the private aspect of this sort of icon veneration
propels the cult of holy images, with their curative, healing, and protective powers.
It is not difficult to identify the reasons for this: icons can dominate a particular
sphere of worship, commanding an especially intense form of close-up, personal
interaction. The viewer is drawn into the image by the eyes of the person depicted,
who gazes out from the painting in a very direct fashion. Even when the saint does
not address the viewer but glances to the side, there is usually a pronounced frontal-
ity in the presentation of the figures. The invitation to some form of communication
is commented on by many contemporaries, as is the capacity to engage with the wor-
shipper in what is usually a private dialogue. A variety of texts preserve instances of
such conversations reported between individuals and the holy persons depicted, often
in a dream, or when half asleep, waiting for a message.20 While the pagan gods had
often been addressed with similar requests, through the medium of curse tablets or
incubation in the temple precinct, as well as in private devotions within the house,
the direct communication imagined between Christian saints and their human devo-
tees constructs a profoundly fervent style of dialogue. This may be a significant
factor in the development of the domestic and private cult of icons. And it is this
aspect of personal devotion which seems to be particularly associated with women.
Many sources which provide evidence of this type of veneration were cited at the
Council of Nicaea in 787 to justify the use of icons.21 Since they are well known and
19
For a selection of the many miracles associated with particular icons, see Mango, Art,
pp. 133–40.
20
Judith Herrin, ‘Women and the Faith in Icons in Early Christianity’, in Culture, Ideology
and Politics: Essays for Eric Hobsbawm, ed. by Raphael Samuel and Gareth Stedman Jones
(London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982), pp. 56–83 (pp. 66–68).
21
Mango, Art, pp. 134–39, provides six examples of such stories cited at the council. In
contrast, Auzépy ‘L’iconodoulie’, emphasizes that the texts used to secure the support of
previous iconoclasts all relate to the cult of the saints depicted on icons. The council therefore
spent less effort in justifying religious art than in strengthening the role of Christ, the Virgin,
saints, and other holy people as intercessors.
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often quoted, I will not rehearse the arguments here. But it is significant that several
of them concern the devotions of women who had particular faith in icons and
addressed their personal prayers to holy images in hopes of miraculous intervention
and healing. Elsewhere I have drawn attention to the special significance which this
type of veneration may have for women in early Christian times, since they are sys-
tematically excluded from official roles within the Byzantine church. Apart from the
possibility of becoming nuns (and many women did follow this route to an estab-
lished position), the vast majority of women had no recognized role. They were
urged to exercise philanthropy, embody Christian piety, and perform charitable acts.
Personal devotion to their own icons which they kept at home is therefore quite
understandable. And the responsiveness they felt in addressing the holy people de-
picted on them arises in part from the domestic context of their devotions, as well as
from the narrow range of expressions of faith allowed to women in general.22
Private Veneration of Icons in Public Shrines
Despite the fact that this type of devotion is often performed in a church open to the
public, in front of icons displayed in shrines and chapels, it also seems to have been
a private activity carried on without the intervention of priests or other Church offi-
cials. This intensely personal aspect suggests that men and women found particular
satisfaction in it. The parents of St Elizabeth, for instance, made their prayers in front
of an icon of St Glykeria, the patron of Herakleia of Thrace.23 Getting older and
fearing that she would remain barren for ever, Euphemia begged the saint to grant
her the gift of a child. After they had prayed both she and her husband fell asleep in
the church and received night visions of Glykeria, who gave them instructions. As a
result their daughter Elizabeth was born and the grateful parents returned to thank
their patron for her miraculous intercession. On this occasion the father, Eunomia-
nos, saw the saint’s lips move on the icon, when Glykeria told him to fulfil his vows.
The couple then asked the archbishop to baptize their daughter, who received the
predicted name of Elizabeth.
From well-known biblical models of Sarah, Elizabeth, and Anna right up to
present-day problems of infertility, problems of conception seem to have remained
fairly constant. The elderly couple blessed by an unexpected child through divine
intervention is a common topos of Christian miracle stories. And in Late Antique
and Byzantine times when children were considered the great blessing of marriage,
22
Judith Herrin, ‘Public and Private Forms of Religious Commitment among Byzantine
Women’, in Women in Ancient Societies: An Illusion of the Night, ed. by Léonie Archer,
Susan Fischler, and Maria Wyke (London: Macmillan, 1994), pp. 181–203.
23
François Halkin, ‘La Vie de Sainte Elizabeth’, Analecta Bollandiana, 91 (1973), 249–
64; trans. by Alice-Mary Talbot, ed., Holy Women of Byzantium: Ten Saints Lives in English
Translation (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1998), pp. 122–35.
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80 JUDITH HERRIN
and childlessness was mourned as a serious loss, for a woman to be barren was a
terrible fate. It is often, therefore, a specifically feminine practice to request divine
assistance from a living holy man, or through the medium of an icon or a wall
painting. As one of the most famous women assisted through this process, Anna, the
Virgin’s mother, was considered a most effective intercessor and gained a revered
place in the hearts of other women threatened by sterility or old age. They made their
devotions in front of her images and invoked her help, both in their homes and in
shrines or churches open to the public.24
A highly developed example concerns the mother of St Stephen the Younger, who
regularly visited the shrine of the Virgin at Blachernai in the early eighth century and
prayed before the image of the Mother of God and her son, Christ. She was already
the mother of two daughters but she implored the Virgin to grant her a son of her
own before she was too old to conceive.25 She called on Anna, mother of the Virgin
Mary, after whom she was named, as well as Sarah and Elizabeth. But the Life of St
Stephen reveals a great deal about the way in which this particular icon of the
Theotokos was used in public and private veneration.
Anna, mother of the future saint, never missed the Friday evening vigil in honour of
the Virgin held at Blachernai, and indeed it was on one of these occasions when she
stood before the icon that the supposed conversation occurred. Her prayer took the
form of a lengthy appeal to the Virgin which she repeated two and three times, inter-
spersed with genuflections. It was during the last of these acts of bending in prosky-
nesis that sleep took her and she received the vision and message of the Virgin, who
raised her to a standing position, touched her side, and told her that she would have a
son. On retaining her self-control, the woman returned home rejoicing and of course
conceived (par. 4, p. 92). Forty days after the promised son was safely delivered, the
parents went back together to the same shrine and again Anna addressed the icon
directly. This time she gave thanks to the Theotokos for making the impossible hap-
pen, for curing her of the sterility which prevented her from having a son.
First, she greeted the Theotokos as all pure, immaculate, and quick to save, and
then with many tears she lifted the baby Stephen up to the image. She begged the
Virgin, now identified as sovereign lady (despoina), she who responds (antiphone-
tria), a particularly appropriate epithet since the image had spoken to her, and
daneistria, she who provides loans, to accept Stephen as her servant. The husband
was surprised by the length of her prayer and her copious tears, but then Anna
took him by the hand and pointed out the divine icon, informing him that the Virgin was
the guarantor, patron, and protector of Stephen’s birth. And when they had both bent
24
Sharon E. J. Gerstel, ‘Painted Sources for Female Piety in Medieval Byzantium’,
Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 52 (1998), 89–111 (pp. 96–98).
25
See the new edition by Marie-France Auzépy, La Vie d’Etienne le Jeune par Etienne le
Diacre: Introduction, Edition et Traduction (Birmingham: Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and
Modern Greek Studies, 1997), par. 4, p. 92.
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their heads and prostrated themselves on the sacred ground, giving thanks to she who
is the guarantor and patron of all Christians, they returned home. (par. 6, pp. 94–95)
This mythic account of the conception of the Neomartyr nonetheless reveals much
about the way in which celebrated icons might be used by individuals. In addressing
their prayers directly to the person represented they spoke without constraint, pour-
ing out their deepest fears and anxieties, hoping for some comfort, perhaps even a
response. Their words were accompanied by actions, prostration, and veneration,
proskynesis, with tears and personal expressions of confidence in the power of holy
persons to intercede, to make things happen. On giving thanks for the miracle of
Stephen’s birth, the couple took over the sacred ground in front of the icon (to
hagion edaphos), and made it their own for a moment (par. 6, p. 95.21–22). No one
assisted or prevented them; they venerated the holy icon in their own fashion and for
their own purposes. There was no problem in building a personal link between the
holy person depicted and the worshipper. Even in a crowded church or at a busy road
shrine, wherever an icon is displayed in public, it can become private momentarily.
A similar creation of private space is documented in the lives of saints and nuns
who were always instructed to avoid eye contact with unknown visitors. Many spent
years practising ‘the custody of the eyes’: keeping their gaze fixed on the ground to
be sure of not straying into any form of temptation, for as the Byzantines knew very
well, the eyes are a passage through which dangers enter a person. As recorded in the
Epic of Digenis: when the girl saw the youth
her heart was fired, she would not live on earth; Pain kindled in her, as is natural;
Beauty is very sharp, its arrow wounds, and through the very eyes reaches the soul.26
St Elizabeth of Herakleia grew up as such a dedicated women; she kept her eyes on
the ground for three years as a test of humility. As Alice-Mary Talbot puts it:
a nun’s downcast gaze also served to create a private space around her that made her
immune to temptation from male visitors and other nuns. Each was expected to build
an invisible wall around herself comparable to the physical wall that shielded the
cloister from the outside world.27
Such privacy within a public space is widely documented in the activity of women at
particular shrines. It confirms that medieval Byzantine women could visit shrines
without constraint. Another interesting story, surely an invention, records the plan of
a woman who was a convinced iconoclast to destroy the icon of the Virgin preserved
in the Hodegetria Church. She approached the icon, which was known for its miracu-
lous cures of blindness, and was only prevented from attacking it by the power of the
Virgin. From being determined to obliterate the eyes on the painted image, she was
26
Digenis Akrites, ed. and trans. by John Mavrogordato (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956),
pp. 90–91, lines 1353–56.
27
Alice-Mary Talbot, ‘Women’s Space in Byzantine Monasteries’, Dumbarton Oaks
Papers, 52 (1998), 113–28, esp. p. 127.
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82 JUDITH HERRIN
converted and became a totally devoted iconophile.28 While the account is preserved
in a collection of miracles associated with this icon, the freedom of a woman to leave
her home, enter a shrine even with destructive intentions (and the mode of destruc-
tion is typical),29 and to return home again is not questioned. This unsupervised
movement lies behind the numerous accounts of young girls using an icon in a
particular church as a place for a tryst with a potential lover. These stories seem to
have been as popular in Byzantium as they are today.
The personal relationship between an individual and a holy person depicted on an
icon is enhanced by communication and visions and messages that pass between the
icon and the believer: the well-known conversion of St Mary of Egypt as recorded in
her Life by Sophronios (affected by the icon of the Virgin in her church at Jerusa-
lem); or the cure of a young girl, only twelve years old by St Artemios. This girl had
been sent to light the lamps in front of the icons at his shrine by an older woman who
normally undertook the task. Her experience is one of numerous accounts of unedu-
cated adults and children, who were familiar with the saints from their icons and from
the prayers and liturgies associated with their cult. The young girl reported that she
recognized the saint who appeared to her in a vision from his image on the icon screen
(iconostasis) of the church, a feature repeated in many of the Miracula Artemii.30
The collection of miracles was probably put together by those in charge of the shrine
to consolidate the saint’s cult. It also drew attention to a similar role played by St
Fevronia, who specialized in female complaints. The stories not only imply an easy
familiarity with the artistic traditions but also a firm belief in the power of intercession.
Veneration of Icons in Byzantine Houses
But there is even greater privacy in venerating icons within the home. And the sug-
gestion that women brought their personal devotions from the household to the
public sphere of the church can be supported by the evidence that women owned and
appreciated icons which they kept in their own quarters. A striking instance occurs
later in the Life of Saint Stephen when the saint is imprisoned after his arrest by the
iconoclast Emperor Constantine V. In prison he and his iconophile companions are
approached by the wife of the jailer, a woman who offers to bring them her own
icons so that they may venerate the saints in the accustomed fashion.31 It transpires
28
Christine Angelidi and Titos Papamastorakis, ‘The Veneration of the Virgin Hodegetria
and the Hodegon Monastery’, in Mother of God, ed. by Vassilaki, pp. 373–87.
29
Cormack, Painting the Soul, p. 88.
30
The Miracles of St Artemios, ed. by Vincenzo Criscuolo and John Nesbitt (Leiden: Brill,
1997), no. 34, pp. 174–83. The stories, probably recorded by the custodians of the shrine, draw
pointed contrasts with the failure of medical doctors and help to build up the cult at this shrine.
31
Auzépy, ‘L’iconodoulie’, par. 57, p. 159, lines 26–31.
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that she has secretly kept her icons locked away in her chest. Since she knows why
the prisoners have been arrested and fears for their safety, she offers to bring out her
icons so that they can venerate them. This act of bravery is appreciated, and under
the nose of the jailer the icon venerators perform their prayers, even though they
have been arrested and are about to die for this crime! In this case they create a holy
space in the prison, which is supposed to be restraining them from all iconophile
activity, using the personal possessions of a pious woman.
This is only one of many stories probably concocted after the event to draw atten-
tion to the determination and courage of women in resisting iconoclasm, stories
which are designed to condemn the heretical iconoclasts and praise the virtuous
iconophiles. But their significance lies in the method used to sustain traditional prac-
tices in secret, as the female relations of Emperor Theophilos demonstrated in the
830s. While the Byzantine ruler branded icon painters and venerators with tattoos,
which condemned them as iconophiles, his own wife, Theodora, took their five
daughters to visit their grandmother Theoktiste and the Emperor’s step-mother
Euphrosyne. The two older women had retired from court life to live in a nunnery
where they maintained the practice of venerating icons and taught the Emperor’s
children how to kiss and adore the proscribed paintings of holy figures.32 In this way,
the women of the imperial family sustained traditions which the Emperor was trying
to uproot. They were active in passing on the established methods of venerating
icons by secretly instructing the younger generation.
Such practices may well have contributed to the opposition manifested by women
to official, imperial iconoclasm during the eighth and ninth centuries. As Peter Hatlie
has recently emphasized, when St Theodore of the Stoudios monastery praises all
those true orthodox, who refused to comply with the iconoclast decrees, he singles
out a few women, who resisted more successfully than men and who supported male
iconophiles by bringing them food and other necessities when they were in exile,
fleeing from persecution, or actually in prison.33 This confirmation of the role played
by the wife of the jailer, mentioned earlier, amplifies the importance that icons had
assumed in the personal devotions of earlier Christians. It suggests that particular
women cherished rather than destroyed their icons. By means of this private aspect,
they maintained the continuity of icon veneration through periods of persecution and
oppression, a role taken up by women more recently and sustained right up to the
present day.
32
Judith Herrin, Women in Purple (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2001), pp. 178–82.
33
Peter Hatlie, ‘Women of Discipline during the Second Iconoclasm’, Byzantinische Zeit-
schrift, 89 (1996), 37–44.
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84 JUDITH HERRIN
The Development of the Icon Corner
Another implication of such stories is that, by the eighth century, the traditional
household lares had been replaced by Christian icons. While it is impossible to
document this slow process in the capital of the Byzantine Empire, the final outcome
is revealed by an incident preserved in the Life of Andrew the Fool. Whether this
collection of miracles performed by the ‘Fool for Christ’ is to be dated to the seventh
century or later, it provides striking evidence of the female care of icons and faith in
them. The subject of one particular miracle was a devout woman (unnamed) who
lived at Neorion, a region of Constantinople. Her husband frequented brothels and
maintained a mistress, causing her great distress. On the advice of another woman,
the wife sought the help of a magician, Vigrinos, who instructed her to prepare cer-
tain objects. He then came to her house and set them up in the woman’s icon corner
(opou yperchon ai eikones tes gunaikos).34As the dreadful story develops, the icons
then guide her to the truth — revealing that the magician is a demon. At first he
appears to succeed in reforming the husband, but later in her dreams her icons turn to
the west (away from the east) and she begins to feel turned the same way and so
prays incorrectly. Then they become smeared with shit and emit a filthy stench. In
great anxiety she appeals to Andrew, who instructs her to bring him the icons and
explains the significance of the magic. Everything is restored to health, but we are
not told if the husband reformed!
From this evidence, which is almost tangential to the story, we learn that this
devout woman maintained an icon corner in her house, to which she admitted a
magician when she was utterly desperate about her husband’s behaviour. Recourse
to magic is of course quite common, but in this account the magic has demonic
origins, which are revealed through the woman’s dreams. Normally she would pray
to her icons, which were placed so that she faced towards the east, following normal
church orientation. In this way, she reproduced in her own home a shrine in which
she could make her own personal prayers. There is no indication that she was a
wealthy woman, indeed most of the people helped by Andrew are poor inhabitants of
Constantinople. So this evidence suggests that icon veneration as practised in public
churches was the same as that of the home, both in private chapels attached to
wealthy households and in humbler homes where individuals established their own
little shrines. While these areas may well represent the place of hearth and household
gods of classical times, they also give birth to the icon corners of today.35
The widespread nature of iconophile belief is found in many saints’ Lives, where
mothers are recorded as praying to icons for their sons’ advancement in Christian
34
The Life of Andrew the Fool, II, 35, ed. by Lennart Rydén, Studia Byzantina Upsaliensia,
4.2 (Uppsala: Textgruppen i Uppsala, 1995), pp. 170–85, lines 2461–62.
35
Laurie Kain Hart, Time, Religion, and Social Experience in Rural Greece (Langham,
MD: Rowan and Littlefield, 1992), pp. 116, 133, 150–51, 216–19, a brilliant study of the
significance of icons in orthodox homes today.
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faith and courage, for example, Theoktiste, mother of Theodore who became abbot
of the Stoudios monastery in Constantinople in the late eighth century. Although
there is no mention of the arrangement of the Byzantine house, it seems reasonable
to assume that such icons were placed in rooms occupied by their female patrons.
They would naturally protect these areas as well as the women who lived in them.
Later, in the twelfth century, the highly educated princess Anna Komnene could sup-
pose that the intense prayers offered by the mother of Constantine Psellos to an icon
of the Theotokos helped him in his mastery of the curriculum.36 She may also have
known from Psellos’s own testimony that his mother did not have enough education
to assist him in his school work. But she prayed to the Virgin for her son’s progress,
and he rose to the very summit of the hierarchy of civil government in the empire.
Thus, in medieval Byzantium women regularly took charge of the domestic space
and looked after the household icons, perhaps drawing attention to the saints on their
name days by devoting special veneration to them.37 Euphemia’s faith in the protec-
tion of the archangel, depicted on the icon which she hung over her bed, also points
to women as patrons of icon painting. This practice of commissioning an icon for a
specific purpose becomes widespread in later centuries. It can be traced through the
depiction of female patrons and donors within the image, a development which
follows established traditions of male donor portraits. The results can, nonetheless,
be striking, as Lucy-Anne Hunt has shown for a Syrian Orthodox icon now at the
Monastery of St Catherine on Mount Sinai. This shows a woman wearing a long
black veil kneeling before an image of St Sergios, the military saint, who is mounted
on his horse. Clasping his right foot, the donor who commissioned the painting begs
the saint to protect her now that she is widowed and to care for the community of
which she is a member.38 While this icon was painted in the thirteenth century, it
reveals the growth of a pattern of female patronage of religious art which goes back
to the early Christian period. Through their devotions, women develop close spiritual
relations with their new male protectors, which they found particularly reassuring.
A similar concern is mirrored in the epigrams composed by Manuel Philes in
honour of icons and works of art dedicated at the shrine of the Virgin tes Peges, near
Constantinople, in the early fourteenth century. Several record the gratitude of
women healed by the Theotokos: the wife of Syr Stephanos, who had suffered from
an issue of blood; Irene, archontissa, cured of a severe headache; and an anonymous
donor who offered a glass lamp in gratitude for her cure. Among these Kasiane
36
Anna Comnène, The Alexiad, V, 8, ed. by B. Leib (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1967), II, 34.
37
Hart, Time, Religion, and Social Experience, pp. 197–200: ‘Today, women bring their
icons to the church on the relevant saint’s day and take images of the healing saints into the
bedroom of the sick.’
38
Lucy-Ann Hunt, ‘A Woman’s Prayer to St Sergios in Latin Syria: Interpreting a
Thirteenth-Century Icon at Mount Sinai’, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, 15 (1991),
96–145 (pp. 113–24).
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86 JUDITH HERRIN
Raoulaine, from a well-known family, felt sure that the Virgin had assisted her
difficult birth and saved the life of her baby son.39 None of them went as far as the
soldier Kallierges who commissioned an icon to record his healing by the Theotokos
of his leprosy. But they may well have had their epigrams inscribed on the frames of
the icons they patronized for the decoration of the shrine.
Clearly, one reason why many women dedicated so much attention to their house-
hold icons or icons in healing shrines must be related to their relative exclusion from
the life of the Church. Only as nuns, or in rare cases, deaconesses, could women per-
form a public role recognized by the official church hierarchy. A thoroughly patri-
archal control prevented them from actively participating in the administration of the
state religion and often criticized their zealous philanthropic activities, when these
were considered inappropriate for women. Of course there were particular rites and
liturgies in which they participated — notably births, deaths, and commemorative ser-
vices. And Sharon Gerstel has recently shown how these activities are related to the de-
piction of female saints in particular areas of churches.40 So there were many occasions
when women were expected to attend church services. But among the officials who
ran the church, there was no place for women: they had no formal career possibilities
and were regularly reminded of the sin of the first mother, Eve, which they shared.
Given the thoroughly male domination of the organization of the church, female
devotion to particular icons, whether these were publicly displayed in shrines and
churches or private objects of cult set up within the household, is hardly surprising.
In the case of icons inherited from mothers and grandmothers, or commissioned by
female patrons, there was a customary duty to venerate and honour them. Icons of
saints after whom individuals were named clearly gained special devotion on the
shared name day. It seems quite possible that the protective Christian image was
initially introduced as a replacement for the ancient household lares. What would be
harder to demonstrate, though it may nonetheless be supposed, would be the adop-
tion by the Church authorities of the cult of icon veneration from its domestic setting
within the household. Such a process would suggest that the official Church might
have wanted to take over an already popular activity in an attempt to bring it under
priestly control.41
Within the home the family continued to venerate its images, without provoking
any comment in the sources. Perhaps household cults of specific saints as well as the
holy family was one of those features so widespread, so commonly accepted and
39
Alice-Mary Talbot, ‘Epigrams of Manuel Philes on the Theotokos tes Peges and its Art’,
Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 48 (1994), 135–66, nos 8, 9, 11, and 12.
40
Gerstel, ‘Painted Sources’.
41
As suggested by Thomas F. Mathews and Norman Muller in ‘Isis and Mary in Early
Icons’.
Page 96
practised that no one thought it worthy of note?42 The maintenance of icon corners in
family homes is certainly one of the most prominent traditions to have survived in
Orthodox lands into the twenty-first century, providing a firm base for personal
devotion. It emphasizes the domestic context of private worship, in which women
establish their own holy space, make their prayers, and teach their children how to
venerate icons. In this respect, orthodox women today sustain traditions of religious
devotion, which are an integral part of the Church, but which are equally preserved
in the context of the icon corner of the home.
42
In his article, ‘Women at Home’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 52 (1998), 1–18, Alexander
P. Kazhdan tried ‘to demonstrate the lack of evidence that in everyday relations women were
really oppressed by members of the other sex’. His reconsideration of patriarchy concludes
that there was ‘no drastic difference between men and women in the household’. But his
partial investigation of women in the home quite overlooked the possibility of women having
responsibility for a part of the household’s devotional life in an icon corner.
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88 JUDITH HERRIN
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the Hodegon Monastery’, in Vassilaki, Mother of God, pp. 373–87.
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Nicolas Lossky (Paris: Cerf, 1987), pp. 157–65.
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Cameron, Averil, ‘The Early Cult of the Virgin’, in Vassilaki, Mother of God, pp. 3–15
Cormack, Robin, Painting the Soul: Icons, Death Masks and Shrouds (London: Reaktion, 1997).
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Esbroeck, Michel van, ‘Le culte de la Vierge de Jérusalem à Constantinople aux 6e–7e
siècles’, Revue des études byzantines, 46 (1988), 181–90.
Gerstel, Sharon E. J., ‘Painted Sources for Female Piety in Medieval Byzantium’, Dumbarton
Oaks Papers, 52 (1998), 89–111.
Grabar, André, ‘Remarques sur l’iconographie byzantine de la Vierge’, Cahiers Archéolo-
giques, 26 (1977), 169–78.
Haas, Christopher, Alexandria in Late Antiquity: Topography and Social Conflict (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997).
Hart, Laurie Kain, Time, Religion, and Social Experience in Rural Greece (Langham, MD:
Rowan and Littlefield, 1992).
Hatlie, Peter, ‘Women of Discipline during the Second Iconoclasm’, Byzantinische Zeitschrift,
89 (1996), 37–44.
Herrin, Judith, ‘The Imperial Feminine in Byzantium’, Past and Present, 103 (2000), 3–35.
———, ‘Public and Private Forms of Religious Commitment among Byzantine Women’, in
Women in Ancient Societies: An Illusion of the Night, ed. by Léonie Archer, Susan Fisch-
ler, and Maria Wyke (London: Macmillan, 1994), pp. 181–203.
———, ‘Women and the Faith in Icons in Early Christianity’, in Culture, Ideology and
Politics: Essays for Eric Hobsbawm, ed. by Raphael Samuel and Gareth Stedman Jones
(London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982), pp. 56–83.
———, Women in Purple (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2001).
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within a Medieval Coptic Context’, in Icon and Word: The Power of Images in Byzantium,
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———, ‘A Woman’s Prayer to St Sergios in Latin Syria: Interpreting a Thirteenth-Century
Icon at Mount Sinai’, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, 15 (1991), 96–145.
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Society of Papyrologists, 27 (1990), 123–37.
———, OIKIA: Le vocabulaire de la maison privée en Egypte d’après les papyri grecs (Paris:
Publications da la Sorbonne, 1983).
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Historiated Phylacteries’, Byzantinsche Forschungen, 20 (1994), 73–102.
Kazhdan, Alexander P., ‘Women at Home’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 52 (1998), 1–18.
Limberis, Vasiliki, Divine Heiress: The Virgin Mary and Creation of Christian Constanti-
nople (London: Routledge, 1994).
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wood Cliff, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1972).
———, ‘Constantinople as Theotokoupolis’, in Vassilaki, Mother of God, pp. 17–25
———, ‘The Origins of the Blachernae Shrine at Constantinople’, in Acta ad XIII Congressus
Internationale Archaelogiae Christianae (Split: Arheoloski Muzej, 1998), II, 61–75
Mathews, Thomas F., The Clash of Gods: A Reinterpretation of Early Christian Art, rev. edn
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999).
Mathews, Thomas F., and Norman Muller, ‘Isis and Mary in Early Icons’, in Vassilaki,
Images of the Mother of God, pp. 3–11.
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Oikonomides, Nicolas, ‘The Holy Icon as an Asset’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 45 (1991), 35–44.
Rodziewicz, Mieczyslaw, Les habitations romaines tardives d’Alexandrie à la lumière des
fouilles polonaises à Kom el-Dikka (Warsaw: Editions Scientifiques de Pologne, 1984).
Saradi, Helen, ‘Privatization and Subdivision of Urban Properties in the Early Byzantine Cen-
turies: Social and Cultural Implications’, Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists,
35 (1998), 17–43.
Talbot, Alice-Mary, ‘Epigrams of Manuel Philes on the Theotokos tes Peges and its Art’,
Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 48 (1994), 135–66.
———, ‘Women’s Space in Byzantine Monasteries’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 52 (1998),
113–28.
Vassilaki, Maria, ed., Images of the Mother of God: Perceptions of the Theotokos in Byzan-
tium (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005).
———, ed., Mother of God: Representations of the Virgin in Byzantine Art, Catalogue of the
exhibition (Milan: Skira, 2000).
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Household and Empire:

The Materfamilias as Miles Christi
in the Anonymous Handbook for Gregoria
KATE COOPER
The books which had their place among the chairs for the ladies were found to be of a
religious style, while those by the seats of the heads of household (patrum familias)
were notable for their elevated style.1
S
idonius Apollinaris’s late fifth-century description of the library of Ferreolus
offers an important testimony to the literacy of aristocratic women at the end
of antiquity, yet at the same time it calls our attention to assumptions about
how male and female reading habits were divided. Though these assumptions seem
to have been widespread among Sidonius’s contemporaries,2 they should be viewed
with caution by modern scholars. Discussion of literature for, by, and about pious
Christian women in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages has tended to see
‘women’s literature’ of the period as a corpus apart, rather than stressing its interre-
latedness to literature for, by, and about contemporary laymen, monks, and clerics.
1
‘Sic tamen quod qui inter matronarum cathedras codices erant, stylus iis religiosus inve-
niebatur: qui vero sub sellia patrum familias, ii cothurno latialis eloquii nobilitabatur. Licet
quaepiam volumina quorumpiam auctorum servarent in causis disparibus dicendi parilitatem.
Nam similis scientiae viri, hinc Augustinus, hinc Varro; hinc Horatius, hinc Prudentius
lecitabantur. Quos inter Adamantius Origenes, Turranio Rufino interpretatus, sedulo fidei nostrae
lectoribus inspiciebatur’, Sidonius Apollinaris, Letter 2.9 to Donidius, in Epistolae, PL, 58,
484. All translations are my own unless otherwise specified.
2
See Kate Cooper, ‘The Widow as Impresario: Gender, Legendary Afterlives, and Docu-
mentary Evidence in Eugippius’ Vita Severini’, in Eugippius und Severin: Der Autor, der
Text, und der Heilige, ed. by Walter Pohl and Maximilian Diesenberger (Vienna: Verlag der
Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2001), pp. 53–63, for discussion of this issue
in the early sixth-century writer Eugippius.
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92 KATE COOPER
The present contribution offers a starting point for exploring these connections. Con-
sidered together here are two roughly contemporary Latin manuals of conduct, the
Handbook for Gregoria addressed, probably early in the sixth century, by a named
but otherwise unidentified Johannes (‘Johannes episcopus’ in certain manuscripts) to
a married lady of senatorial rank, and the Letter to Reginus written in the early 530s
by Ferrandus, Deacon of Carthage, to a military official of high standing in the
Byzantine reconquest of Africa.
The two treatises draw, it will be argued, on what seems to have been a shared
tradition of pastoral advice for the aristocratic laity applicable to both men and
women. This conceptual interrelatedness has far-reaching repercussions. For exam-
ple, the conduct manuals for women surviving from late antiquity in Merovingian
and Carolingian copies may have had an influence on the development of conduct
literature as a genre for men in the Carolingian period, a significance wholly ignored
by Anton in his discussion of the development of the Fürstenspiegel genre.3 But the
emphasis here is on the shared context as a resource for interpretation. There are
surprises to be found in the two texts’ converging and diverging uses of inherited
Christian concepts, in particular the concept of the miles Christi. The Handbook for
Gregoria’s initially surprising emphasis on the miles Christi as a metaphor for the
spiritual life of a Christian matrona in fact reflects, it will be argued, a spiritual and
literary milieu in which spiritual advice to aristocratic laymen and -women drew on
shared models for the responsible exercise of Christian authority.
Household and province represented two of the most important hierarchical layers
in the organization of society. Thus it makes sense that their management was seen
in similar terms. We should also remember that both institutions were seen to be
under threat in the early sixth century. The contest among Vandal, Ostrogothic, and
Byzantine powers attempting to establish dominion in Italy and North Africa meant
that the lack of a stable framework of rulership in which political and social institu-
tions could find their footing was deeply felt. This instability formed the context for
the effort by ecclesiastical writers to ground the responsible exercise of lay authority
in a network of Christian values and institutions, whose force might persist through
changes of political dispensation.
The Handbook for Gregoria and the Miles Christi as a Devotional

Model for Women
The use of the language of spiritual warfare as a means for establishing Christian
identity was well established in late antiquity.4 It appears as early as the exhortation
3
Hans Hubert Anton, Fürstenspiegel und Herrscherethos in der Karolingerzeit, Bonner
historische Forschungen, 32 (Bonn: Ludwig Röhrscheid Verlag, 1968).
4
See, for example, Adolf Von Harnack, Militia Christi: The Christian Religion and the
Military in the First Three Centuries, trans. and introd. by David McInnes Gracie
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Household and Empire 93
to eschatological battle handed down in the New Testament’s Letter to the Ephesians
— ‘for we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities,
against the powers [. . .] against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly
places’ (Ephesians 6. 12)5 — and in the vivid battle imagery of the Book of Revela-
tion. Origen’s third-century allegorical readings of the military books of the Hebrew
Bible developed this idea of spiritual battle, but it was in fourth-century ascetic
literature that the metaphor found its most compelling application. The famous epi-
sode of St Antony doing battle with the demons which offers the climax of Athana-
sius’s mid-fourth-century Life of the saint was widely influential in ascetic literature,
as were Evagrius’s contemporary attempts to prepare ascetics for the inevitable
battle with temptation,6 and those of John Cassian a generation later. John Cassian
would develop the theme of invisible spiritual battle as more dangerous than the
visible battle of military engagement.
For [the ascetic’s] enemies are not visible but invisible and merciless; the daily and
nightly encounter is a spiritual battle not against one or two, but against innumerable
companies, whose destructive power is all the more dangerous, insofar as the enemy is
more hostile, and the contest more hidden.7
The parallel drawn here between invisible and visible battle would remain influen-
tial, as we will see below.
By the late fourth century, a specifically female interpretation of this tradition was
emerging in the Latin West. Ever one to bring what was most up-to-date to the atten-
tion of his aristocratic patronesses in Rome, St Jerome gives emphasis to the theme
in his twenty-second letter, published at Rome in the spring of 384 and addressed to
Eustochium, the daughter of his principal patroness Paula.8 The letter invites the
young virgin to consider the spiritual life in terms of the battle with principalities and
powers noted above in Ephesians 6. 12. As an ascetic, she must don the breastplate
of faith, ‘for we are surrounded by great bands of enemies’,9 a battle which is cast in
(Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1981); Andreas Wang, Der ‘Miles Christianus’ im 16. und 17.
Jahrhundert und seine mittelalterliche Tradition: ein Beitrag zum Verhältnis von sprachlicher
und graphischer Bildlichkeit, Mikrokosmos, 1 (Frankfurt: Lang, 1975).
5
Here and below I have cited the Revised Standard Version of Biblical texts.
6
Evagrius, Praktikos 48, ed. and trans. by Antoine Guillaumont and Claire Guillaumont,
Evagre le Pontique, Traité pratique ou Le moine, SC, 171 (Paris: Cerf, 1971), p. 608.
7
Cassian, Collationes 2.11, ed. and trans. by E. Pichery, Jean Cassien, Conférences, SC,
42 (Paris: Cerf, 1955), p. 124: ‘Habet enim non adversus visibiles sed invisibiles atque inmites
hostes diurnum nocturnumque conflictum nec contra unum seu duos, sed contra innumerabiles
catervas spiritale certamen, cuius casus tanto perniciosior quanto et infestior inimicus et
congressus occultior.’
8
Jerome, Letter 22, in Epistolae, PL, 22, 394–425.
9
Jerome, Letter 22,3, PL, 22, 396.
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94 KATE COOPER
ascetic terms, as taking place between the flesh and the spirit. The young virgin is
invited to remember Jerome’s own ascetic struggles10 and — by extension — those
of Antony, and presumably to take heart from the comparison: her own struggle with
the flesh is mapped onto the heroic battles of the desert itself. Three decades later,
the letter of Pelagius to the virgin Anicia Demetrias takes up the military theme. Her
life is to be a battle for virtue with God as her commander; her assault against the
camp of the Devil means that not only must she shun what is evil, she must also
actively do what is good. Reflecting a stunning disregard for literary consistency, the
metaphor suddenly turns from the battlefield to the virtues as the ‘most precious
pearls with which the bride of Christ should be adorned’.11 This inconsistency may
reveal the writer’s self-consciousness regarding the gender of his young warrior, but
the mixing of masculine and feminine points of identification in texts addressed to
women was by no means unusual. Indeed, we will see below that the Handbook for
Gregoria develops and escalates the use of battle language in the text, at the same
time as its commitment to the spirituality of marriage and householding requires that
it substitute chaste, fertile marriage for virginity, and thus reinterpret the battle as
primarily with the vices of the heart rather than those of the body.
The Handbook for Gregoria is one of a handful of conduct manuals for married
women preserved from late antiquity, though it is by far the most complex and ambi-
tious among the group. Its date and authorship are uncertain, though there is good evi-
dence that it was addressed to a latin-speaking lady Gregoria of senatorial rank residing
in Rome in the sixth century. The best manuscript evidence attributes it to ‘Johannes’,
or ‘Johannes episcopus’, an attribution vague enough, given the number of attested
individuals writing under this name at the time, as to leave the text semi-anonymous.12
The Handbook presents itself essentially as a conduct manual, although unlike the
other surviving exempla of the type it diverges substantially from the task. The text
is structured in two main parts, a manual outlining the trials which a married Chris-
tian woman should expect to encounter (Chapters 1–10 and 16–24), and a visionary
10
Jerome, Letter 22,7, PL, 22, 399.
11
Pelagius, Ad Demetriadem, 16.1, PL, 30, 30, trans. by B. R. Rees, The Letters of
Pelagius and his Followers (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1991), p. 52.
12
The most comprehensive overview of authorship possibilities is given in my ‘Concord
and Martyrdom: Gender, Community, and the Uses of Christian Perfection in Late Antiquity’
(unpublished doctoral dissertation, Princeton University, 1993), Appendix B: ‘The Liber ad
Gregoriam: Date and Authorship’. I now believe, however, that the contextual evidence for an
early sixth-century Roman context is compelling. In his Corpus Christianorum edition of the
Liber (CC, 25A, Turnhout: Brepols, 1992), K.-M. Daur ignores the authorship question
entirely. For an otherwise well-informed reading which, however, does not consider alternatives
to the mid-fifth-century date proposed by Germain Morin in the early twentieth century, see
Michel Cozic, Le Liber ad Gregoriam d’Arnobe le Jeune: Édition, Traduction, Étude histo-
rique, doctrinale et littéraire (Villeneuve d’Ascq: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 1997).
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meditation in which Gregoria is invited to ascend to the high tower of wisdom13 and
to view, arrayed below her, the allegorical battle between the miles Christi and a suc-
cession of personified vices (Chapters 11–15).14 The visionary segment takes the
form of an altercatio, a dialogue between the vices and virtues as they face each
other in battle, and in this respect the Handbook constitutes one of the earliest attes-
tations of an important medieval literary genre.15 The household manual itself,
however — which precedes and follows the altercatio — follows a formula which is
well attested in other roughly contemporary conduct manuals for married women.
The Handbook opens with an extended description of what it imagines as Gre-
goria’s own musings about the spiritual status of a woman who finds herself bound
by the married estate despite her yearning for an unencumbered spiritual life. The
traditional rhetorical gesture of invoking a patron’s real or imaginary request16 ac-
quires pastoral urgency here. The lady reader is pictured as asking the author to ‘give
a ruling on what place a wife will be able to find before God, or to clarify to what
extent she should pay compensation for the license of the marital state’.17 She is
troubled by her awareness that the estates of widowhood and virginity are accorded a
higher status than that of marriage, and the writer’s task is to allay her concern. This
preface dispenses with the protestations of reluctance on the part of the writer which
are common in the treatises addressed to noble women. We are led to believe that
our author takes it as a given that his approach to the noble Gregoria will not be seen
as self-serving, although it is difficult to judge whether this reflects his own status, a
secure existing relationship with the lady in question, or simply rhetorical bravura.
13
‘Ascende iam turrim in hac vita constructam, et ex ipsa aspice acies pugnatorum’, Liber
ad Gregoriam [hereafter Liber] 10, ed. by Morin, p. 399, trans. by Cooper, p. 276. Page
numbers are given for the Latin edition of Dom Germain Morin, in his Études, Textes, Décou-
vertes (Paris: Picard, 1913; repr. in vol. III of the Patrologia Latina Supplement, pp. 221–56),
and for the English translation in Appendix A of Cooper, ‘Concord and Martyrdom’.
14
The hinge between the two elements is the assertion (Chapter 10) that the Christian wife
should not believe that gender or the vocation to marriage will exempt her from service in the
spiritual battle-lines. This assertion serves to introduce the conflictus; the section ends (Chap-
ter 16) with an excursus on endurance (patientia) as the root of all virtues.
15
See Morton W. Bloomfield, The Seven Deadly Sins: An Introduction to the History of a
Religious Concept. With Special Reference to Medieval English Literature ([n.p.]: Michigan
State College Press, 1952). See also references in Elisabeth Sears, ‘Louis the Pious as Miles
Christianus: The Dedicatory Image in Hrabanus Maurus’ De laudibus sancti crucis’, in
Charlemagne’s Heir: New Perspectives on the Reign of Louis the Pious (814–840), ed. by
Peter Godman and Roger Collins (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), pp. 605–28.
16
Tore Janson, Latin Prose Prefaces: Studies in Literary Conventions, Studia Latina
Stockholmensia, 13 (Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell, 1964).
17
In the preface, the author characterizes Gregoria’s request to him as follows: ‘ut quem
locum uxor apud deum invenire poterit digneris dare responsum’, Liber, Preface, ed. by
Morin, p. 383, trans. by Cooper, p. 247.
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96 KATE COOPER
Nonetheless, he presents himself as making a straightforward and vivid approach to

what he expects his readers to acknowledge as a pressing pastoral problem. It is of
course impossible to judge whether Gregoria or any other married woman of the
patronage class really was disturbed by the high status accorded to widowhood and
virginity, but our author was by no means the only male writer of his day to imply
that they were or ought to be.18
The first chapter establishes a central theme of the treatise, that life on this earth
should be understood as a period of spiritual testing, and that successful endurance
of these tests will lead to eternal rejoicing. Although God will reward her steadfast-
ness, it is the Devil who torments her with his tribulations, because her righteous
conduct so offends him. ‘And not without cause is the Devil tormented by the afflic-
tion of his own envy, when he laments that you have done a rare thing among
married women, having taken up arms against him.’19 John develops here a meta-
phor which he will sustain throughout the treatise: that of Gregoria as a soldier of
Christ. ‘The King of Vices grieves that you are fighting boldly against his own sol-
diers, that is, against the battalions of sins, and he fears that unsheathed, the sword of
your faith menaces the necks of his generals.’20 He goes on to try to convince her
that every difficulty encountered during her married life has been an attempt by the
Devil to win her away from the cause of God:
For already at the very beginning of [your] marriage, because the Enemy saw you
handed over after the training of your parents to the embraces of a most Christian man,
in whom no disgrace of concubines, no immodest conceit of female friends, was able
to prevail, in whose heart purity of morals holds sway as if in its own dominion; then, I
say, the author of all crime presaged that you would be his assassin. Nor from any
other motive did he attempt either at first to incite quarrelling between you, or after-
wards to plant the seed of various instances of discord except in order that he — the
Devil — might separate those joining together against him and wishing to live in the
love of Christ.21
Marital quarreling is here understood as an expression of Satan’s temporary victory
over two soliders of Christ whom he seeks to turn against one another instead of
himself.
If Gregoria has bestirred the enemy by choosing to follow in the foosteps of
Christ, so now she must hasten to follow him, protecting herself from the Devil’s
18
For a discussion of the sources, see Kate Cooper, The Virgin and the Bride: Idealized
Womanhood in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), pp. 116–43.
19
Liber 1, ed. by Morin, p. 384, trans. by Cooper, p. 250: ‘Nec inmerito suae dolore torquetur
invidiae, cum te inter matronae, quod rarum est, contra se corripuisse arma diabolus ingemescit.’
20
Liber 1, ed. by Morin, p. 385, trans. by Cooper, p. 250: ‘rex vitiorum contra milites suos,
contra omnem scilicet numerum peccatorum, dolet fortiter dimicantem, evaginatumque tuae
fidei gladium suorum expavescit ducum cervicibus inminere.’
21
Liber 1, ed. by Morin, p. 385, trans. by Cooper, pp. 250–51.
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arrows by a shield of forbearance. This military language, though not in itself excep-
tional for a conduct manual, takes on added significance in light of the presence of
an extended altercatio in Chapters 11–15, set out as a metaphorical battle between
the forces of God and the forces of the Devil warring over the soul.
After the altercatio, the Handbook returns to a formula which would have been
more familiar to a reader of fifth-century conduct literature such as the now fragmen-
tary treatise on household governance preserved in a Vienna manuscript of the eighth
century.22 The matrona’s responsibility to treat those under her authority with the
justice she herself would expect from God is stressed, along with her responsibility to
offer her own conduct as an exemplum.23 This exhortation to responsible stewardship
of God’s justice reflects the importance of the authority of the senatorial matrona,
who was expected to supervise a complex and economically substantial establishment.
Here we see something very like a feminine version of the advice on how to govern an
army which will be discussed below. The closing section of the Handbook reviews
the requirements of the Christian life and stresses the urgency of safeguarding the
divine precepts by assiduous searching and observance (inquirere et servare).24 To
an imagined objection that it is not the place of the married to excel in the Christian
life, our author replies that the caritas of marriage is itself a vehicle of grace.
The miles Christi and the Spiritual Life of the Male Military
Professional: Ferrandus of Carthage’s Letter to the dux Reginus
The significance of the Handbook for Gregoria is difficult to judge, since there are
no comparable texts juxtaposing household management and the battle with the vices
in late antiquity. To weigh its meaning, it may be useful to consider the more
straightforward use of the miles Christi topos as it was applied to a male reader.
Addressed to Reginus, called dux illustris in the text,25 by Ferrandus, the early sixth-
century Deacon of Carthage best known as the probable biographer of the Life of
Fulgentius of Ruspe,26 the Letter to Reginus has received little scholarly attention
due to its lack of interest in doctrinal or asectic matters. From the point of view of
the history of the laity, however, it represents a rich resource. Particularly interesting
for the present study is its attempt to reconcile the relationship between the miles
Christi and the miles saeculi, the military professional understood in earthly terms.
22
Germain Morin, ‘Fragments pélagiens inédits du manuscrit 954 de Vienne’, Revue
Bénédictine, 3 (1922), 265–75.
23
See especially Chapters 18 and 19.
24
Chapters 22 through 24; here Liber 24, ed. by Morin, p. 436, trans. by Cooper, p. 337.
25
Ferrandus, Ad Reginum Comitem Paraneticum 1, PL 67, 928.
26
On the arguments for and against Ferrandus as the author of the Vita Fulgentii, see
Pseudo Ferrando di Cartagine: Vita di San Fulgenzio, trans. by Antonio Isola (Roma: Città
Nuova, 1987), pp. 5–8.
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98 KATE COOPER
Reginus himself is a cipher in the historical record. (Not only women but also men
— even politically important ones — are often only glancingly documented in our
period.) There is reason to think that Ferrandus wrote to him during or shortly after
Belisarius’s campaign to re-establish Roman rule in Vandal North Africa between
532 and 534. Reginus would have been one of five duces and six provincial gov-
ernors charged with assisting the Praetorian Prefect at Carthage in the government of
the seven provinces of Roman Africa, but biographical information about him be-
yond the slim indications provided by Ferrandus and Fulgentius of Ruspe27 has not
come down to us. The letter envisions the dux’s role less as a commander of forces
in battle than as a judge and administrator, the embodiment of imperial authority in
the newly reconquered province.28 His task is envisaged primarily as one of steward-
ship. He is urged to bring stability, peace, and fertility to the province, and to ensure
that the poor are not crushed by the greed of men more powerful than themselves.
This last point had military as well as ethical significance, for Procopius records a
vivid speech by Belisarius to his soldiers early in the campaign, chastising them for
stealing food from the surrounding fields rather than buying it at a fair price from the
local farmers.29 It was at risk of their own lives and of the invasion’s success, he
reminded them, that they dared to alienate the Roman population of the countryside,
for the invasion plan had spread forces and resources thinly indeed, relying on the
Roman population to support the Byzantine forces as welcome liberators from the
yoke of Vandal occupation. Ferrandus’s discussion of the ethics of military govern-
ment drew force from both writer’s and reader’s awareness that even after the
conquest, the military and civil authorities could ill afford to do without the help of
the Catholic clergy in cementing the population’s loyalty to Constantinople.
Reflecting the Augustinian tradition for which the early sixth-century circle around
Fulgentius of Ruspe was known, Ferrandus imagines human authority in terms of
27
In addition to the letter of Ferrandus, Letter 18 in the corpus of Fulgentius is addressed
to Reginus (CC, 91A, pp. 619–24).
28
For a recent discussion of Roman administration of Africa after the conquest of 533–34,
see Jonathan P. Conant, ‘Staying Roman: Vandals, Moors, and Byzantines in Late Antique
North Africa, 400–700’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, 2004),
Chapter Four, ‘New Rome, New Romans’, pp. 235–311. According to Conant (p. 295), each
of the five duces in post-conquest Africa was assigned a staff of forty-three aids, clerks, and
subordinate officers. On the wider sixth-century evolution of the role of dux from that of a
general on active campaign duty to that of a civil administrator at a period when ‘no clear
limits existed between civil and military authority’ even in areas such as Italy where civil
bureaucracy had enjoyed comparative continuity, see T. S. Brown, Gentlemen and Officers:
Imperial Administration and Aristocratic Power in Byzantine Italy, A.D. 554-800 (Rome:
British School of Rome, 1984), pp. 53–56 (p. 54), with literature cited there.
29
Procopius, History of the Wars 3.15.1–5, ed. by J. Haury, repr. with trans. by H. B.
Dewing, Loeb Classical Library, 81 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1916), pp.
142, 144.
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responsibility rather than glory. The dux must understand his own rule as subordi-
nate to the will of God, while at the same time watching carefully to make sure that
none of the lesser men acting on his behalf abuse their position, for it is he who will
bear responsibility for the misdeeds of his subordinates. Even his enemies should be
brought to love him by the justice of his rule. As a manual of Christian authority the
letter to Reginus anticipates in many respects both the Regula pastoralis of Pope
Gregory the Great and the Fürstenspiegeln of the Carolingian period.
The initial proposition of the letter is to consider how the metaphor of the miles
Christi applies to a military professional. Ferrandus opens the treatise with a rhetorical
tour de force, introducing the polar opposition between the miles Dei and the miles
saeculi,30 only to establish that the opposition is an illusion. The miles, in this case
the dux Reginus himself, has it within his power to choose — without in fact relin-
quishing his established position and duties — whether to identify himself as belong-
ing to the saeculum or as belonging to Christ. His choice will be embodied not in
whether he takes up the burden of authority in the saeculum, but in how he bears it.
The first section sets out the tension between the miles Christi and the miles sae-
culi, a tension echoing that between the authority of Ferrandus as a Christian teacher
and that of Reginus as dux. The contrast between the milites Dei and the milites sae-
culi is underscored by presenting an extended list of oppositions: ‘those fight against
visible enemies, these against invisible ones. Those, avarice renders cruel (crudeles),
these, mercy renders generous (benignos).’31 This series of oppositions carries the
important message, central to the letter, of redefining the distinction between earthly
military service and membership in the army of Christ not as a distinction of actual
military participation, but rather as a distinction of character and ethical com-
mitments. Such a redefinition allows participation in earthly military affairs to be
redefined as compatible with the ethical outlook of a soldier of Christ.
The deacon then invites Reginus to join with him in petitioning God the creator,
who, according to the Psalmist, created all things according to his will, that
We ask Him, who orders the world, that he deign to promote those of his soldiers hid-
den under the uniform of the secular military, guiding them from within, and sending
to others the wisdom to rule, just as he has given it to you, Reginus, dux illustris.32
30
Ferrandus, Ad Reginum 1, PL 67, 928: ‘Propter hoc apostolus Paulus: “Nemo, ait,
militans Deo implicat se negotiis saecularibus” (II Timothy 2. 4) ostendens esse milites Dei,
sicut sunt etiam milites saeculi. Duplex ergo militia duo genera militum signat: alios militia
corporalis laborare cum mundo, secundum voluntatem terreni regis astringit; alius militia
spiritalis ad coelestia castra per gratuitam gratiam coelestis imperatoris adducit.’
31
Ferrandus, Ad Reginum 1, PL 67, 928
32
Ferrandus, Ad Reginum 2, PL 67, 929: ‘Rogemus [. . .] eum qui disponit orbem [. . .] ut
videlicet milites suos sub habitu militiae saecularis latentes promovere dignetur ad maximas
dignitates: regens eos intus, et regendi alios scientiam tribuens; sicut tibi quoque, dux illustris
Regine, jam donasse cognoscitur.’
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100 KATE COOPER
Ferrandus goes on to review his occasion for writing to Reginus. Reginus had asked
Fulgentius of Ruspe to give him a regula for the man occupied with both military
and spiritual matters, but Fulgentius having died, Reginus has brought the query to
Ferrandus, ‘almost to make good a hereditary debt’.33
This provides an occasion for Ferrandus to expand on his own unworthiness to
offer advice to a man so accomplished as Reginus, much less to stand in the shoes of
Fulgentius.
Woe to me [. . .] here, held fast by the bonds of the ecclesiastical militia, I am without
eloquence in worldly matters, and how should I impose the law of the spiritual militia
on one who is a soldier in the saeculum?34
Ferrandus goes on to explain that his task of teaching another could only be accom-
plished if he himself were to live well, a meditation on his own worthiness that will
inform his advice to Reginus on how the dux in turn should exert a morally uplifting
influence on the men assigned to his command. Ferrandus consoles himself with the
thought that it is not human but divine teachings that Reginus wishes to be guided by.
At this point, the author turns to list seven ‘rules of integrity’ (innocentiae) by
which the soldier of Christ must be guided, a list whose elaboration will constitute
the remainder of the letter. The first rule, to acknowledge the necessity of grace, sets
the moral agenda for the treatise: not only does Ferrandus draw explicitly on the
Augustinian theology of grace, but he clearly has in mind, as we will see below,
Augustine’s pastoral instinct that the most insidious spur to discouragement in a
community is the superbia of its élite. The practical military context which Reginus
faces as dux is invoked immediately by the biblical exempla which Ferrandus
chooses: the book of Judith illustrates the proposition that while no one can protect a
city if God himself does not sustain the defense, a small band can triumph with God
on their side; the book of Judges provides the authority for the assertion that when
the dux finds himself embroiled in the difficult business of reconciling factions
among his men, he should remember that God himself is the source of all peace.
Ferrandus turns next to exhort Reginus to let his own life be a mirror from which his
soldiers can learn morality. The second rule emphasized Reginus’s responsibilities as
a judge of his men, but they are redefined to incorporate the Pauline prohibition (Ro-
mans 2. 1) against judging others lest one be judged. Reginus is exhorted to cultivate
the virtues — justice, mercy, patience — which will make him a fair leader and an
example to his men. Added to these is the virtue of continentia, understood in its
classical sense as the self-control which allows a leader to listen to the counsel of the
33
Ferrandus, Ad Reginum 2, PL, 67, 929: ‘ut me iubeas tanti viri quasi hereditarium
debitum solvere’.
34
Ferrandus, Ad Reginum 3, PL, 67, 930: ‘Vae mihi misero [. . .] Ecce ego militiae ecclesi-
asticae vinculis alligatus, curis saecularibus dissipor; et quomodo in saeculo militanti militiae
spiritalis audeam legem ostendere?’
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wise, rather than that of flatterers.35 Our writer now invokes a single New Testament
dictum directly pertinent to the correct behavior of soldiers, Luke 3. 14, in which a
group of soldiers petitions John the Baptist and he replies, ‘Rob no one by violence
or by false accusation, and be content with your wages.’ Out of this slim material
Ferrandus renders a broad picture of the ruin caused to a province under military rule
if the occupying soldiers’ instinct for extortion and plunder is not checked by the
word and example of a wise leader.36
The third rule — ‘seek not to be eminent (praeesse) but to be useful (prodesse)’
(935) — develops the theme of the leader’s responsibility to contain the behaviour of
his men. ‘On account of these things you will be seen to be useful in two ways; if
you do not harm anyone, and if, insofar as you can — which is to say insofar as
Christ has given you the power — you prohibit those who have the tendency to harm
from doing so.’37
The dux who takes seriously his duty to the civilian population under his dominion
will understand that containing the tendency to corruption among his men is at least
as important as the more visible exercise of power,38 and it should be understood that
it is the leader’s responsibility to seek out such crimes against the powerless rather than
imagining that he is not responsible for what he does not know about.39 ‘By this con-
scientiousness he may acquire such good fame, that even if a superior wants to harm
those below him, he can help by his intercession, and easily persuade him to spare
those whom he himself would spare.’40 Indeed, the good dux should try to leave rich
35
Ferrandus, Ad Reginum 5, PL, 67, 933. Whether the vocabulary of continence is being
invoked here polemically against the sexual definition of continentia which prevails among
the moral writers of the period, or whether Ferrandus is writing in a milieu where the sexual
meaning would simply be a secondary meaning, remains an open question.
36
See now Christopher Kelly, Ruling the Later Roman Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2004), Chapter Four, ‘Purchasing Power’, pp. 138–85, on the problem of
regulating access to justice in provincial government at this period.
37
Ferrandus, Ad Reginum 7, PL, 67, 935: ‘Praeter haec quoque duobus modis prodesse
videberis, si neminem laedas, et illos qui solent aut volunt laedere prohibeas quantum potes,
imo quantum posse donaverit Christus.’
38
Ferrandus, Ad Reginum 7, PL, 67, 935: ‘Tunc autem dux optimus neminem laedet, si in
omni praetorio illius non audeat aliquis amicus, cliens, medicus, armiger, aut propter officii
publici devotionem lateri ducis semper adiunctus, concessa beneficia vendere. Quid enum
miseros juvat, si dux exhibeat continentiam boni ducis, et alius sibi de potestate illius
occasionem faciat avaritiae satiandae?’
39
Ferrandus, Ad Reginum 7, PL, 67, 935: ‘Non potest sapiens dux excusari de ignorantia,
quoties forsitan dixerit: Ego nescio, non audivi, nullius ad me querela pervenit.’
40
Ferrandus, Ad Reginum 7, PL, 67, 936: ‘Potest plane per hanc diligentiam sic acquirere
famam bonam, ut etiam si persona superior laedere voluerit subditos, libera intercessione
subveniat; et parcendum facile persuadeat, quibus ipse primo pepercerit.’ The language here
— libera intercessione — is that of the tribune of the people, who could annul a decree of the
senate by his veto.
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102 KATE COOPER
those whom he found poor, rather than the other way around. It is the man who
brings his subjects prosperity, not oppression, who will be remembered.
This leads naturally to the fourth rule, to love the commonwealth (rempublicam)
as much as oneself. The good general wants to see her tranquil, peaceful, and fertile.
He should be guided by this principle and by his conscience. ‘So enter there, O best
of men, as often as you consider how you have to act in military affairs, enter into
the vast sanctuary of your conscience.’41
The fifth rule, to put divine things before human ones, offers specific advice for
the man who is stationed in areas where the civilian population are Arians. While in
matters of ecclesial custom Reginus is encouraged to follow indigenous practice for
fear of scandalizing others, he is encouraged in matters of doctrine to work on behalf
of the Catholic faith, and to act in consultation with the clergy. An extended agri-
cultural metaphor echoes the exhortation to the dux as a husbandman of the fertitlity
and prosperity of the territory under his control: Reginus’s task is to sow the seeds of
the Catholic faith, but it is the task of God to see that the soil is fruitful.
The last two rules exhort Reginus to avoid self-righteousness and to remember
that he is a Christian. Since their purpose is not only to exhort but also to draw the
letter to a close, it seems appropriate that the last two rules draw the reader’s
attention from the specific task and circumstance of the dux, back to the broader
Augustinian point of view with which Ferrandus had framed the treatise initially.
Gregoria and Reginus: A Comparison

The comparison of Gregoria’s handbook to the Letter to Reginus invites us to consider
the scope of the matrona’s authority and agency in a wider social and economic con-
text, and similarly asks us to notice that the matronly virtues towards which Gregoria is
urged are not only those of a wife who has her eye fixed on her husband, but also those
of the aristocrat who acts as arbiter of the fate of others. Though reference to her gen-
der pervades the manual it is far from offering a simple exhortation to wifely obedi-
ence. On balance, what is noticeable in the text is the degree to which it exhorts her to
the virtues which limit the abuses of the powerful, rather than to those of submission
by the weak. Gregoria is clearly understood here primarily as a female patronus.
Equally significant is how the comparison calls attention to the problem of the
public-private binary. Gregoria and Reginus do not inhabit alternate moral spheres.
If we compare the way the position of each is understood, there are differences both
of substance and of strategy, but they are not the differences we might expect. For
example, while Gregoria is perhaps predictably portrayed primarily in the context of
an interior space, whether that of the domus or the fortress, Reginus, too, is invited
to ‘go indoors’ to the sanctuary of his conscience.
41
Ferrandus, Ad Reginum 9, ed. PL 67, col. 937: ‘Ingredere igitur tu, virorum optime,
quoties cogitas qualis esse in actibus militaribus debeas, ingredere conscientiae tuae latissima
penetralia.’
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Perhaps the most significant difference between the two texts is Gregoria’s ascent
to the tower of contemplation. The altercatio section, in which she is asked to ascend
the tower and look out over the battlefield as the vices wage war with the virtues,
acknowledges the ideal of the miles Christi but interposes an imaginary distance.
The matrona is asked to view the altercatio rather than fighting — even though it is
her own soul that must do battle with the forces of evil. It can be argued that she is
assigned a passive role as a spectator, but the situation is more complex than this. In
the main body of the text her own actions in daily life are viewed as direct engage-
ment in spiritual warfare, and this spills across to colour the interpretation of the
sequences in which the virtues — her virtues — are at war with the vices. Gregoria
is both soldier and spectator across the text as a whole.
We must also remember that both contemplation and the role of the speculator
have high-prestige masculine connotations in this period. In its Neoplatonic aspect the
tower of contemplation is pretentiously literary, calling to mind both the Psychomachy
of Prudentius and Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy, as well as a Christian-
philosophical tradition stretching back to the second-century Shepherd of Hermas.
The tower itself also evokes monastic connotations, reminding the reader of the
tower of John Cassian, and of Benedict as commemorated a generation later in Greg-
ory the Great’s Dialogues. At the end of the sixth century Gregory would build on
these traditions with the recommendation to contemplation for the ruler in his Regula
Pastoralis. In his Homilies on Ezekiel Gregory accords to the speculator, the man
who views from above, a panoptical authority strongly identified with that of the
bishop, though he views ordained and lay authority as resting on the same founda-
tions.42 The real significance of the altercatio sequence is probably in its pretensions,
not in the seeming passivity to which it can be read as assigning the addressee.
Turning to the household manual section, what emerges is that the terms of address
are very similar to those in the letter to Reginus. Like Ferrandus, the anonymous
author of the Handbook warns virulently against the neglect that would allow a
Christian to claim ignorance as an excuse for a violation of Christian principles.
While in the case of Ferrandus it is the commander whose men are extorting from
the civilian population behind his back, in the Handbook at issue is the entire sacred
history of God’s attempt to bring Israel to salvation. The Handbook’s author
despises the excuse of the matrona who claims ignorance of God’s will:
I believe we will have to say, ‘Lord, we did not know that you existed, You did not
send prophets, You did not give the Law to the world, we saw no patriarchs, we read
no Lives of the saints, Your Son was never on Earth, Peter remained silent, Paul
refused to preach, no evangelist taught, there were no martyrs whose example we
might follow, no one foretold your coming judgement, no one commanded that the
42
On the speculator tradition, see Conrad Leyser, Authority and Asceticism from Augustine
to Gregory the Great (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 28–31 and 160–63.
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104 KATE COOPER
poor be clothed, no one urged that lust be checked. We fell by lack of awareness and
we sinned by ignorance; for those sins which we committed knowing no better, we
deserve mercy.’43
Here the self-justification of the subordinate accounting for wayward behavior to a
superior offers the reader comic relief while simultaneously serving a serious
warning.
The Handbook for Gregoria and the letter to Reginus share, it is clear, an over-
arching approach to the moral instruction of the laity, and within this, an instinct to
adapt the metaphor of the miles Christi to the imaginative needs of a population ex-
posed to recurring political instability and the reality of military engagement. Having
said this, the two treatises frame their readers according to different sensibilities.
While the letter to Reginus is clearly directed to Reginus the military man in distinc-
tion to Reginus the man of letters — though the more theologically orientated Letter
18 of Fulgentius attests that he was both — the Handbook for Gregoria conflates the
military and literary aspects of its reader’s world. The conflation was perhaps plausi-
ble to a reader whose gender meant that her experience of military affairs would
ideally be from a distance.
When each is asked to think of the effect of his or her actions, the dux is invited to
imagine it in terms of the civilian population of his province, while the matrona is
invited to think in the diverse terms of husband, servants, contemporaries, and God.
This multivalence should not lead us to underestimate Gregoria’s status. Her position
as mistress of a late Roman domus was in fact an office of considerable authority
since the domus was the primary unit of social organization and economic produc-
tion in the Roman and post-Roman world. Both dux amd matrona are secured within
a hierarchy, with one eye cast below, to those whom they govern, and one cast
fearfully above. The perilous balance applies to both.
Conclusion
Does the comparison of Gregoria and Reginus — of the texts addressed to them —
cast light on Sidonius’s view of books for women as being less learned and more
devotional than those for men? It is not a fair question, since the Letter to Reginus is
clearly less pretentious in its literary framing than the Handbook for Gregoria — it
would offer a closer comparandum for one of the conduct manuals for women which
43
Liber 20, ed. by Morin, pp. 429–30, trans. by Cooper, p. 326: ‘Credo nos dicturos fore:
Nescimus te, domine, esse: prophetas non misisti, legem saeculo non dedisti, patriarchas non
uidimus, sanctorum exempla non legimus, filius tuus in terris non fuit, Petrus tacuit, Paulus
noluit praedicare, euangelista non docuit, martyres non fuerunt, quorum exempla sequeremur,
futurum iudicium tuum nemo praedixit, uestiri pauperem nemo mandauit, cohiberi libidinem
nemo persuasit: inscientia lapsi sumus, ignoratione peccauimus, meremur ueniam pro his quae
peccauimus nescientes.’
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does not include the excursus on the vices and virtues. Conversely, a more appropriate
selection for the male reader in parallel to the Handbook for Gregoria would have been
a text — Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy, for example, or Martianus Capella’s
Marriage of Mercury and Philology — reflecting literary tastes more elevated than
those of the Letter to Reginus. It is easy to see that all but very few of either sex
would have been intimidated by the rarified male lay elite whose idea of spiritual
meditation was to make erudite philological corrections to the text of Prudentius or
Martianus,44 but at the present stage of research it is difficult to make secure
generalizations about female as opposed to male lay spiritual literature beyond the
simple point that lay women were perceived as deeply interested in spiritual matters.
Still, we can conclude that the texts addressed to Gregoria and Reginus reveal ini-
tial contours of the shared imaginary landscape in play for dux and domina at the end
of antiquity, and show that these contours can be recognized across gender barriers.
The self-conception as miles differs, in that its metaphorical nature is understandably
stressed where the matrona is concerned, but in fact the metaphor sits no more nor
less easily with the literal miles, who is first of all an administrator who will be
judged by his ability to maintain peaceful relations within his province. Taken
together, the two texts offer a window onto the development of a warrior laity who
looked to their God as the ultimate guarantor of what justice the saeculum afforded.
Finally, the comparison of province and household as spheres of authority has
evidenced remarkable continuity despite the differences of scale. Both texts portray
the intended reader as a person of considerable authority, and there is equal urgency
in the effort to persuade both toward justice in the face of those who depend on
them. It is worth noting that the household is imagined in terms borrowed from the
military imagination of the day, as itself a sphere beset by uncertainty. To some
extent it must be true that geopolitical uncertainty would be reflected up and down
the social hierarchy, with restlessness among those below who wondered whether
those established above them might be toppled. Read in this light, Sidonius’s sug-
gestion of a recognizable affinity of female householders for ‘the religious style’
takes on new significance. The Church and the household, Sidonius reminds us,
were the two enduring institutions during this period of uncertainty, and their mutual
reinforcement was crucial to social stability. Though less well documented by far
than Church or monastery, the lay household should hold a central place in our own
imaginative landscape, as the elusive but indispensable institution within which the
fate of province and empire took shape.45
44
Cooper, ‘Widow as Impresario’, pp. 54–55, discusses the range of elite male and female
lay spiritualities in early sixth-century Rome; on elite male spirituality, see Helen Kirkby,
‘The Scholar and his Public’, in Boethius: His Life, Thought, and Influence, ed. by Margaret
Gibson (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1981), pp. 44–69.
45
I am grateful to Anneke Mulder-Bakker and Jocelyn Wogan-Browne for unusually
generous and intellectually stimulating criticism of this piece in draft, although they bear no
responsibility for its shortcomings.
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106 KATE COOPER
Bibliography
Primary Sources
Apollinaris, Sidonius, Epistolae, PL, 58, 443–640.

Cassian, Collationes, ed. and trans. by E. Pichery, Jean Cassien, Conférences, SC, 42 (Paris:
Cerf, 1955).
Evagrius, Praktikos, ed. and trans. by Antoine Guillaumont and Claire Guillaumont, Evagre le
Pontique, Traité pratique ou Le moine, SC, 171 (Paris: Cerf, 1971).
Ferrandus, Ad Reginum Comitem Paraneticum, PL, 67.
Pseudo-Ferrandus, Pseudo Ferrando di Cartagine: Vita di San Fulgenzio, trans. by Antonio
Isola (Rome: Città Nuova, 1987).
Hieronymus, Eusebius, Epistolae, PL, 22.
Liber ad Gregoriam, ed. by Germain Morin, Études, Textes, Découvertes (Paris: Picard, 1913;
repr. in Patrologia Latina Supplement, III, cols 221–56).
Liber ad Gregoriam, ed. by K.-M. Daur, Corpus Christianorum, 25A (Turnhout: Brepols,
1992).
Pelagius, Ad Demetriadem, PL, 30, 13–45; trans. by B. R. Rees, The Letters of Pelagius and
his Followers (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1991).
Procopius, History of the Wars, ed. by J. Haury; repr. with a trans. by H. B. Dewing, Loeb
Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1914).
Secondary Sources
Anton, Hans Hubert, Fürstenspiegel und Herrscherethos in der Karolingerzeit, Bonner histo-
rische Forschungen, 32 (Bonn: Ludwig Röhrscheid Verlag, 1968).
Bloomfield, Morton, W., The Seven Deadly Sins: An Introduction to the History of a Religious
Concept. With Special Reference to Medieval English Literature ([n.p.]: Michigan State
College Press, 1952).
Brown, T. S., Gentlemen and Officers: Imperial Administration and Aristocratic Power in
Byzantine Italy, A.D. 554–800 (Rome: British School of Rome, 1984).
Conant, Jonathan P. ‘Staying Roman: Vandals, Moors, and Byzantines in Late Antique North
Africa, 400–700’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, 2004).
Cooper, Kate, ‘Concord and Martyrdom: Gender, Community, and the Uses of Christian Per-
fection in Late Antiquity’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Princeton University, 1993).
———, The Virgin and the Bride: Idealized Womanhood in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1996).
———, ‘The Widow as Impresario: Gender, Legendary Afterlives, and Documentary Evi-
dence in Eugippius’ Vita Severini’, in Eugippius und Severin: Der Autor, der Text, und der
Heilige, ed. by Walter Pohl and Maximilian Diesenberger (Vienna: Verlag der Österreich-
ischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2001), pp. 53–63.
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Cozic, Michel, Le Liber ad Gregoriam d’Arnobe le Jeune: Édition, Traduction, Étude historique,
doctrinale et littéraire (Villeneuve d’Ascq: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 1997).
Janson, Tore, Latin Prose Prefaces: Studies in Literary Conventions, Studia Latina Stockhol-
mensia, 13 (Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell, 1964).
Kelly, Christopher, Ruling the Later Roman Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 2004).
Kirkby, Helen, ‘The Scholar and his Public’, in Boethius: His Life, Thought, and Influence,
ed. by Margaret Gibson (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1981), pp. 44–69.
Leyser, Conrad, Authority and Asceticism from Augustine to Gregory the Great (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2000).
Morin, Germain, ‘Fragments pélagiens inédits du manuscrit 954 de Vienne’, Revue Bénédic-
tine, 3 (1922), 265–75.
Sears, Elisabeth, ‘Louis the Pious as Miles Christianus: The Dedicatory Image in Hrabanus
Maurus’ De laudibus sancti crucis’, in Charlemagne’s Heir: New Perspectives on the
Reign of Louis the Pious (814–840), ed. by Peter Godman and Roger Collins (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1990), pp. 605–28.
Von Harnack, Adolf, Militia Christi: The Christian Religion and the Military in the First Three
Centuries, trans. and introd. by David McInnes Gracie (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1981).
Wang, Andreas, Der ‘Miles Christianus’ im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert und seine mittelalter-
liche Tradition: ein Beitrag zum Verhältnis von sprachlicher und graphischer Bildlichkeit,
Mikrokosmos, 1 (Frankfurt: Lang, 1975).
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Faith, Family, and Fortune: The Effect

of Conversion on Women in Scandinavia
BIRGIT SAWYER
I
n order to assess the effects of conversion, not only on women, but on people in
general, their society, political organization, laws, and customs, we need to
know what conditions were in pre-Christian times. For such knowledge we are,
however, dependent on relatively meagre source-material: archaeological and
written sources that are furthermore often very difficult to interpret. Another com-
plication is that the conversion of Scandinavia coincided with other important devel-
opments, demographic and political, that also had profound economic, social, and
juridical consequences.
The conversion of Scandinavia was a long drawn-out process, lasting from the
late eighth to the early thirteenth century. If we want firm dates, it is customary to
choose the years when Christianity was officially accepted by Scandinavian rulers.
This first happened in Denmark, where King Harald Bluetooth was baptized c. 965
and (on his big rune-stone in Jelling) claimed to have made the Danes Christian.1 In
the king-less Iceland the Allthing (the central assembly) decided to convert c. 1000,
but for Norway and Sweden it is more difficult to choose a year; the Norwegian king
Håkon, who had been fostered at the English court, brought missionaries with him at
1
Danmarks Runeindskrifter, ed. by Lis Jacobsen and Erik Moltke (Copenhagen:
Munksgaard, 1942), no. 42: ‘King Harald commanded this monument to be made in memory
of Gorm, his father, and in memory of Thorvi (Thyre), his mother, that Harald who won the
whole of Denmark for himself, and Norway, and made the Danes Christian.’
More than 3000 rune-stones are known in Scandinavia, and the majority of them were
made in the tenth and eleventh centuries. Most of them are upright, but some are horizontal
slabs that covered graves, and some inscriptions are carved on natural rock faces. See Birgit
Sawyer, ‘Viking Age Rune-Stones as a Crisis Symptom’, Norwegian Archaeological Review,
24.2 (1991), 97–112; and Sawyer, The Viking-Age Rune-Stones: Custom and Commemoration
in Early Medieval Scandinavia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).
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110 BIRGIT SAWYER
his return to Norway in the 930s, but this did not lead to conversion. That goal was
achieved by later kings, Olav Tryggvason (995–1000) and Olav Haraldsson (1015–
30).2 In Sweden, King Olaf ‘Skötkonung’ tried to introduce Christianity but
succeeded only in the western parts, where in the early eleventh century he had a
bishopric established.3
The subject of this essay includes ‘faith’ but I will principally concentrate on
‘family’ and ‘fortune’. Further, I will deal not only with the effect of conversion on
women but also the effect of women on conversion.
Faith
The introduction of a monotheistic religion meant a dramatic change for all; for
women it meant the end of their active participation in cults and the loss of numer-
ous female goddesses. Against the pagan high valuation of warlike virtues were set
the Christian ideals of tolerance and mercy; against the pagan worship of fertility
were put the Christian ideals of chastity and celibacy; and against the pagan stress
on the survival of kin was put the Christian emphasis on the salvation of the
individual soul.
There is, however, a risk of exaggerating the religious role of women in pagan
Scandinavia and of underestimating it after the conversion. Christian authors had a
tendency to put most of the blame on women for much that they resented in the pa-
gan past (sacrifices, sooth-saying, and the use of magic), while we also know that,
especially in the missionary period but also later, women played an important role
helping the missionaries and — as donors to — churches, monasteries, and
nunneries.
According to an older view, Scandinavian women tended to hold on to old habits,
invoking Thor, insisting on pagan burials, and creating (or commissioning) laments
for their dead husbands, sons, or other kinsmen. Recent research, however, stresses
2
Norges Innskrifter med de Yngre Runer, ed. by Magnus B. Olsen and Aslak Liestol
(Oslo: Norsk Historisk Kjeldeskrift-Institut, 1941–60), no. 449: ‘Tore and Hallvard raised this
stone after X. Twelve winters had Christianity improved (things) in Norway.’ A dendrochron-
ological dating of a bridge close to the stone has resulted in the year 1034. If — as is highly
probable — the stone and the bridge were contemporary, this means that Christianity was
officially accepted in Norway in 1022. For this as well as the new interpretation of the
inscription, see Jan Ragnar Hagland, ‘Innskrifta på Kulisteinen: Ei nylesing ved hjelp av
Jan O. H. Swantessons mikrokarteringsteknologi’, in Innskrifter og datering, ed. by Audun
Dybdahl and Jan Ragnar Hagland, Senter for middelalderstudier, Skrifter 8 (Trondheim:
Tapir, 1998), pp. 129–39.
3
Birgit Sawyer and Peter H. Sawyer, Medieval Scandinavia: From Conversion to Refor-
mation, c. 800–1500, The Nordic Series, 17 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1993), pp. 57–60.
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Faith, Family, and Fortune 111
that women were clearly among the first to be converted; both archaeological and
runological evidence show this.4 In the runic inscriptions containing a prayer to
Mary women are overrepresented as sponsors, and the interesting thing is that the
prayer is directed not to the Virgin Mary but to Mary in her capacity of God’s
mother. This could possibly be evidence for a missionary strategy for accommodat-
ing pagan worship of fertility, replacing the fertility goddess Freja with Mary.
If recent research is right, then how do we explain why women were especially
attracted to Christianity? Much Christian teaching must have been particularly wel-
comed by women, a point obscured by the misogyny that colours so much medieval
literature. They must have found the prospect of the Christian paradise far more at-
tractive than the gloomy realm of Hel to which they had previously been consigned.
Many must also have been glad to believe that in the sight of God they were men’s
equals and that their worth did not depend on their fertility, family, or social status;
the community of Christians had room for all, including women who were barren or
unmarried, as well as for orphans and the poor. Christian teaching that all had an ob-
ligation to help those in need was especially welcome to women without near kins-
folk, for they had far more limited opportunities to support themselves than men had
in a similar situation. It may also be supposed that many mothers were gladdened by
the attempts of the Church to prohibit, or at least severely restrict, the custom of
infanticide, despite the increased burden that this must often have imposed.
It can safely be assumed that in Scandinavia, as in other parts of Europe, women
not only were among the earliest converts but also were generous donors to the
infant Church and active in the work of evangelism, encouraging their husbands to
convert and teaching the new faith to their children. Normally it must have been the
father who determined the religion of his family, but there were exceptions. A rune-
stone at Enberga in Uppland, erected by two brothers in memory of their parents,
implies that only their mother was Christian. It was erected in a pagan cemetery, and
the inscription reads: ‘Gisl and Ingemund [. . .] had this monument made after
Halvdan, their father, and after Ödis, their mother. May God now help her soul
well.’5 It is also significant that most of the monuments commemorating deathbed
converts were erected by women. Five of the six Uppland runic monuments to men
who ‘died in white clothing’, meaning that they had very recently been baptized,
4
Sawyer and Sawyer, Medieval Scandinavia, pp. 197–99. For a study of burial customs
and the high incidence of Christian symbols associated with female graves, see Anne-Sofie
Gräslund, ‘The Role of Scandinavian Women in Christianisation: The Neglected Evidence’,
in The Cross Goes North: Processes of Conversion in Northern Europe AD 300–1300, ed. by
Martin Carver (York: York Medieval Press, 2003), pp. 483–96, and Jörn Staecker, ‘The Cross
Goes North: Christian Symbols and Scandinavian Women’, in ibid., pp. 463–82.
5
Sveriges Runinskrifter [SRI] (Stockholm: Kungliga Vitterhets Historie och Antikvitets-
akademien, 1911–): Uppland (U) 808 (emphasis added). In SRI the inscriptions are published
according to provinces, e.g. U = Uppland.
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112 BIRGIT SAWYER
were erected by women — two mothers and one wife acting on their own and two
mothers together with their husbands.6
Monuments referring to the building of bridges are further proof of the leading
role of women in the process of conversion. The missionaries taught that to build a
bridge (the word could mean a causeway over marshy ground) was a meritorious act
earning divine favour. A relatively large proportion of the approximately 145 in-
scriptions that mention the building of such a bridge were erected by, or were in
memory of, women. Those commemorating women are especially significant, for
whereas only one in fourteen of all inscriptions are in memory of women, one in
four of the bridge-stones are. Also, in an inscription in Uppland, two daughters
commemorate their father and record that he had built a ‘soul-house’ (probably a
resting place for Christian travellers) in memory of his wife.7 It is also noteworthy
that women were responsible for the two inscriptions that refer to pilgrimages. One
reads, ‘Estrid had this stone erected in memory of Östen, her husband, who went to
Jerusalem and died away in Greece’, and the other, ‘Ingerun, Hård’s daughter, had
these runes carved in memory of herself. She wanted to go east and to Jerusalem’.8
The inscriptions were predominantly Christian monuments, manifesting the accep-
tance of the new religion by the sponsors or by the dead they commemorated and
implying a willingness to give the missionaries active support. It is therefore signifi-
cant that almost a quarter of all inscriptions involved women as property owners.
Most of them were widows who could expect support from churchmen who urged
them not to remarry, presumably in the hope that at least part of their property would
be given to them as an endowment for their churches.
How did these women become property owners? As far back as we have evi-
dence it is clear that women had some inheritance and property rights; when she got
married (in pre-Christian society her only reason to leave home) a woman was
equipped with a dowry, a kind of prepaid inheritance. Further, she was given a
dower from her husband and the right to inherit from the children that they had in
common. The threat after the conversion was that these married women could per-
manently disinherit (or at least diminish the inheritance for) their children or, if
childless, other relatives by their donations to the Church. Many ecclesiastical
writers urge widows to remain widows, no doubt because remarriage would lessen
the chances of their becoming generous benefactresses.
The Church also provided women with a new way to leave their homes, by be-
coming nuns. For the women themselves this meant an alternative to their traditional
career as wives and mothers, but for their families it also meant a loss of property,
since now unmarried women must also be provided with a dowry — ‘for Christ’ —
on entering the nunnery.
6
SRI: U 613, 1036 (mothers); U 699 (widow); U 243 and (perhaps) 364.
7
SRI: U 996.
8
SRI: U 136 and 605.
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Family
A widely held interpretation of early Scandinavian society has been that, like other
Germanic societies, it was based on clans (Swedish: ätter), in the sense of descent
groups that were responsible for many of the functions that were later taken over by
kings and the Church, an encroachment that the clans are supposed vigorously to
have resisted. There is, however, no evidence for such well-defined descent groups
in Scandinavia; belief in their existence largely depends on interpreting the provin-
cial laws (from the eleventh to the fourteenth centuries) as reflecting such a clan
society in the last stages of dissolution.9 This interpretation has been proved false,
and if a clan society had ever existed, it disappeared long before the laws began to
be compiled. The runic inscriptions (of the tenth and eleventh centuries) confirm this
conclusion, for they show that kinship was bilateral and that society consisted of
nuclear families.
Thus in Scandinavia a woman did not sever all links with her own family when
she married. In the new family she and her husband created, they both, together with
their children, had property rights or expectations.10 Families were formed by mon-
ogamous marriages, and even if a man could have relationships — and children —
with several women, when he died only one wife was acknowledged. There is no
doubt that also in pre-Christian times marriage was based on a contract between two
families; reciprocally binding agreements were needed, especially among the
wealthy, for reverse inheritance (when a parent inherited from a child) could result
in the transfer of large estates from one family to another. According to our sources
(sagas and early laws) the contract could be cancelled; divorce seems to have been
easily obtainable, also for women. Contracted marriages, however, were not the only
form of partnership. According to both family sagas and chronicles, concubinage, an
informal relationship without legal consequences, was common. Concubinage
should not be confused with brief relationships; a concubine was a permanent, or at
least long-term, partner of a man, and their children could, if he acknowledged them,
inherit from him. In the higher levels of society a man could hope to ensure that he
would have one or more sons to survive him by having a concubine as well as a
legal wife; in lower levels — and for the majority of people — such informal rela-
tionships must have been the normal form of partnership between men and women.
There is nothing to suggest that these relationships were considered improper at any
social level before the Church condemned not only them but also many of the
customary marriage rules.
9
Sawyer and Sawyer, Medieval Scandinavia, pp. 166–68.
10
Sawyer, ‘Viking Age Rune-Stones as a Crisis Symptom’; Sawyer, Viking-Age Rune-
Stones.
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114 BIRGIT SAWYER
Marriage and the Church
The only form of cohabitation between men and women accepted by the Church was
Christian — lifelong and monogamous — marriage, which must be based on the
consent of both man and woman, a requirement that diminished the role of families
in contracting alliances for their children. The Church also forbade marriage be-
tween too closely related partners, prohibited divorce, and condemned extramarital
relationships as sinful. Concubinage was classified as marriage if it was monoga-
mous, permanent, and fulfilled these requirements.
According to Church law only children born in wedlock could inherit, and the
distinction drawn between legitimate and illegitimate children caused many difficul-
ties that were particularly serious when the children in question were the sons of
kings. Because several Danish and Norwegian kings were sons of concubines, the
Church had great difficulty in gaining acceptance of its demand that kings should be
legitimate.
It is hardly surprising that this marriage policy of the Church met with opposition.
In every given population where concubinage, divorce, remarriage, marriage be-
tween close relatives, and polygamy are forbidden, it has been estimated that circa
40% of the families will lack male offspring.11 For the big landowners this was
serious enough, and another threat was the ecclesiastical demand for reciprocal con-
sent to the marriage. From a secular point of view it was out of the question that a
decision to marry could be made by the couple themselves. In the higher ranks of
society marriage was a family concern with far-reaching consequences. By means of
marriage contracts landowners could build up networks of alliances, in which eco-
nomic and political considerations were significant. Thus the emphasis of the
Church on the voluntary character of marriage with consent as the main requirement
posed a serious threat to the existing social order. The demand that the woman’s
wishes should be respected was particularly disturbing. If a daughter could decide
whom to marry, her father and family lost the opportunity of using her marriage as a
means of advancing their interests. What was worse, she might marry someone un-
suitable, possibly from a hostile family.
Our Scandinavian law texts clearly illustrate how such consequences were op-
posed: according to some laws illegitimate children could be legitimized at the thing
(the Assembly), and remarriage is considered normal. In the Norwegian and Ice-
landic laws divorce is still allowed, and nowhere is the woman’s consent required.
What is required though is the consent of her guardian, and one means of bringing
pressure to bear was that a woman who married against the wishes of her guardian
could be disinherited. It is clear that in these laws marriage is still first and foremost
a family matter.
11
Jack Goody, The Development of the Family and Marriage in Europe (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 44.
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What was so threatening about the demand for women’s consent to marriage was
probably not the fact that it was necessary — in pre-Christian times it must also have
been an important consideration if a planned alliance was to function — but rather
the fact that it was now sufficient for a valid marriage. This could be a serious
setback for the head of a family in planning an alliance in his own interest. Even
though a woman who married against her family’s will could be disinherited, she
was considered a wasted asset if the marriage could not be annulled in some way.
Another reason for the reaction to the law on consent was that it meant that a woman
who chose to become a nun could not be forced to marry, and it can safely be
assumed that the Church fully supported women whose families objected to their
taking vows — or simply deciding to lead a chaste life. What also met with strong
resistance were the royal and ecclesiastical demands that inheritances should be
divided into legally fixed, individual shares.
Fortune
Marriages were not only used to create social and political networks; they resulted in
transfers of land, sometimes on a very large scale, in the form of dower and dowry.
Their size was the subject of negotiation and could vary greatly. In order to achieve
an advantageous match a father could, for example, in his lifetime give away such
large marriage portions that there was relatively little left for the unmarried heirs.
This freedom of action was limited, however, as a result of ecclesiastical and royal
demands.
The Church pressed the claim that Christ should be co-heir in all inheritances, but
as long as people could freely dispose of their property in their lifetimes, large
amounts of land could be transferred to heirs without the Church having a chance to
claim its share. The Church also urged everyone to make gifts in alms for the sake of
their souls. It was therefore important that all should have a fair share of family
property, but the shares could not be finally determined until the head of the family
died. When that happened, any children who had been given some of the family es-
tate when they married could either be excluded from a further share or return what
they had been given to the estate, so that a new and just division could be made. For
such a redistribution to be fair it was desirable that the amount each heir was entitled
to should be legally fixed. It was in the interest of the Church that the division
should, if possible, be equal — the larger the amount that could then be claimed as
Christ’s portion, or expected as gifts in alms. It was also in the interest of the Church
and secular government that all heirs — male and female — should have a right to a
predetermined share of their family’s property, so that they would better be able to
pay any legal penalties that might be imposed (and so that the shares of their co-
heirs would be protected).
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116 BIRGIT SAWYER
Inheritance in Theory and Practice
The Scandinavian laws reflect different stages in the transition from the relatively
unrestricted division of inheritances to systems in which the shares were fixed for
both men and women. The change was completed in Denmark by the beginning of
the thirteenth century, and in Norway later in that century. In Sweden the change is
reflected in most provincial laws of the early fourteenth century but was not effec-
tive in the kingdom as a whole until the acceptance of the landlaw, issued in about
1350. Earlier there had been great variations in the way heirs and heiresses were
treated. In the provincial laws of Norway, the Icelandic Grágás, the Older Law of
Västergötland, and the Law of Dalarna, it is assumed that a daughter would be pro-
vided with dowry, but the amount depended on her guardian (and the negotiation
preceding marriage). An unmarried daughter had no legal right to inherit as long as
she had brothers. These laws applied what is known as the gradual principle, in
which inheritance rights were determined by the degree of kinship, with men having
priority. In the Danish and the other Swedish provincial laws daughters have a right
to inherit together with sons, but only half as much. The rules for more distant kin
varied, but in general these laws applied what is known as the parentela principle,
namely that descendants — both male and female — have priority over other kin.
It has generally been supposed that women benefited when they were given a
legal right to inherit. That is questionable. After all, the laws that only allowed
daughters to inherit if they had no brothers assumed that those who married received
dowry, which could have been significantly larger than what was left for their
younger brothers, and which they were, before the legal change, entitled to keep.
The other laws, granting daughters half a ‘brother’s share’, certainly benefited those
who did not marry, but the amount that could now be given as the daughter’s dowry
was maximized to the daughter’s fixed legal share (unless a special arrangement was
made with the consent of all involved). There was another limitation: a daughter
who married without the consent of her father or guardian lost her right to her share.
The division of inheritances specified in the laws was not necessarily that used in
practice. Other arrangements could be made; in order to arrange a desirable marriage
alliance fathers or brothers could give more than half of a brother’s share to a
woman, but only if the other potential heirs agreed. The legal limitations of women’s
inheritance rights give a somewhat misleading impression of reality; in practice
many women were the sole heirs, some of them with great wealth. This circumstance
was partly due to the fact that women tended to live longer than men, and many
survived not only their husbands but also, because of the high rate of infant mor-
tality, their children. The runic inscriptions offer many examples of sole heiresses,
including some mothers who inherited from their children.12
12
Sawyer and Sawyer, Medieval Scandinavia, pp. 182–85.
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Obviously the number of inheriting women increased during the eleventh century,
partly because of women’s higher longevity, partly because, after the conversion, the
exposure of children gradually ceased. Since female babies had run the greatest risk
of being exposed (abandoned or just actively neglected), conversion resulted in an
increased number of women in the population. Secondly, male mortality was very
high in the early Middle Ages; apart from extremely high infant mortality, danger-
ous expeditions, feuds, and warfare took a heavy toll. The life expectancy of women
who survived their fertile period was especially favourable.
All these factors taken together — the survival of more girls than earlier, the
greater longevity of women, and ecclesiastical obstacles to the procreation of legiti-
mate male heirs — led to new demographic and economic conditions. The changes
can be traced all over Western Europe, although it is impossible to say when they
first appeared. As far as continental Europe is concerned, David Herlihy asserts that,
in the early Middle Ages, women came to play an extraordinary role in the manage-
ment of family property.13 A comparison with contemporary Saxony is especially
interesting, since — like Scandinavia — it was converted late (by c. 800). What
happened in Saxony during the first centuries after its conversion can indeed be
studied as a prelude to the Christianization of neighbouring Scandinavia. It was from
the monastery of Corvey in Saxony that the missionary Anskar came, and after the
establishment of Hamburg-Bremen as an archbishopric (in the 830s) Saxon influ-
ence was steadily increasing.
In his study of Ottonian society Karl Leyser emphasizes the important role
women played as landowners and donors.14 In tenth-century Saxony the shortage of
males and the longevity of women, combined with the system of dowry and dower,
led to the accumulation of land in female hands, which meant that women, espe-
cially widows or spinsters, had more to leave to the Church. According to Leyser, it
was not uncommon for single women to live in the household and under the protec-
tion of a clerical kinsman, in which case the women’s funds often went to enrich a
see, or to enlarge existing churches/religious houses. There was indeed a preference
for endowing nunneries rather than monasteries during the tenth and early eleventh
centuries. Other Germanic peoples had in fact responded to conversion and the
opportunities of forming communities for unmarried women in much the same way,
as for example the Franks and the Anglo-Saxons three centuries earlier. There must
have been several reasons for this. Leyser writes:
Marriages were costly and the presence of many unbetrothed girls in the houses of
Anglo-Saxon, Frankish and Old Saxon nobles threatened their peace. Infanticide was
13
David Herlihy, ‘Land, Family, and Women in Continental Europe, 701–1200’, in
Women in Medieval Society, ed. by Susan M. Stuard (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylva-
nia Press, 1976), pp. 13–45.
14
Karl J. Leyser, Rule and Conflict in an Early Medieval Society: Ottonian Saxony
(London: Edward Arnold, 1979), pp. 49–73.
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118 BIRGIT SAWYER
not unknown even among the aristocracy. Unmarried girls were exposed to the inces-
tuous advances of their own kin. [. . .] There was danger also from the intrusion of
strangers and worst of all unequals, especially slaves. [. . .] The foundation of religious
houses for women shifted the burden of safeguarding and maintaining them within
their own caste into another sphere.15
Many Saxon nunneries were founded by powerful matrons, three by the rulers’
wives, but several houses were founded by fathers who had lost their sons and could
only hope to be commemorated in a nunnery raised for a daughter or a daughter-in-
law. Leyser interprets the eagerness to found nunneries — or allow them to be
founded — as the response of a self-protective aristocratic caste to its predicaments.
Also, the good works and prayers of these noble women were felt to secure the
welfare of their kinsmen in this life as well as in the next. In the end, however, the
large number — and lavish endowment — of nunneries in Ottonian Saxony so dis-
torted the pattern of landholding that Saxon princes became less tolerant of wealthy
widows who donated their possessions to the Church; to restore the balance between
ecclesiastical and secular landholding the rich widows were forced to remarry.16
In Scandinavia most religious houses were founded during the twelfth century,17
and it seems as if the Danes in particular responded very quickly to the possibility of
safeguarding unmarried women. Before the middle of the thirteenth century there
were at least thirteen nunneries in Denmark, ten of which had been founded before
c. 1175. There were admittedly more monasteries (c. thirty), but it is worth asking
whether any preferences in endowing nunneries rather than monasteries can be
traced here as in Saxony 100–150 years earlier. In Sweden, where there were ac-
tually as many nunneries as monasteries (though only six of each) we know that the
nunnery of Gudhem was certainly very rich. In Norway and Iceland conditions seem
to have been somewhat different from those in Denmark and Sweden; from this
period only four nunneries were founded in Norway compared with some fourteen
monasteries, and of Iceland’s six religious houses only one was a nunnery (Kirkju-
bær, founded as late as 1186).
In Denmark and Sweden especially, women seem to play an important part both
as founders of religious houses and as benefactresses in general. The very first reli-
gious house in Sweden to be founded was the nunnery at Vreta (Östergötland),
which, according to tradition, was the work of King Inge (the younger) and his wife
Helena. The later introduction of the Cistercians to Sweden was the work of Ulvhild,
15
Leyser, Rule and Conflict, p. 64.
16
Leyser, Rule and Conflict, pp. 65–67 and pp. 70–72.
17
Kulturhistorisk Leksikon for nordisk middelalder: fra vikingetid til reformationstid
(Copenhagen: Rosenkilde og Bagger, 1956–78), cols 527–46 (‘kloster’); see also Birgit
Sawyer, ‘Women and the Conversion of Scandinavia’, in Frauen in Spätantike und
Frühmittelalter: Lebensbedingungen, Lebensnormen, Lebensformen, ed. by Werner Affeldt
(Sigmaringen: Jan Thorbecke, 1990), pp. 263–81.
Page 128
former wife of the Danish king Niels, later married to the Swedish king Sverker (the
older).18 In Östergötland this royal couple founded the monastery of Alvastra, from
which in Västergötland the monastery at Varnhem and the nunnery at Gudhem were
founded. Gudhem was richly endowed, for example, by Queen Katarina (1250) and
later by Queen Margareta (1392).19
From 1250 to 1350 the number of wills in favour of the Church made by Danish
laymen and laywomen are equal,20 and my own preliminary investigation of
Swedish diplomas before c. 1280 has shown that more than a third of the non-royal
donations were made by or for women. Women’s gifts were often considerable.
There is much to indicate that the ecclesiastical demands for gifts and donations
met with strong resistance; as late as in the thirteenth century Pope Innocent III com-
plained about Swedish lawspeakers, who used to declare that gifts in alms required
the consent of heirs.21 The following passage in the Older Västgötalaw (from the
1280s) is very revealing:
On his deathbed a man must not give anything away from his heir, unless the heir
himself agrees. Learned men say that, according to the Law of God, the heir must not
disagree[!].22
This tug of war can be witnessed all over Scandinavia, and only slowly is the indi-
vidual’s right to donate for pious purposes without the heirs’ consent accepted. The
right is, however, always limited to a certain share, and most restricted was the right
to dispose of ancestral land.
The legends about Scandinavian female saints also show that there was a fierce
resistance to these novelties. Both St Helena of Skövde and St Margrethe of
Roskilde were killed by their own relatives, no doubt because of their generosity
towards the Church, a generosity that threatened to disinherit their closest kin. The
very fact that women like Helena and Margrethe were made saints well illustrates
the conflict between ecclesiastical and secular values.
18
For Helena, see Nils Ahnlund, ‘Drottning Helena och Vreta kloster’, Historisk Tidskrift
(Swedish), 66 (1946), 139–44; for Ulvhild, see Toni Schmid, Sveriges kristnande: Från verk-
lighet till dikt (Stockholm: Svenska kyrkans diakonistyrelses bokförlag, 1934), pp. 98–100.
19
Diplomatarium Suecanum [DS] (Stockholm, 1829–), nos 377, 385.
20
Thelma Jexlev, ‘Wills, Deeds, and Charters as Sources for the History of Medieval
Women’, in Aspects of Female Existence: Proceedings from the St. Gertrud Symposium
‘Women in the Middle Ages’, Copenhagen, September 1978, ed. by Birte Carlé and others
(Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1980), pp. 28–40.
21
DS, no. 131.
22
Svenska landskapslagar, ed. by Åke Holmbäck and Elias Wessén (Stockholm:
AWE/Gebers, 1979), V: Äldre Västgötalagen, p. 77; my translation.
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120 BIRGIT SAWYER
Literary Evidence
For conditions in twelfth- and early thirteenth-century Scandinavia we cannot base

our conclusions on any kind of statistics, but the indications of women’s increasing
importance as landholders and benefactresses, as well as the economic consequences
of endowing nunneries, can be tested against the attitudes of contemporary writers,
such as the Icelandic saga–authors and the Dane Saxo Grammaticus.
In Saxo’s history things always turn out badly for women who want to maintain
their independence. Life-long chastity is not considered a virtue; a woman’s natural
career is to be a wife and mother.23 Saxo also objects to female inheritance rights
that guaranteed unmarried women a share of the family property. Married women’s
property was not endangered as long as their husbands had control over it, and this
is no doubt what is implied in Saxo’s propaganda for women’s subordination, an
opinion supported by patristic arguments about women as inferior to men in every
respect.24
The Icelandic family sagas are remarkably free of unmarried women, which is
due to the weight the authors put on marriage and procreation.25 We actually only
know of about six Icelandic nuns altogether between c. 1000 and 1300; the first,
Gudrun (in Laxdœla saga) had had four husbands, a few lovers, and children, and
she did not become a nun till fairly late in life. Two other nuns are also said to have
had husbands and children, and of the remaining three, only two nuns actually lived
in celibacy. The author follows up this information with anecdotes illustrating the
fatal effects of such life-long chastity: one had problems with her eye-sight, and the
other developed mental trouble. It is obvious that in Iceland chastity as such was not
highly valued. To quote Roberta Frank, who has studied marriage in twelfth- and
thirteenth-century Iceland:
In the family sagas [. . .] one way to find out who is the villain is to locate the nearest
bachelor, if you can find one. He is usually an outlaw, a thug, a poet, or worse. [. . .]
When there are two unmarried protagonists in a saga, on the one hand the man who
openly declares that he wants nothing to do with women will be the greater scoundrel.
On the other hand, the bachelor who demonstrates his heterosexual interests — how-
ever crudely — is judged redeemable. To make a bachelor like Grettir more respect-
23
Birgit Sawyer, ‘Sköldmön och madonnan: den kvinnliga kyskheten som ett hot mot
samhällsordningen’, Kvinnovetenskaplig Tidskrift, 1986, 3–14.
24
Birgit Sawyer (as Birgit Strand), Kvinnor och män i Gesta Danorum (Göteborg
Universitet, 1980), pp. 253–67 (p. 275); see also Sawyer, ‘Historiography and Politics in
Medieval Denmark’, Revue Belge de philologie et d’histoire, 63 (1985), 685–705.
25
Roberta Frank, ‘Marriage in Twelfth- and Thirteenth-Century Iceland’, Viator, 4 (1973),
473–84.
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able, the saga-author places him in a variety of amorous encounters — represented in

most English translations of the saga by a series of blank spaces and dots.26
The contempt with which the Icelanders regarded celibacy is reflected in their lan-
guage; the Icelandic for bachelor (einhleypingr) means vagabond or scoundrel, and
the term used for a spinster also means ‘one who has bad luck’ (úgiptr).27
Saxo and his Icelandic colleagues thus agree in their opposition to life-long chas-
tity, and as far as women are concerned their message is simple and unambiguous: a
normal woman marries and is praiseworthy when she devotes herself to her
husband. Most ecclesiastical writings present a striking contrast; in them the ideal
woman is the virgin — or widow — who, devoted only to God, withdraws from the
active life and gives her property to the Church. This contrast well illustrates the
resistance that the Church still had to fight in thirteenth-century Scandinavia. The
misogynistic propaganda of the day, so obvious in Saxo’s Gesta Danorum, opaque
but present in the Icelandic sagas, is, I suggest, an expression of the fear secular
society must have felt for the consequences to which the economic politics and
moral ideals of the Church might lead. Such propaganda would not have been
needed if women really were as weak, inferior, and powerless as they were often
said to be.28 Since misogynistic propaganda was obviously needed, we can conclude
that women, by alienating family property to the Church, were felt to constitute a
real or potential threat to society.
26
Frank, ‘Marriage in Twelfth- and Thirteenth-Century Iceland’, p. 481.
27
Frank, ‘Marriage in Twelfth- and Thirteenth-Century Iceland’, p. 482.
28
Mikael Nordberg, Den dynamiska medeltiden (Stockholm: Tiden, 1984), p. 118.
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122 BIRGIT SAWYER
Bibliography
Primary Sources
Danmarks Runeindskrifter, ed. by Lis Jacobsen and Erik Moltke (Copenhagen: Munksgaard,
1942).
Diplomatarium Suecanum (Stockholm, 1829–).
Norges Innskrifter med de Yngre Runer, ed. by Magnus B. Olsen and Aslak Liestøl (Oslo:
Norsk Historisk Kjeldeskrift-Institut, 1941–60).
Svenska landskapslagar, ed. by Åke Holmbäck and Elias Wessén (Stockholm: AWE/Gebers,
1979).
Sveriges Runinskrifter (Stockholm: Kungliga Vitterhets Historie och Antikvitetsakademien,
1911–).
Secondary Works
Ahnlund, Nils, ‘Drottning Helena och Vreta kloster’, Historisk Tidskrift (Swedish), 66 (1946),
139–44.
Carver, Martin, ed., The Cross Goes North: Processes of Conversion in Northern Europe AD
300–1300 (York: York Medieval Press, 2003).
Frank, Roberta, ‘Marriage in Twelfth- and Thirteenth-Century Iceland’, Viator, 4 (1973),
473–84.
Goody, Jack, The Development of the Family and Marriage in Europe (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1983).
Gräslund, Anne-Sofie, ‘The Role of Scandinavian Women in Christianisation: The Neglected
Evidence’, in Carver, The Cross Goes North, pp. 483–96.
Hagland, Jan Ragnar, ‘Innskrifta på Kulisteinen: Ei nylesing ved hjelp av Jan O. H. Swantes-
sons mikrokarteringsteknologi’, in Innskrifter og datering, ed. by Audun Dybdahl and Jan
Ragnar Hagland, Senter for middelalderstudier, Skrifter 8 (Trondheim: Tapir, 1998), pp.
129–39.
Herlihy, David, ‘Land, Family, and Women in Continental Europe, 701–1200’, in Women in
Medieval Society, ed. by Susan M. Stuard (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
1976), pp. 13–45.
Jexlev, Thelma, ‘Wills, Deeds, and Charters as Sources for the History of Medieval Women’,
in Aspects of Female Existence: Proceedings from the St. Gertrud Symposium ‘Women in
the Middle Ages’, Copenhagen, September 1978, ed. by Birte Carlé and others (Copen-
hagen: Gyldendal, 1980), pp. 28–40.
Kulturhistorisk Leksikon for nordisk middelalder: fra vikingetid til reformationstid (Copen-
hagen: Rosenkilde og Bagger, 1956–78).
Leyser, Karl J., Rule and Conflict in an Early Medieval Society: Ottonian Saxony (London:
Edward Arnold, 1979).
Nordberg, Mikael, Den dynamiska medeltiden (Stockholm: Tiden, 1984).
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Sawyer, Birgit, ‘Historiography and Politics in Medieval Denmark’, Revue Belge de philo-
logie et d’histoire, 63 (1985), 685–705.
——— (as Birgit Strand), Kvinnor och män i Gesta Danorum (Göteborg Universitet, 1980).
———, ‘Sköldmön och madonnan: den kvinnliga kyskheten som ett hot mot samhällsord-
ningen’, Kvinnovetenskaplig Tidskrift, 1986, 3–14.
———, ‘Women and the Conversion of Scandinavia’, in Frauen in Spätantike und Früh-
mittelalter: Lebensbedingungen, Lebensnormen, Lebensformen, ed. by Werner Affeldt
(Sigmaringen: Jan Thorbecke, 1990), pp. 263–81.
———, ‘Viking Age Rune-Stones as a Crisis Symptom’, Norwegian Archaeological Review,
24.2 (1991), 97–112.
———, The Viking-Age Rune-Stones: Custom and Commemoration in Early Medieval Scan-
dinavia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).
Sawyer, Birgit, and Peter H. Sawyer, Medieval Scandinavia: From Conversion to Reforma-
tion, c. 800–1500, The Nordic Series, 17 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1993).
Schmid, Toni, Sveriges kristnande: Från verklighet till dikt (Stockholm: Svenska kyrkans
diakonistyrelses bokförlag, 1934
Staecker, Jörn, ‘The Cross Goes North: Christian Symbols and Scandinavian Women’, in
Carver, The Cross Goes North, pp. 463–82.
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Introduction Part II:

Medieval Households
I
n 1346, in a vision on Christmas Eve, Birgitta of Sweden received precise
instructions on how to serve as an instrument of divine proclamation in the
Christian community. She found herself engaged to Christ and experienced a
movement in her heart as if she was pregnant. She heard Mary say to her:
Therefore, as my son placed on you the name of his new bride, so now I call you
daughter-in-law. For as a father and mother, growing old and resting, place the burden
upon the daughter-in-law and tell her what things are to be done in the house, so God and
I, who are old in the hearts of people and cold apart from their love, want to proclaim
our will to our friends and the world through you. This motion in your heart truly will
remain with you and will grow in accordance with the capacity of your heart.1
Significantly, Birgitta experienced her call to serve as God’s instrument of divine
proclamation in household imagery. She was addressed in her capacity of lady of the
house, the female head of household, daughter-in-law of God the Father and Mary.
Together with her husband Christ she formed the next generation in charge of the
family household. She does not imagine herself as a nun or a virgin, but as a lady
and mother in the world. Having been long married to Ulf and having borne him
eight children, she was now commissioned to expand the family household to the
whole world and to bear children to the Christian community at large. She was in her
fortieth year at the time she received her first calling. In Birgitta’s eyes, it would
seem, a matron received new tasks around that age and entered into a new phase; in
this case to proclaim the will of God and of Mary to friends and to the world. She
1
Revelaciones, Book 6.88, 6–8, ed. by Birger Bergh in Samlingar utg.av Svenska
fornskriftsällskapet, Ser. 2, Latinska skrifter 7.6 (Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell, 1991).
Quotation from Claire L. Sahlin, Birgitta of Sweden and the Voice of Prophecy (Woodbridge:
Boydell, 2001), p. 92.
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was expected to take over more of the public functions belonging to the lady of the
house; specifically the function of publicly inculcating its values for which the older
household couple, God and Mary, had grown too old.2
This anecdote makes us aware that we cannot assume that women in the past,
even more than in the present, lived in the confinement of their household, in the pri-
vate sphere of the family outside society. Of course, there is immense historical and
geographical variation in household size, membership, legal and social status, gender
roles, and relation to the wider market. In the medieval period, for instance, the
household may function as an urban workshop or as a unit of agricultural production
(anywhere on a scale from that of the villain tenant’s holding to the large estates of
pluralist ecclesiastical or lay noble owners). It may be defined as the conjugal family
unit, a co-resident family group, or the wider kin-group and can also be extended to
people living together from different families.3 The catch-all definition of the equally
flexible term ‘family’ — those who share an economic household — is itself open to
extension and may include, as Myriam Carlier points out, ‘people who define them-
selves as belonging to a family’ whether they are co-resident with the group or not.4
Nevertheless, some general observations can be made.
Household and the Female Householder in Medieval Society
Recent studies of the household have given most attention to the household as an
economic institution. Scholars study its economic organization and its contribution
to urban commerce and industry; they study the family economy or the male and
female workforce. Less attention has been paid to the household as a social and emo-
tional entity or to its significance for other sectors of society such as culture and
religion, education and morals.5 In the study of German women noted in our general
Introduction (pp. 5–6 above), however, Heide Wunder explores the consequences of
her argument for the critical importance of the conjugal household as it developed
2
See The Prime of their Lives: Wise Old Women in Pre-Industrial Europe, ed. by Anneke B.
Mulder-Bakker and Renée Nip (Louvain: Peeters, 2004), in particular the Introduction.
3
E. A. Hammel and Peter Laslett, ‘Comparing Household Structure Over Time and Be-
tween Cultures’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 16 (1974), 73–109 (pp. 75–79).
4
Myriam Carlier, ‘The Household: An Introduction’, in The Household in Late Medieval
Cities: Italy and Northwestern Europe Compared, Proceedings of the International Confer-
ence, Ghent 21st–22nd January 2000, ed. by Myriam Carlier and Tim Soens (Leuven-
Apeldoorn: Garant, 2001), pp. 1–11 (p. 4).
5
For a recent study of the household’s cultural and discursive importance, see D. Vance
Smith, Arts of Possession: The Middle English Household Imaginary (Minneapolis: Univer-
sity of Minnesota Press, 2003).
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Introduction Part II 127
from the eleventh and twelfth centuries.6 Life and work became household-based.
Culture and religion became household bound. The older structures of the clan, the
extended family, and the village community gave way to the nuclear family and the
household as the smallest cell of society. This cell consisted of the married couple,
their children, perhaps a few servants, and the family workshop, where all worked
together. The production process became increasingly organized in these family house-
holds. Marriage, household, and profession began to form an intricate whole. It is not
the individual, the male householder and breadwinner, who ran the business and had
a wife and family (or not). It is not the baker and his wife or the merchant and his
wife. Nor is it the clan in the organizational structure of the domain with its court
and its male and female quarters (and workshops). Rather, it is the couple who runs
the workshop, the means of production. So it is the bakery, man and wife; the firm,
merchantman and merchantwoman. To run a farm or a craft or a merchant’s firm a
married couple was required, for only such a couple could start a family with a house-
hold and family workshop. Such a business was based on the capital and income of
both partners, and both would devote all their energy to it for the rest of their lives.
In society at large, one’s position was determined by wedlock — and this was true
not only for women but also for men. Social independence and political responsi-
bility could be attained only as a married couple and applied to man and woman
alike.7 The household was represented in the guild and the town administration; of
course, mostly by the male head of household, but he acted as the household repre-
sentative, not as an individual person and adult. As a rule, if an adult person, male or
female, was not married, (s)he earned a living as a dependent, (s)he was not legally
or socially adult. (S)he could not run her or his own business. From the fourteenth
century things changed to the extent that from then onwards a marriage could be
established not only on the base of an independent firm or craft, but also on the joint
wage labour of man and wife. So servants, too, separated from the large households
and established their own households as married couples.8
From now on the married status became the dominant way of life for adult people.9
It was the organizational structure in which the social and emotional relationships
took form; the household shaped their way of life in all spheres. It was also the basic
6
Heide Wunder, He is the Sun, She is the Moon: Women in Early Modern Germany (Cam-
bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), pp. 37–113, also for the following. The Medieval
Household in Christian Europe, c. 850–c. 1550: Managing Power, Wealth, and the Body, ed.
by Cordelia Beattie, Anna Maslakovic, and Sarah Rees Jones (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003).
7
Wunder, He is the Sun, p. 37.
8
On the increasing mobility of servants, see e.g The Problem of Labour in Fourteenth-
Century England, ed. by James Bothwell, P. J. P. Goldberg, and W. M. Ormrod (York: York
Medieval Press, 2000); Felicity Riddy, ‘Mother Knows Best: Reading Social Change in a
Courtesy Text’, Speculum, 71 (1995), 66–86.
9
Wunder, He is the Sun, pp. 38–39.
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cell of society from which all social or public or civic life in the larger community
took shape. Not only in the economic sphere, but also in culture and religion, educa-
tion and morals. No wonder that Birgitta received her visions in household imagery.
The role patterns in the household, the division of labour between man and wife, and
the various areas for special attention of the lord and lady of the house also shaped
the public roles of man and woman in society. Public roles in society were the verso
side of family roles in the household.
Thanks to scholars such as David Herlihy and Heide Wunder we are well informed
as to the division of labour between the lord and the lady of the household in the eco-
nomic sphere. In most professions the wife organized production at home and the hus-
band organized the trading of the finished goods. He was the one who went out, while
she stayed home, although the local marketplace also became a domain for women.10
Women often displayed ability in administrative duties and finances and received the
necessary formal schooling for this in the Winkelschule (apprentice schools).11
We are much less informed about the cultural and moral or religious allocation of
household resources and training. Women kept the social memory and transmitted
ethics and morals. Karl Leyser and Henrietta Leyser have argued, for different areas
and periods, that women were held responsible for the family duties in religion.12
What women did in the field of culture and religion has been so far the subject of
scrutiny principally for noblewomen at the court.13 We hardly know anything about
the role patterns at lower levels of society, and these need much further study.
The Medieval Household and the Church
As earlier noted (in the first part of the Introduction), neither in theory or practice
were medieval households purely private or purely secular. As Jonathan Nicholls
showed in a study of one of the most famous late medieval English romances, Sir
Gawain and the Green Knight, an elite lay household maintained its own priests and
cleric: Sir Gawain could go to chapel and Mass with the ladies of the household and
confess himself to the household priest.14 (In an often-remarked lay appropriation of
10
Matrons and Marginal Women in Medieval Society, ed. by Robert R. Edwards and
Vickie Ziegler (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1995).
11
Wunder, He is the Sun, p. 88.
12
Karl Leyser, Rule and Conflict in an Early Medieval Society: Ottonian Saxony (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1989); Henrietta Leyser, Medieval Women: A Social History of Women in England
450–1500 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1995).
13
Joachim Bumke, Mäzene im Mittelalter: Die Gönner und Auftraggeber der höfischen
Literatur in Deutschland 1150–1300 (Munich: Beck, 1979).
14
Jonathan W. Nicholls, The Matter of Courtesy: Medieval Courtesy Books and the
‘Gawain’-Poet (Woodbridge: Brewer, 1985); R. G. K. A. Mertes, ‘The Household as a Reli-
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clerical judgement, Sir Gawain further confesses to the master of the household, a
confession less official but in some ways more efficacious.15) At this corporate level
of householding, Roberta Gilchrist has noted monastic and household overlaps in the
architectural features and the social structures of women’s communities in particular:
‘in certain respects nunneries resembled manorial settlements, which would have
formed the most familiar model for the gentry founders and inmates of nunneries.
Like manor houses, many nunneries were surrounded by moats, ordered as discon-
tinuous ranges around courtyards formed by pentices [overhanging internal roofs]
and constructed in local materials [. . .]. Some nunneries seem to have developed
domestic and service facilities within the cloister, lending them a secular appear-
ance.’16 Gilchrist points to the ‘splintering of the communal dormitory and refectory
into smaller familiae from the late thirteenth century’ as ‘resembling the permanently
resident “inner households” of women residing in castles’.17
Monastic ties with lay practice and lay intervention in monastic custom also
occurred at lower socio-economic levels. As David Postles has shown, for instance,
medieval English laypeople without the resources to found a religious house, or even
one of the chantry chapels that became increasingly popular in later medieval
England, might nonetheless become monastic donors and shape the practical life of
the religious by giving pittances (special dishes for feast days).18
An important medieval figuration of the relations between religious and lay
domains and lifestyles is drawn from the Gospels’ accounts of the two sisters of
Bethany, Mary and Martha (Luke 10. 38–42; John 12. 1–8). Although they are
associated with distinguishing active and contemplative lives, lay versus religious,
household versus church, Mary and Martha as often embody the interrelations of the
two, and certainly each is seen in terms of the other. Giles Constable has shown how
the two sisters repeatedly move apart and together in the writings of churchmen from
the Fathers onwards, sometimes figuring distinctions between monasteries and the
world, sometimes different kinds of life within religion, often (increasingly so in the
gious Community’, in People, Politics and Community in the Late Middle Ages, ed. by Joel
Rosenthal and Colin Richmond (Gloucester: Sutton, 1987), pp. 123–39.
15
See Nicholas Watson, ‘The Gawain-poet as Vernacular Theologian’, in A Companion to
the Gawain-Poet, ed. by Derek Brewer and Jonathan Gibson (Cambridge: Brewer, 1997), pp.
293–313.
16
Roberta Gilchrist, Contemplation and Action: The Other Monasticism (Leicester:
Leicester University Press, 1995), pp. 151–54.
17
Gilchrist, Comtemplation and Action, p. 213.
18
David Postles, ‘Pittances and Pittancers,’ in Thirteenth Century England, vol. IX, ed. by
Michael Prestwich, R. H. Britnell, and Robin Frame (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer,
2003), pp. 175–86.
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later Middle Ages) a mixed life within the life of a single individual.19 St Bridget of
Sweden herself, in the fifteenth-century Middle English version of her Revelations
(VI, 65), is taught by Christ ‘howe actyfe lyf and contemplatyf owe to be kepte be
ensample of Marie and Martha’.20 Mary comes first and is unambiguously the higher
role, but the contemplative life is figured in terms of the active: Mary must have
an howse þat gestes shall slepe ine; secunde, clothes to cloth þe naked; thirde, mete to
fede the hungery; forte, fyr to make the colde hote and warme; fyfft, medecyn for the
seke. (Revelations, p. 27)
(a house that guests can sleep in; secondly, clothes to clothe the naked; third, food to
feed the hungry; fourth, fire to make those who are cold hot and warm; fifth, medicine
for the sick.) (our translation)
The house and its resources are then explained as the ability to endure the distur-
bance of sinful thoughts and impulses for God’s sake (just as the good host wel-
comes guests); to have the clothes of humility and compassion, the food and drink of
appetite for the world, the fire of the Holy Spirit to warm and enlighten the guests,
and the medicine of God’s words to give them. This small but complex allegory, in
which the etiquette of the host–guest relation offers strategies for the management of
counter-intuitive experiences and feelings in the religious life, suggests how thor-
oughly the two domains interpenetrated each other both in terms of social history
and in models of the self and its processes.
The figure of Martha developed as a separate saint from the late twelfth century
onwards: as Christ’s hostess she becomes an exemplary householder (a group of
increasing importance as patrons of mendicant friars) even as she articulates the reli-
gious identity of the lady of the household.21 She practises the asceticism of chaste
matrons (prayers, vigils, weeping, restricted diet, etc) and exercises the devotional
artistic patronage of the urban householder (having a statue made of Christ — and
not a crucifix, but a Christ walking and clothed as he had appeared to her on earth).
Her relations with religious men are those of householder with upper clergy; her
death is one of exemplary lay piety, borrowing from monastic ritual as she is carried
outside to lie on ashes on the ground with a cross held before her. A bishop attends
her funeral to recite the Office of the Dead, miraculously transported from service in
his own church to do so.
19
Giles Constable, Three Studies in Medieval Religion and Social Thought: The Interpre-
tation of Mary and Martha, the Ideal of the Imitation of Christ, the Orders of Society
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 3–141.
20
The Revelations of Saint Birgitta, ed. by William Patterson Cumming, EETS OS 178
(London: Oxford University Press, 1929), pp. 25–36 (p. 25): henceforth referenced by page
number in text.
21
For a study of Martha and other holy household figures in the thirteenth and early
fourteenth centuries, see Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, Saints’ Lives and Women’s Literary Culture
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 139–46.
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The imitable aspects of the exemplary Martha are rooted in the household powers
of women, in dispensing hospitality and counsel: the audiences of Martha’s legend
are adjured to be similarly charitable in offering hospitality in either their households
or their hearts. Martha is also, in some versions of her legend, the foundress and
leader of a non-monastic female community, and she became particularly associated
with the beguines and their semi-laicized religious houses. In the High Middle Ages
the part of Martha had often been assigned to abbots (as persons in charge of the
monastic household), or used of lay brothers as opposed to choir monks. Among the
beguines all the roles of what in a monastic household would have been the obedien-
tiaries became Marthas (Schu-Martha, Keler-Martha, Cuchen-Martha, and so on), and
the term was also used to refer to married laywomen,22 also sometimes to the superior
of the community.23 Although St Cecilia and her royal or highly aristocratic virgin
martyr sisters are enduring models for the Middle Ages and beyond, the growth of
Martha’s cult from the twelfth century onwards is both symptomatic of and related to
the wider developments noted for Western and northern Europe by Heide Wunder.
Martha’s late medieval prominence, together with that of Elizabeth of Hungary and
other contemporary women saints, is yet another sign of the importance of the later
medieval laity and the lay, partly feminized, household domain as mainsprings of
development in the social practices and doctrinal issues of Christianity.
22
Constable, Three Studies, pp. 81, 125.
23
Walter Simons, Cities of Ladies: Beguine Communities in the Medieval Low Countries,
1200–1565 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), p. 85.
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‘Our Steward, St Jerome’:

Theology and the Anglo-Norman Household
JOCELYN WOGAN-BROWNE
T
he importance of women’s patronage in the production of Anglo-Norman
literature has long been recognized, especially in historiographic texts, but the
role of women in the creation of Anglo-Norman doctrinal and theological texts
has yet to be considered in detail.1 In this essay I will look at a group of texts which
claim their origin in the specific request of a female patron from an elite household.2
1
This essay’s beginnings were much helped by Giles Constable’s discussion group at the
Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, in late 1999, and its revised version further helped by
Jim Rhodes’s conference on ‘Re-thinking the Middle Ages’ at the University of Southern
Connecticut in 2002.
2
Ian Short, ‘Patrons and Polyglots: French Literature in Twelfth-Century England’, Anglo-
Norman Studies, 14 (1991), 229–49; for study of a particular case, see his ‘Gaimar’s Epilogue
and Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Liber vetustissimus’, Speculum, 69 (1994), 323–43, and Jean
Blacker, ‘“Dame Custance la gentil”: Gaimar’s Portrait of a Lady and her Books’, in The Court
and Cultural Diversity: Selected Papers from the Eighth Triennial Congress of the International
Courtly Literature Society, the Queen’s University of Belfast 26 July–1 August 1995, ed. by
Evelyn Mullally and John Thompson (Cambridge: Brewer, 1997), pp. 109–20; for a general
survey of women’s patronage in medieval Britain, see Karen Jambeck, ‘Patterns of Women’s
Literary Patronage in England, ca 1200–ca 1475’, in The Cultural Patronage of Medieval
Women, ed. by June Hall McCash (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1996), pp. 228–65,
and for their architectural and artistic patronage, Loveday Gee, Women, Art, and Patronage
from Henry III to Edward III, 1216–1377 (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2002). The
recent publication of Ruth J. Dean with Maureen B. M. Boulton, Anglo-Norman Literature: A
Guide to Texts and Manuscripts, Anglo Norman Text Society [ANTS], Occasional Publi-
cations Series, 3 (London: ANTS, 1999), surveys 986 texts, 26 named women patrons, and 8
works by women. For women’s access to doctrinal and theological learning via hagiographic
and encyclopedic literature, see Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, ‘Women’s Formal and Informal
Traditions of Biblical Knowledge in Anglo-Norman England’, (forthcoming).
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134 JOCELYN WOGAN-BROWNE
The circumstances of manuscript production make it very unlikely that such claims
are without historical foundation. But this does not mean we can dispense with
careful attention to the rhetoric and strategies of these texts. The invocation of a
particular patronage may function less as a matter of record than as a prestige
genealogy for a text designed to encourage its circulation. Moreover, in the represen-
tation of male authors and female patrons and audiences, as in that of clerical
relations with laypeople in general, the source and direction of flow for the cultural
capital at stake is often occluded.3 Texts produced by clerics for female patrons are
sometimes presented as responses to humble and urgent requests for information and
guidance. They are seen as informal tasks, a burden outside the writer’s official clerical
work.4 Yet such texts often incorporate more of the agenda of their clerical writers
than is overtly acknowledged in their rhetorical strategies of self-presentation.5 The
task of writing for a female patron can be used to display authority on the part of
clerics, confessors, and chaplains and to claim for them an indispensable role as
mediators and interpreters. Conversely, texts claiming their origin as clerically pro-
vided remedies for female cultural lack may in fact amount to a contribution by
women, and a contribution, moreover, in the very area where gender theoretically
debarred women from institutional participation, the dissemination of doctrinal and
theological teaching.
Prologue Politics: Language, Status, and the Partnership of Lady and

Cleric
One ground of clerical superiority and female disqualification from theological and
exegetical discussion is women’s lack of access to institutional Latinity. As Alcuin
3
On the politics of representation and the woman romance reader and patron, see Roberta
Krueger, Women Readers and the Ideology of Gender in Old French Verse Romance
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 4–7, for the ambiguities of praise of the
patron, and on Anglo-Norman examples, Blacker, ‘“Dame Custance la gentil”’, pp. 117–18.
4
So for example, the Anglo-Norman versions of the famous early Middle English ancho-
ritic guide, Ancrene Wisse: ‘I would rather, God knows, undertake a journey to Rome than
begin composing this book a second time’ (‘Jeo voudrai mieuz, Dieu le siet, moi mettre vers
Rome qe comencier altre foiz ceste livre faire’), The French Text of the Ancrene Riwle:
British Museum MS Cotton Vitellius F. vii, ed. by J. A. Herbert, EETS OS, 219 (London:
Oxford University Press, 1944), pp. 317/20–23 (I have punctuated and lightly modernized
Herbert’s diplomatic text).
5
For examples and discussion of the ways in which manuscript-culture texts represent their
relation to textual and other traditions, their audiences and modes of use, see The Idea of the
Vernacular: An Anthology of Middle English Literary Theory, c. 1280–1520, ed. by Jocelyn
Wogan-Browne, Nicholas Watson, Andrew Taylor, and Ruth Evans (Exeter: Exeter
University Press; University Park: Penn State Press, 1999).
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‘Our Steward, St Jerome’ 135
Blamires showed in his study of Henry of Ghent’s arguments against women’s

preaching, there is a circular dimension to the restriction of access: women cannot
preach and teach, the case goes, because they are socially debarred from attending
the institutions where preaching and teaching are taught and practised.6 Language
and its status is often an important topos in articulating the relation of cleric and
patron. In an insular cleric’s prologue, the complexities of clerical language and its
status versus that of the patron are well in evidence:
Point de latin mettre n’i voil
Kar ço resemblereit orgoil;
Orgoil resemble veraiement
Ço dire a altre qu’il n’entent,
E si est ço mult grant folie
A lai parler latinerie;
Cil s’entremet de fol mester
Ki vers lai volt latin parler;
Chescun deit estre a reisun mis
Par la langue dunt il est apris.7
(I don’t want to include any Latin in this for that would look like pride. It truly does
look like pride to say to another what he cannot understand, and so it is very great folly
to use Latinity in speaking to the laity. He undertakes a foolish task who wants to
speak Latin to lay people; each one must be brought to what is right through the
language in which he has been taught.)
So Robert the chaplain in the Prologue to the mid thirteenth-century Évangiles des
domnées, the 19,000 lines of Gospel commentary he says he has written for ‘sa
trechere dame, Aline’ (v. 1). Robert’s ‘dame Aline’ was probably Lady Elena de
Zouche (d. 1296), born Elena de Quincy, and married in 1240/42 to Alain de
Zouche, Justiciar of Ireland 1256–58 and overseer of Henry III’s royal forests (d.
6
Alcuin Blamires, ‘Women and Preaching in Medieval Orthodoxy, Heresy, and Saints’
Lives’, Viator, 26 (1995), 135–52; Blamires, ‘“Women Not to Preach”’, in Women, the Book
and the Godly: Selected Proceedings of the St Hilda’s Conference, 1993, ed. by Lesley Smith
and Jane H. M. Taylor (Cambridge: Brewer), pp. 1–17.
7
Miroir ou Évangiles des Domnées, from Nottingham, Nottingham University Library,
MS MiLM 4, fol. 57rb–va (vv. 79–88, henceforth cited by line number in the text). The Miroir
has not been published in full, but see Linda Marshall, ‘A Lexicographical Study of Robert of
Greatham’s Miroir’ (unpublished master’s thesis, University of Manchester, 1971) for an
edition of this manuscript. Extracts are edited by Marion Y. H. Aitken, Étude sur le Miroir,
ou, Les Évangiles des Domnées de Robert de Gretham suivie d’extraits inédits (Paris:
Champion, 1922), and Robert de Gretham, Miroir ou Les Évangiles des Domnées, ed. by
Saverio Panunzio (Bari: Adriatica, 1967). I am grateful to Linda Shaw and the staff at
Nottingham University Library for allowing me to see the Nottingham Miroir manuscripts and
for supplying a microfilm of MS MiLM 4. I have also benefited from the edition of the Miroir
Prologue prepared by Karl Steel in my graduate class.
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1270).8 Robert seems to have written for both husband and wife: the language of a
verse treatise on the sacraments dedicated to a lay patron, Lord Alain, by ‘Robert the
chaplain’ is very similar to that of the Évangiles.9 Whether Robert was a resident
household chaplain or a member of a community with de Zouche patronage cannot
be determined with certainty from the available evidence, but one or other or perhaps
successively both of these he almost certainly was.10
At first sight, Robert suggests a hierarchical relation between cleric and patron in
which Lady Elena is entirely dependent on his Latinity in order to be brought to the
knowledge of what is right (‘estre a raisun mis’, v. 87). But in this very lengthy pro-
logue (691 lines), Elena’s represented lack is Robert’s opportunity: an opportunity
for repeatedly asserting clerical indispensability to laypeople. Clergy are the clouds
set by God above the laity who enable the rain of holy writ to fall; they are cultiva-
tors, producers of the fruit of good works, that one of the three orders of society
created by God who are ordained to the responsibility of teaching everyone. They
must dispense bread to the little ones, ‘li petit’ (i.e. the laity). Scripture is crucial to
the refreshment and growth of the land, and the figure of the expositor (‘li espunur’)
is both the cloud from which the rain comes and the clearer away of the clouds of
8
Keith V. Sinclair, ‘The Anglo-Norman Patrons of Robert the Chaplain and Robert of
Greatham’, Forum for Modern Language Studies, 28 (1992), 193–208, and Robert de
Gretham, Corset: A Rhymed Commentary on the Sacraments, ed. by Keith V. Sinclair, ANTS,
52 (London: ANTS, 1995), Introduction; Linda Marshall, ‘The Authorship of the Anglo-
Norman Poem Corset’, Medium Aevum, 42 (1973), 207–23; Linda Marshall and W. Rothwell,
‘The Miroir of Robert of Gretham’, Medium Aevum, 39 (1970), 313–21. Elena de Quincy was
the third daughter of Roger de Quincy, Earl of Winchester (d. 1264) and his first wife, Helen
of Galloway (d. 1245).
9
The two works by ‘Rober’, the Évangiles for ‘his lady Aline’ and Corset for ‘his lord
Alain’ are accepted as having been produced for a wife and husband (see Sinclair, ‘Patrons’,
and the lexical evidence in Marshall, ‘Authorship’) by their chaplain. A slightly earlier Lady
Elena de Quincy was Eleanor de Ferrers (d. 1274), who became (in 1252) the second wife of
Roger de Quincy. If Robert’s authorship of both the Évangiles and Corset and the identifica-
tion of the Lord Alain mentioned in the latter holds, Elena de Ferrers cannot be the Elena of
Robert’s account here. On the treatise for Lord Alain, see J. Wogan-Browne, ‘How to Marry
Your Wife with Chastity, Honour, and Fin’Amor in Thirteenth-Century England’, in
Thirteenth-Century England, vol. IX, ed. by Michael Prestwich, R. H. Britnell, and Robin
Frame (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2003), pp. 131–49.
10
Sinclair, ‘Anglo-Norman Patrons’, and Introduction, in Robert de Gretham, Corset, pp.
15–21. Sinclair’s identification of Robert as possibly an Augustinian canon of Lilleshull (a house
in the de Zouche patronage) cannot be confirmed from the subsequently published Lilleshall
cartulary: a Robert the Chaplain witnesses Alain’s uncle’s charter in 1190 x 1199 and other
charters and gifts till c. 1202 (The Cartulary of Lilleshall Abbey, ed. by Una Rees (Shrewsbury:
Shropshire Archaeological and Historical Society, 1997), nos 24, 30, 89–90); Alain’s own
gifts from c. 1237–53 are not witnessed by any Robert the chaplain, though a Robert de Sepee
is included in the witness list for the latest of these (Cartulary, ed. by Rees, pp. 189–90).
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ignorance (vv. 255–422). As Karl Steel has argued, these metaphors of land cultiva-
tion reassign the productivity of the noble estate to clerical powers.11 Robert uses the
prologue energetically to affirm his clerical status as a top-down transmitter of
authoritative doctrine. Yet as the prologue continues, Robert dismantles the very
linguistic hierarchy of Latin versus vernacular with which he began, by his truth
claims for the vernacular:
Si rien i ad a amender
Del françeis u del rismeër,
Nel tenez pas a mesprisun
Mais bien esguardez la raisun;
Deus n’entent pas tant al bel dit
Cum il fait al bon esperit;
Mielz valt vair dire par rustie
Que mesprendre par curteisie;
Quanque s’acorde a verité
Tut est bien dit pardevant Dé. (vv. 105–14)
(If there is anything needing emendation in the French or the rhyming, do not despise
it but consider the reason: God does not attend so much to fine writing as he does to a
willing spirit. It is better to speak truth in an unpolished way than to make mistakes
through refinement. Whatever accords with truth is well said before God.)
Here, as delivery in French is envisaged, there is a different kind of apologia and a
different image of a language: French, as Robert skilfully and carefully claims, is the
language of skill and courtesy but can be emended according to transcendent
standards of truth-telling. Just as the special status of Latin as the language of Holy
Scripture bows to the necessity of translation, so too the social status of French
submits to translation’s indignities for the sake of a higher good. In the process,
however, the language of the patron is indirectly acknowledged and authorized as an
appropriate vehicle of transmission and instruction, even as Latinity is further
posited as the guarantor and authority for what is said.
The deployment of French as a theological vernacular was a matter of interest in the
period. For the transmission of doctrine and even as a medium of theological training,
French was inescapable. Not Latin but French was the lingua franca of the Benedic-
tine monasteries of England, as well as the medium of communication between
ecclesiastics and their lay patrons.12 Unlike continental France, where French as a
vernacular could be imaged in clearly subordinate contradistinction to Latin, French
11
Karl Steel, unpublished edition of the prologue to Robert de Gretham’s Évangiles. Forth-
coming in The French of England: Vernacular Literary Theory and Practice, c. 1130–c. 1450,
ed. by Thelma Fenster, Delbert Russell, and Jocelyn Wogan-Browne (to be published with
Penn State Press).
12
Michael Richter, Sprache und Gesellschaft im Mittelalter (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1979),
pp. 91–94 and 149–53.
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in England had higher social prestige relative at least to English. Variant versions of
Robert’s authorizing strategy for Gospel commentary in the vernacular are frequent
in doctrinal and theological Anglo-Norman works. The social prestige of French is
refashioned into a humility topos mediating the problems of translating the Word.13
Elena’s position, initially phrased as that of a needy recipient, emerges as active
and collaborative. Although Robert claims he wants to ‘draw [Elena] away from
vanity’ (vv. 59–60), he also says that she herself has previously asked him for this
Gospel commentary (vv. 99–100). Although he has produced an authoritative text
(vv. 75–76), nothing missing and all based on proper authority so that the Sunday
gospels and their ‘exposiciuns’ are ‘proprement enromancez’ (v. 72), he has also, he
claims, excerpted and extracted and abridged so as not to bore Elena (v. 117). Two
shaping factors for composition emerge here: Robert’s authority and his lady’s
readerly requirements. Robert, indeed, not only represents his work as a response to
Elena’s agenda and says that he values the support of Elena’s prayers for him (vv.
89–96), but gives Elena the major credit for the whole enterprise:
Vostre est li biens, vostre est li los,
Kar sanz vus penser ne l’os. (vv. 103–04)
(Yours [i.e. Lady Aline] is the good, yours the praise, for without you I [i.e. Robert]
wouldn’t have dared think of it.)14
13
So too Sansun de Nanteuil, whose mid-twelfth-century commentary on Proverbs is
discussed below, adapts stylus humilis to the genre of his text: the very name Proverbs, from
‘Maslot’ in Hebrew, Sansun explains, is an appellation of ‘the people’ (‘li pueples’, v. 145),
and ‘les Respeiz Salemon e del Vilain’ (‘the sayings of Solomon and of the villein’) are a
popular genre (Les Proverbes de Salemon, ed. by C. Claire Isoz, 3 vols, ANTS, 44, 45, 50
(London: ANTS, 1988–94), I (1988), vv. 147–48). He adds that
Vilain en apelent la gent
Pur ceo ques dit apertement;
Cil de seculer corteisie
Li aturnent a vilanie,
Mais la raisun n’est pas vilaine
Ki vent de la cort suveraine. (vv. 149–54)
(People call it base because it speaks openly: those of worldly refinement account it of
low status. But an argument coming from the sovereign court [of heaven] is not base.)
See further on this point, Mishtooni Bose, ‘From Exegesis to Appropriation: The Medieval
Solomon’, Medium Aevum, 65 (1996), 187–210 (p. 197 n. 49). On vernacular theology, see
The Vulgar Tongue: Medieval and Post-Medieval Vernacularity, ed. by Fiona Somerset and
Nicolas Watson (University Park, PA: Penn State Press, 2003); The Vernacular Spirit, ed. by
Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Duncan Robertson, and Nancy Bradley Warren (New York:
Palgrave, 2002); James F. Rhodes, Poetry Does Theology: Chaucer, Grosseteste and the
Pearl Poet (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001).
14
Compare Gaimar, ‘Si sa dame ne li aidast / ja a nul jor ne l’achevast’: Short, ‘Gaimar’s
Epilogue’, vv. 6439–40.
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If Robert begins by positing the dependence of the lady of the household on the
Church and clergy, he ends by claiming his own dependence on her. Robert’s
representation of their relation draws on a hierarchical model in which his command
of Latin enables him to speak for and instruct the lady of the household, but he is
also her collaborator and dependent in the production of the text: the patron lends
cultural and social prestige, just as the cleric contributes Latinate authority.
Jerome and Household Literature

The extent to which such alliances between cleric and lady of the household are a
cultural convention in medieval England can be suggested by the figure of Jerome, a
well-known and often consciously deployed prototype for the relations between
clerics and their female patrons and audiences.15 Jerome writes to Paula and her
daughter Eustochium as instructor and spiritual director to less learned protégés, but
his own projects — translations, tours to the holy land and religious foundations
there — are funded by Paula.16 Jerome also has his intellectual housekeeping partly
done for him by women, as in his famous account of Marcella, who, in his absence
from Rome, taught in his place and would return the right answer to questions, and
even if she had herself produced the answer, give the credit to Jerome.17 Both
Jerome and his patrons were represented in high medieval Latin treatises18 and were
well known to vernacular readers and audiences in insular culture of the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries and later. Biblical prologues circulated in Anglo-Norman as well
15
See especially Abelard’s ninth letter to Heloïse on the education of nuns (Peter Abelard:
Letters IX–XIV: An Edition with an Introduction, ed. by Edmé R. Smits (Groningen: Bouma’s
Boekhuis, 1983), pp. 219–37). Studies on later medieval women, especially holy women, and
their clerical relationships are now numerous: see e.g. Gendered Voices: Medieval Saints and
their Interpreters, ed. by Catherine M. Mooney (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 1999); Anne Clark Bartlett, Male Authors, Female Readers: Representation and Sub-
jectivity in Middle English Devotional Writing (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995).
16
John N. D. Kelly, Jerome: His Life, Writings, and Controversies (London: Duckworth,
1975), pp. 97–103 (the letters), p. 130 (Paula’s patronage); on the wealth and status of
Jerome’s female patrons, Elizabeth A. Clark, Jerome, Chrysostom, and Friends (New York:
Edwin Mellen, 1979), pp. 60–67.
17
Jerome, Ep. 127.8, in Select Letters of Saint Jerome, ed. and trans. by Frederick A. Wright
(London: Heineman; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1933; repr. 1954), p. 454.
18
Barbara Newman, ‘Flaws in the Golden Bowl: Gender and Spiritual Formation in the
Twelfth Century’, Traditio, 45 (1989–90), 111–46, repr. in her From Virile Woman to
WomanChrist: Studies in Medieval Religion and Literature (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1995).
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as Latin and explained that Jerome had translated the various biblical books out of
Hebrew or Aramaic (‘Chaldean’) at the request of Paula and Eustochium.19
Awareness of Jerome as a Bible translator was increased by the wide diffusion of
Peter Comestor’s Historia scholastica in both Latin and vernacular versions. Abbess
Cecily de Chanvill’s copy of the Historia, made at her order for her Benedictine con-
vent at Elstow in 1191–92, introduces its text of the book of Judith with a short
prologue informing the reader that ‘Jerome translated this history at the request of
Paula and Eustochium from Hebrew into Latin. Among the Jews, this book is
counted as one of the histories and as Holy Scripture’20 and similarly that the book of
Esther was translated at Paula and Eustochium’s request (fol. 108r).21 In a thirteenth-
century Anglo-Norman reworking of the Old Testament (extant in numerous
thirteenth- and fourteenth-century manuscripts), the text and its transmission are tele-
scoped and Jerome becomes witness to the wondrous nature of both:
L’estoire estrete n’est pas de fable dit,
De an en an est en seint Eglise lit,
Iço dit Jeroimes ki les merveilles vit.22
19
So, for example, the preface to a fourteenth-century Anglo-Norman prose version of the
Vulgate includes an account of the importance of Paula and Eustochium’s patronage and wishes
in Jerome’s translation projects; see La Preface de seint Jerome le chapellain en l’ancien
testament, London, British Library, MS Royal 1 C.iii, fols 5ra–6a; unedited, see Dean, Anglo-
Norman Literature, no. 469. Paula’s patronage was later known in Middle English: a four-
teenth-century account notes not only her foundation of male and female religious houses, but
that she knew how to ‘speke and red Ebru’ and, when dying, answered Jerome’s enquiries ‘on
Gru [Greek]’; see ‘St Paula’, in Sammlung altenglischer Legenden, ed. by Carl Horstmann
(Heilbronn: Henninger, 1878), pp. 3–8 (p. 5, lines 74–80; p. 6, lines 169–72; p. 7, line 206).
Simon Winter, confessor to Margaret, Duchess of Clarence (d. 1439), also offers information
on Jerome in his ‘Prologue into the lyfe of Saint jerom drawe in to englysh to the hyghe prin-
cesse Margaret Duchesse of Clarence’. Jerome is ‘þe glorye of oure vertu, translatynge bothe
þe olde lawe & þe newe, fro þe langwage of hebrew ynto latyn & yn-to grewe, dysposynge
bothe to abyde for-euer vnto alle that come after’ (fol. 7v). Quoted in George R. Keiser,
‘Patronage and Piety in Fifteenth-Century England: Margaret, Duchess of Clarence, Symon
Wynter and Beinecke MS 317’, Yale University Library Gazette, 60 (1985), 32–46 (p. 40).
20
‘Hanc historia transtulit jeronimus ad petitionem paule 7 eustochii de caldeo in latinum.
Hec liber apud hebreos inter historias conputatur. 7 inter agiographa’: London, British
Library, MS Royal 7 F.iii, prologue to Judith (fol. 105r).
21
On the manuscript, see Andrew G. Watson, Catalogue of Dated and Datable Manu-
scripts c. 700–1600 in the Department of Manuscripts, the British Library (London: The
Library, 1979), I, 152, no. 878, and Michael Gullick, ‘Professional Scribes in Eleventh and
Twelfth Century England’, English Manuscript Studies 1100–1700, 7 (1998), 1–24 (p. 14). An
inscription on fol. 196v dates the commission by de Chanvill, ‘bone memorie Abbatissa beate
marie de Helenestow’, to the third year of Richard I’s reign, 1191–92.
22
Poème anglo-normand sur l’Ancient Testament, vol. II, ed. by Pierre Nobel (Paris:
Champion, 1996), p. 18, vv. 10–12. The work is dated to c. 1220–40 (ibid., p. 45) and written,
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(This story is not taken from fictive sources: it is read year by year in holy Church. So
says Jerome who saw the marvels.)
Partly because of his prominence as a scriptural translator, Jerome also becomes a
generic figure of clergy. A widely diffused twelfth-century French Signs of Judgement
poem, for instance, circulating in thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century manu-
scripts in England, knows of ‘Un cler de tens antif qui sages fu e ber/ Seint Jerome ot
nun’23 (A clerk of ancient times who was wise and valiant was called St Jerome).
In this tradition of vernacular presentation of Jerome as Bible translator and
archetypal cleric, a particularly noteworthy rendering occurs in an Anglo-Norman
text made for Aëliz [Alice] de Cundé, an insular noblewoman of the mid–late twelfth
century who was connected with the Clares and the Earls of Chester.24 Aëliz’s text is
a verse translation and commentary of 12,000 lines on the book of Proverbs (to
19. 27, unfinished), written for her by Sansun de Nanteuil, who was probably her
chaplain.25 The commentary was composed perhaps as late as 1160–65 (the twice
widowed Aëliz was certainly still alive in 1154).26 As Jean Blacker has pointed out,
Aëliz is portrayed as noble and well-informed (‘noble dame enseigné et bele’,
the narrator claims, not for monastery refectory consumption, but for laypeople: ‘as lais ecrif
l’estoire [. . .] / Li clerc le [sic] sevent kar il sovent le veient’ (vv. 31–32).
23
The Fifteen Signs of Judgement circulated in thirty or forty versions (in several vernacu-
lars) throughout the French-speaking regions from the late twelfth to the sixteenth centuries:
see Hugh Shields, ‘Les Quinze Signes Descendus en Angleterre’, French Studies, 18 (1964),
112–22 (p. 112). The text is most frequently though not invariably ascribed to Jerome (to an
anonymous holy hermit of the desert in the version edited Li Ver del Juïse, ed. by Erik Rankka
(Uppsala: Almqvist and Wiksell, 1982)): my example from an insular manuscript citing
Jerome is taken from R. Fawtier and E. C. Fawtier-Jones, ‘Notice du manuscrit 6 de la John
Rylands Library, Manchester’, Romani, 49 (1923), 321–42 (p. 341, vv. 1–2).
24
Sansun de Nanteuil, Les Proverbes, ed. by Isoz, III, 11–18. Aëliz was most probably first
married to Richard fitz Gilbert de Clare, Duke of Normandy (killed in a Welsh uprising in
1136) and secondly to Robert de Cundé, a Lincolnshire landowner. Isoz points out that if, as
seems likely, she was Alice de Clare, daughter of Ranulf first Earl of Chester, she is linked to
two very powerful families, the Earls of Chester and the Clares (p. 11). Robert de Cundé had
died by October 1145, probably in October 1140 (p. 16); Aëliz seems to have lived till at least
1160–65 in one of the long widowhoods which so often accompany traceable Anglo-Norman
female patronage; for further examples, see Gee, Women, Art, and Patronage.
25
Sansun de Nanteuil, Les Proverbes, ed. by Isoz, III, 18; Thomas J. Durnford considers
the reasons for incompleteness in ‘The Incomplete Nature of Les Proverbes de Salemon’, Ro-
mance Notes, 22 (1982), 362–66. I do not find convincing his argument that the scribe of the
extant manuscript was bored and simply stopped copying: other texts are copied entire in the
manuscript and an incomplete exemplar is not uncommon for texts in medieval anthologies.
26
According to the latest certainly datable document among the ten extant concerning
Aëliz’s patronage, she gave land to Rufford Abbey in 1154; see Sansun de Nanteuil, Les
Proverbes, ed. by Isoz, III, 17 and see p. 12.
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v. 202), and (like Robert the chaplain’s Lady Elena in the Évangiles) as taking
pleasure in books and reading (‘des escriz ad grant delit / Molt volonters les ot e lit’,
vv. 211–12) and as repeatedly requesting Sansun’s commentary (‘mainte feiz l’en
out preiéd / Que li desclairast cel traitéd’, vv. 197–98).27
Sansun’s prologue develops the idea of reading as food through a network of
exegetical topoi which, analogously to the metaphors of agricultural fertility used by
Robert the Chaplain (p. 136 above), shape reading and food in terms of the
consumption of the noble household. Sansun plays on the idea of eating bread and
stones at length (his prologue is 346 octosyllabic lines long): whoever starves at the
mill is a fool, there is bread in plenty to eat, given us by a powerful king and brought
to our attention by another, Solomon, who satiates the Church with sweet and
healthy food (vv. 1–86). Consumption of the Word is at once consumption of living
bread and treasure, the precious pearls of divine scripture. Like bread from the king,
these enriching gems are received from God, but also from the translator, for
La doctrine nos ert muciee,
Kar en ebreu esteit traitee.
Reposte esteit tresque l’en traist
Sainz Jerommes ki nos en paist:
Çö est li prestes ki poli
Les beles gemmes dunt vos di;
Les gemmes terst e neïat
Q’en latin les translatat.
Cist en fud nostre despenser
E cueus del savoré manger,
Dunt les almes avront salu
De celx ki ben l’unt retenu.
Cist nos ad molt enmanantiz
E saolez de bels escriz.
Cist prodes clers, cist bon devin,
De ebreu translatat en latin
Les livres ke li Ebreu firent
E lor gestes quë il descristrent.
Quant tot ot fait e asemblé
Ceo que ot escrit e translatét,
D’un ebrieu nun l’entitulat:
Son livre Bible en apelat,
Kar d’estoires ert l’asemblee
Qu’aveit escrit’ e translatee.28
27
Blacker, ‘“Dame Custance la gentil”’, pp. 116–17. In the Évangiles, Lady Elena is said
to love hearing and reading ‘chançon de geste e estoire’ (v. 5), and to have previously asked
Robert for the commentary (vv. 99–100).
28
Sansun de Nanteuil, Les Proverbes, ed. by Isoz, vol. I, vv. 105–28, henceforth cited by
line number in the text.
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(The teaching was hidden from us because it was expounded in Hebrew: it remained
concealed until it was extracted by St Jerome who feeds us with it. He is the priest who
polished the beautiful gems of which I told you: he wiped and cleaned the gems, for he
translated them into Latin. He is our steward in this and cook of the savoury dish from
which the souls of those who digest it well will gain health. He has greatly enriched us
and made us replete with beautiful writings. This worthy clerk, this good theologian,
translated from Hebrew into Latin the books which the Hebrews made and their deeds
which they describe. When all his writing and translating was finished and collected
together, he entitled it with a Hebrew name: he called his book ‘Bible’, for it was a
collection of narratives which he had written and translated.)
So Jerome, authorizing precedent for Sansun, is presented as a priest-jeweller (vv.
109–12)29 and as a cook and household steward (‘despenser / Et cueus’ vv. 113–14).
The precise status and functions of stewards varied on different estates; it is clear,
however, that the steward was both a superior and important household figure
(though a servant nonetheless). In the set of estate rules composed by Bishop
Grosseteste for the Countess of Lincoln, the lady is envisaged as addressing her
steward in this way:
Beau sire, vus veez ben ke pur mun dreyt esclarzir e pur saver plus certeynement lestat
de ma gent e de mes terres e quei io puisse desore en avant del men fere e quey lesser, io
ay fet fere cetes enquestes e ces enroulemenz. Ore vus enpri, cum celuy a ki io ay baylle
quanke io ay desuz moy a garder e governer, e estreytement vus comaund ke tote mes
dreytures fraunchises e mes possessiuns neent mobles gardez enters e saunz blemere.30
(Good sir, you see plainly that I have had these inquests and enrolments made to shed
light on my rights and to know more certainly the state of affairs of my people and of
my lands and to be able to decide henceforth what to do and what not to do with my
property. I now beg of you — as the man to whom I have entrusted all that is in my
ward and government — and strictly command you that you keep my rights,
franchises, and my real property whole and undamaged.)
As a provider of precious goods and food which are not in his personal ownership,
the great doctor of the institutional Church becomes a spiritual version of an estate
steward concerned with providing for the household. In the particular context of a
29
On the social status of jewellers, see Helen Barr, ‘Pearl: The Jewellers Tale’, ch. 2 of her
Socioliterary Practice in Late Medieval England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001);
Marian Campbell, ‘Gold, Silver, and Precious Stones’, in English Medieval Industries, ed. by
John Blair and Nigel Ramsay (London: Hambledon Press, 1991), pp. 107–66. For an
illuminating discussion of many aspects of gems, see Felicity Riddy, ‘Jewels in Pearl’, in A
Companion to the Gawain-Poet, ed. by Derek Brewer and Jonathan Gibson (Cambridge:
Brewer, 1997), pp. 143–55.
30
‘Les Reules [ke le boneveske de Nichole Robert Grosseteste fist a la contesse de Nichole
de garder e governer terres e hostel] seynt Roberd’, in Walter of Henley and Other Treatises
on Estate Management and Accounting, ed. by Dorothea Oschinsky (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1971), p. 390, and see p. 65 on the status of stewards.
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noblewoman patron, Jerome is returned once again to the household context which
was historically so crucial in his career, as he becomes in his twelfth-century Anglo-
Norman instantiation the prototype of a baronial household chaplain.31
Household and Church
Aëliz de Cundé may very well have wanted her Proverbs commentary for educating
her son as much as for herself.32 The book of Proverbs is usually regarded as a
relatively elementary part of Bible study, the next thing, together with the other
wisdom books and the Canticles, after the Psalter (itself widely used by laypeople
and women religious both as a primer and as a summary and adaptation of the mon-
astic horarium).33 This understanding of biblical wisdom literature as an educational
schema is well attested in the vernacular, and Sansun himself includes such an
account of the three books as expounded by Jerome in his prologue for Aëliz (vv.
155–68). In the twelfth century boys entered monasteries less and less frequently as
31
Analogously, the conventional medieval representation of King David as a musician is
inflected towards the presentation of a minstrel at a noble feast in the late twelfth-century
commentary on Psalm 44 (Eructavit) dedicated to Marie de Champagne of which an Anglo-
Norman manuscript is extant (Dean, Anglo-Norman Literature, no. 705). The commentary is
structured as an epithalamion, with David the psalmist as jongleur and also as aristocratic
penitent among the ashes outside the household door, pleading lyrically for entry to the Bride-
groom’s wedding feast, here called, as in the well-known adventure from Chrétien de Troyes’s
Erec et Enide, the ‘joie de la cort’; see Terence Scully, ‘The Sen of Chretien de Troyes’ Joie
de la Cort’, in The Expansions and Transformations of Courtly Literature, ed. by Nathaniel B.
Smith and Joseph T. Snow (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1980), pp. 71–94 (pp. 74–
75). For a subtle account of this text as vernacular theology, see Morgan Powell, ‘Translating
Scripture for Ma dame de Champagne: The Old French “Paraphrase” of Psalm 44
(Eructavit)’, in The Vernacular Spirit, ed. by Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Robertson, and Warren,
pp. 83–103.
32
Aëliz had a son; she made a gift to the church in Lincoln with him at Robert de Cundé’s
death in 1136. See Sansun de Nanteuil, Les Proverbes, ed. by Isoz, III, 12, 17.
33
The prologue to the Glossa ordinaria places Proverbs as the easiest of the sapiential
books supposedly written by Solomon, ‘In proverbiis paruulum docens’, in Biblia Latina cum
Glossa Ordinaria (Facsimile Reprint of the Editio Princeps Adolph Rusch of Strassburg
1480/81), ed. by Karlfried Froehlich and Margaret T. Gibson (Brepols: Turnhout, 1992), II,
653, col. b. Ecclesiastes is a source of natural science and understanding of the world’s tran-
science suitable for adolescent youths; and the Song of Songs is the book for ‘the man in his
perfect age, training him to look beyond visible things to celestial reality’. See further, Mary
Dove, ‘Swich olde lewed wordes’, in Venus and Mars: Engendering Love and War in
Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. by Andrew Lynch and Philippa Maddern (Nedlands:
University of Western Australia Press, 1995), pp. 11–33, esp. pp. 21–22.
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little children.34 In many cases the education of future priests, clerks, and monks will
have begun in a lay household, with their early exposure to the sapiential books
being at the hands of, or organized by, their mothers.35 In his prologue to the
Proverbes, Sansun cites the Church’s own teaching as modelled on this practice: the
book of Wisdom can be glossed as the mother of God by which is figured the
Church, always attentive ‘to teaching her children’ (‘a doctriner ses enfanz’, v. 267).
This trend is further suggested by the contemporary association of elementary
French language textbooks with Anglo-Norman noblewomen as works of French
language instruction begin to proliferate during the thirteenth century.36 As Susan
Crane has shown, the dedication of language-teaching texts to female patrons is
partly a way of imaging what increasingly became a prestige language of acquisition
34
On oblation, see John Doran, ‘Oblation or Obligation? A Canonical Ambiguity’, in The
Church and Childhood: Papers Read at the 1993 Summer Meeting and the 1994 Winter Meet-
ing of the Ecclesiastical Society, ed. by Diana Wood, Society of Church History, 31 (Oxford:
Blackwell for the Ecclesiastical History Society, 1994), pp. 127–41; John Eastburn Boswell,
‘Expositio and oblatio: The Abandonment of Children and the Ancient and Medieval Family’,
American Historical Review, 89 (1984), 10–33.
35
One subsidiary topos of this literature is the warning against children reading parts of the
Bible, especially the Song of Songs. Pierre d’Abernon de Fetcham stresses in the prologue to
his version of the Elucidarius that it is not for ‘fools or children’, though he concludes with a
prayer request to anyone who has heard the Lumere as lais, ‘old, young, women, or children’
(Lumere as lais, ed. by Glynn Hesketh, ANTS, 54–57 (London: ANTS, 1996–99), I, v. 697, II,
vv. 13,953–54). On the other hand Peter of Riga’s Song commentary, the Aurora, is
prescribed by Vincent of Beauvais in his De eruditione filiorum nobilium of 1246 or 1247 for
the children of St Louis and Queen Marguerite of France (Peter of Riga, Aurora: Petri Rigae
Biblia versificata, ed. by Paul E. Beichner (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press,
1965), pp. xxxii–xxxiii). References to children’s reading of course need not be literal and can
be part of the clerical rhetoric of infantilizing the laity. For examples in both senses, see The
Song of Songs, ed. by Cedric E. Pickford (Hull: Oxford University Press for the University of
Hull, 1974), which warns that ‘Letre est colteaus en main d’enfant’ (v. 1871) (the letter of the
text is a knife in the hands of a child); insists that ‘cist romanz [this vernacularization] unkes
ne viegne en main d’enfant’ (should never come into the hands of a child) (vv. 3505–06); and
defines children as those who have not begun to love: ‘Ki commencié n’ont a amer’ (v. 241).
36
The best-known such text is the thirteenth-century Tretiz de langage of Walter Bibbes-
worth, originally composed for Lady Dionysia de Munchesney for use with her son and later
incorporated in another treatise known as Femina nova (Dean, Anglo-Norman Literature, nos
285, 286). In Matthew Paris’s Anglo-Norman Life of St Edmund, Archbishop of Canterbury
(d. 1240), Edmund’s mother Mabilia is shown organizing her son’s early training in French
and Latin, in ‘La Vie de St Edmond, Archevêque de Cantorbéry’, ed. by A. T. Baker,
Romania, 55 (1929), 332–81 (p. 345, vv. 103–04). See further on women’s literacies Michael
Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record: England 1066–1307 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1979;
2nd edn, 1993); on children’s education, Nicholas Orme, From Childhood to Chivalry: The
Education of the English Kings and Aristocracy, 1066–1530 (London: Methuen, 1984), pp.
16–18, 121–28.
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as a mother tongue.37 But both as a matter of record and as a social aspiration, the
links between French-language teaching and female patrons testify to the culturally
formative work done by and under the direction of women in the Anglo-Norman
household. Again, rather than seeing lack and deficiency in the female patron, a con-
tribution can be envisaged: women form and instruct clerics in their youth as well as
themselves being instructed by them, and the household thus forms and contributes
to the Church.
The extant manuscript of Les Proverbes de Salomon suggests that the commen-
tary made for Aëliz de Cundé was perceived as eminently suitable for teaching boys
and youths. The manuscript is not Aëliz’s own, but a copy made c. 1200, in which
the Proverbes are the most used part (there are numerous marginal notae to wanton
women) and in which they are anthologized together with Elie of Winchester’s
Anglo-Norman Cato, Guischart de Beaulieu’s sermon (‘Le Romaunz de temtacioun
de secle’), and the Chastoiement d’un père à son fils (the Anglo-Norman Disciplina
clericalis).38 This manuscript collection of some of the best-known Anglo-Norman
texts of social and educational formation is as suitable for use by a novice master or
clerical tutor with institutional pupils as it is for household reading. So too, a late
twelfth-century Psalter commentary produced initially for Laurette d’Alsace had
seven out of eight manuscripts in insular monastic or ecclesiastical ownership.39
Robert’s Gospel commentary for Elena de Quincy circulated in at least ten insular
manuscripts in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, was the source of the Middle
English Mirror, and contributed in ways yet to be fully elucidated to the Middle
37
Susan Crane, ‘Social Aspects of Bilingualism in the Thirteenth Century’, in Thirteenth
Century England, vol. VI, ed. by Michael Prestwich, Richard H. Britnell, and Robin Frame
(Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 1997), pp. 103–15.
38
London, British Library, MS Harley 4388, fols 1a–86c, described by Isoz in Sansun de
Nanteuil, Les Proverbes, III, 2–8: for details of these texts, see Dean, Anglo-Norman
Literature, nos 597 (sermon); 263 (Chastoiement); 254 (Elie of Winchester, Distichs of Cato).
39
The remaining manuscript is a presentation copy probably made for Eleanor of Verman-
dois, Laurette’s step-daughter and sister-in-law by marriage to Matthew, Count of Flanders.
See Dean, Anglo-Norman Literature, nos 451–52; The Twelfth-Century Psalter Commentary
in French for Laurette d’Alsace (An Edition of Psalms I–L), ed. by Stewart Gregory, MHRA
Texts and Dissertations, 29.1 (London: MHRA, 1990), pp. 1–5. For the presentation copy,
Pierpont Morgan, MS M 338, see p. 25. Gregory shows that in the later stages of Laurette’s
commentary, its scribes are less familiar with her (p. 20) and suggests 1175–80 as the date of
the commentary on psalms LI–LXVII (p. 22): i.e. the work (which probably had three authors
all told) was continued by others after Laurette’s retirement to the nunnery of Forest-les-
Bruxelles in 1163, and hence beyond Laurette’s own direct involvement. So too, Syon Abbey
in the fifteenth century takes on `the role of patron and publisher formerly played so well by
lady Margaret Beaufort and her grandmother, the Duchess of Clarence’; see Keiser,
‘Patronage and Piety’, p. 46.
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English Northern Homily Cycle and other texts.40 Large households with their own
clerical staff or close relations of patronage with religious houses are cultural centres
with access to both clerical and lay resources, and it is not surprising that manuscript
traffic should circulate from lay to clerical contexts in these circumstances.41 More-
over, if manuscript transmission here suggests a movement from the household into
institutional concerns with the teaching of doctrine and theology, this is also a fea-
ture of the thematic concerns of such texts. As with Robert the Chaplain’s commen-
tary for Lady Elena, much of Sansun’s work is preoccupied with the clergy, their
state of life, the criteria for good and bad clergy, and the claims of priestly activity to
embrace both active and contemplative models of virtue.42 This suggests that the
double audience embodied in manuscript circulation is envisaged for these texts
from the start, and that the figure of a noblewoman patron is a valued and efficacious
authorization of a text’s origins and value.
Many of the considerations so far advanced apply to one of the greatest clerics of
thirteenth-century England, Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln (d. 1253).
Grosseteste, like Jerome, advised and wrote to and for various elite women.43 He
was also concerned with the cultural formation offered by households in several
ways. As a bishop, he had his own large curial household, and this may be the con-
text for the composition of the household etiquette book attributed to him, Stans puer
40
Dean, Anglo-Norman Literature, no. 589, lists the Anglo-Norman manuscripts. A critical
edition of the Middle English text in progress includes a single manuscript text of the Anglo-
Norman Miroir: see The Middle English ‘Mirror’: Sermons from Advent to Sexagesima:
Edited from Glasgow University Library, Hunter 250 with a Parallel Text of the Anglo-
Norman ‘Miroir’ Edited from Nottingham University Library, Mi LM 4, ed. by Thomas G.
Duncan and Margaret Connolly (Heidelberg: Winter, 2003): for a complete Middle English
text, see The Middle English ‘Mirror’: An Edition Based on Bodleian Library, MS Holkham
misc. 40, ed. by Kathleen Marie Blumreich (Tempe: Arizona CMRS in collaboration with
Brepols, 2002).
41
R. G. K. A. Mertes, ‘The Household as a Religious Community’, in People, Politics and
Community in the Late Middle Ages, ed. by Joel Rosenthal and Colin Richmond (New York,
1987), pp. 123–39: the texts discussed in the present essay suggest that aristocratic acceptance
that households ‘should be religious as well as domestic communities’ (ibid., p. 121) was well
established in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries rather than the mid-fourteenth century: see
further Short, ‘Patrons and Polyglots’; Jonathan W. Nicholls, The Matter of Courtesy:
Medieval Courtesy Books and the ‘Gawain’-Poet (Woodbridge: Brewer, 1985).
42
Sansun de Nanteuil, Les Proverbes, ed. by Isoz, III, 28–30: Robert de Gretham, prologue
to the Évangiles, ed. by Steel, vv. 255–422.
43
These included Henry III’s sister, Eleanor, wife of Simon de Montfort (John R. Maddi-
cott, Simon de Montfort (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 41–42). A letter
(in Latin) to his sister Yvetta with personal news is extant, though not her reply: see Roberti
Grosseteste [. . .] Epistolae, ed. by Henry R. Luard, RS, 25 (London: Longman, Green,
Longman and Roberts, 1861), pp. 43–45, Ep. 8, and <http://www.grosseteste.com/
Epistolae/8>.
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ad mensam, if it was not in fact produced for the household of Eleanor and Simon de
Montfort.44 As an adviser to the Countess of Lincoln, Grossesteste produced an
Anglo-Norman handbook of estate and household management, often titled Les
reules seynt Roberd in its many manuscripts.45 His Anglo-Norman verse treatise on
the redemption, Chasteau d’amour, an influential work of pastoral theology, may
have been produced for a noblewoman or for the de Montfort sons.46 One copy of
Grosseteste’s Chasteau d’amour occurs in a manuscript which explicitly images
collaboration between noblewomen patrons and churchmen. The book is a late
thirteenth-century Anglo-Norman anthology commissioned by or for Baroness Joan
de Tateshal (d. 1310).47 It comprises an illustrated collection of exempla from
William Waddington’s Manuel des pechiez (fols 1a–150b); the Roman des romans
(a homiletic poem in quatrains on the state of the world, fols 151a–164b); a prose
Lament of the Virgin (fols 165a–170a); two homilies of Maurice de Sully (fols
170b–171a); and Grosseteste’s Chasteau d’amour (fols 173a–198b, with Latin
rubric, fol. 172b). In her invaluable study of the manuscript, Adelaide Bennett shows
that it was probably commissioned 1280x1298 (after the Lincolnshire recommenda-
tion of Grosseteste’s canonization in 1286/7).48 In the historiated initial for the be-
ginning of the Chasteau d’amour on fol. 173a, Joan de Tateshal and Grosseteste are
represented, she in her armorial bearings, he with episcopal mitre and crosier. Both
are of the same height, fully occupying the initial. In the opening initial for the
Waddington Manuel at the beginning of the manuscript, a full-size woman patron is
represented directing the work of a small seated cleric half her height.49 As Adelaide
44
Grosseteste is praised as a model householder in Friar Hubert’s ‘Verses on the Life of
Robert Grosseteste’, ed. by Richard W. Hunt, Medievalia et Humanistica, n.s., 1 (1970), 241–
51 (pp. 248–49, lines 99–122). For his Statuta (injunctions issued by Grosseteste for his
episcopal household), see Walter of Henley, ed. by Oschinsky, pp. 408–09.
45
Edited by Oschinsky in Walter of Henley, pp. 387–415.
46
See M. Dominica Legge, Anglo-Norman Literature and its Background (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1963; repr., Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1978), pp. 222–24. De Montfort’s
sons spent time in Grosseteste’s episcopal household; see Maddicott, Simon de Montfort, pp.
43–44. Further information pends the publication of Evelyn Mackie’s recent Toronto thesis on
and edition of the Chasteau. For descriptions of the extant Chasteau d’Amour manuscripts and
their provenance, see C. W. Marx, The Devil’s Rights and the Redemption in the Literature of
Medieval England (Cambridge: Brewer, 1995), Appendix 4.
47
Princeton, Taylor Medieval MS 1.
48
Adelaide Bennett, ‘A Book Designed for a Noblewoman: An Illustrated Manuel des
Pechés of the Thirteenth Century’, in Medieval Book Production: Assessing the Evidence, ed.
by Linda L. Brownrigg (Los Altos, CA: Anderson Lovelace, 1990), pp. 163–81.
49
On these initials, see Bennett, ‘A Book’, pp. 166–67, where the Chasteau illustration of
fol. 173 is reproduced, together with a colour plate for the Manuel illustration; S. Harrison
Thomson, ‘Two Early Portraits of Robert Grosseteste’, Medievalia et Humanistica, 8 (1954),
20–21.
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Bennett points out, the two portraits suggest close involvement with the production
of her book on the Baroness’s part: unlike the conventional female donor portrait of
kneeling small-scale figures in attitudes of devotion, both Joan de Tateshal’s appear-
ances in the manuscript ascribe to her an unusually commanding role, while in the
Chasteau initial she and Grosseteste hold a scroll together, ‘attesting to the dialogue,
as it were, between the laywoman and the ecclesiastic’ (p. 173). This manuscript’s
visual conventions for the female patron are striking, but the Anglo-Norman textual
representations of the female patron suggest that they image a well-recognized
convention of cooperation between cleric and patroness.
For Sir Richard Southern, the Chasteau d’amour is a set of contradictions, a
‘popular’ poem, but one full not only of technicalities, but of ‘new and controversial’
theological ideas.50 Southern refers this perceived contradiction to the author: ‘he
could not keep these thoughts out of his theology even on the most popular level’ (p.
228). But ‘popular’ here means in practice composition for aristocratic patrons, and
we could as well see the theological innovativeness of the Chasteau d’amour as
produced by their demands and questions.51 As is signalled by the portrait in Joan de
Tateshal’s book, the household and its requirements and social environment may be
a major conditioning factor in what clerics produce and how. And not only in the
content of their work: Andrew Taylor has recently argued that the rapidity with
which Grosseteste’s pastoralia were diffused around England may be accounted for
by vernacular networks of transmission being added to episcopal (networks in which
Grosseteste’s contacts with noblewomen will have played a part).52
The Household of Heaven
If the language of vernacular theology moves across the popular/learned binary pro-
posed by Southern, the elite medieval household makes the modern public/private
binary also permeable. The very notion of household encodes a mixture of public
and private conduct and is not necessarily an image of the private or personal life,
though it may be a template for individual spiritual and ethical conduct.
A royal Anglo-Norman household figures in the Jerarchie, a prose version of Ps-
Dionysius’s Celestial Hierarchies (though possibly only of Peter Lombard’s version
50
Richard W. Southern, Grosseteste: The Growth of an English Mind in Europe (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1986; 2nd edn, 1992), pp. 227–28.
51
For a comparable case concerning Anglo-Norman theological encyclopedias, see
Wogan-Browne, ‘Women’s Formal and Informal Traditions of Biblical Knowledge’.
52
Paper given at International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, May 2002: for
the published version, see Andrew Taylor, ‘From Manual to Miscellany: Stages in the
Commercial Copying of Vernacular Literature in England’, Yearbook of English Studies, 33
(2003), 1–17.
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of its angelology in the Sentences) made (on its own statement) by Archbishop John
Pecham in the 1280s for Eleanor of Castile (m. Edward I of England, 1254).53
Eleanor had a personal scriptorium that travelled with the queen’s household (and
which probably produced saints’ lives and romances for her, though ‘more elaborate
Psalters and apocalypses’ were brought in from elsewhere).54 Among other tasks, as
Paul Binski has shown, the scriptorium repaired for Eleanor’s use the illustrated
Lives of English saints (Becket and Edward the Confessor) owned by her mother-in-
law, Eleanor of Provence.55 Although less close in her relations with churchmen than
her mother-in-law, Eleanor of Castile was a powerful patron of the Dominicans and
seems to have followed contemporary theological issues with some interest. John
Parsons points out that Grosseteste’s translation and commentary on Ps-Dionysius’s
Celestial Hierarchies was carried out between 1235 and 1243 and that Eleanor’s
interest was probably aroused by current learned discussion.56 (So too her mother-in-
law’s court had gone to hear Grosseteste’s determinatio on the Holy Blood when
Henry III sought in 1247 to establish a cult around this relic that might rival that of
King Louis of France’s crucifixion relics at Sainte Chapelle.57) The issue of true and
53
‘John Pecham’s Jerarchie’, ed. by M. Dominica Legge, Medium Aevum, 11 (1942), 77–
84 (p. 82): henceforth cited by page number in the text). On the Celestial Hierarchies, see
David Luscombe, ‘The Reception of the Writings of Denis the Pseudo-Areopagite into
England’, in Tradition and Change: Essays in Honour of Marjorie Chibnall Presented by her
Friends on the Occasion of her Seventieth Birthday, ed. by Diana Greenway, Christopher
Holdsworth, and Jane Sayers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 115–43. As
Legge points out, the Jerarchie’s particular interest in guardian angels may have been
prompted by Peter Lombard’s Sentences (Lib. II, Dist. ix, PL, 192, 673). The sources of the
Jerarchie need more investigation than can be undertaken in the present context: there are
other points in common between it and Peter Lombard, but the Sentences include further
material, mainly from Gregory the Great, on angels (II, ix–xi).
54
John Carmi Parsons, ‘Of Queens, Courts, and Books: Reflections on the Literary Patron-
age of Thirteenth-Century Plantagenet Queens’, in Cultural Patronage of Medieval Women,
ed. by McCash, pp. 175–201 (pp. 178–79).
55
Paul Binski, ‘Reflections on the Estoire de seint Aedward: Hagiography and Kingship in
Thirteenth-Century England’, Journal of Medieval History, 16 (1990), 333–50 (p. 339).
56
John Carmi Parsons, Eleanor of Castile: Queen and Society in Thirteenth-Century
England (London: Macmillan, 1995), p. 57, on Eleanor’s religious patronage, and Parsons,
‘Piety, Power and the Reputations of Two Thirteenth-Century Queens’, in Queens, Regents
and Potentates, ed. by Theresa M. Vann (Dallas, TX: Academia Press, 1993), pp. 107–23 (p.
111–17).
57
So Matthew Paris, Chronica majora, ed. by Henry R. Luard, vol. IV, RS, 57 (London:
Longman, 1877), pp. 640–45: Grosseteste’s determinatio is in the Addimenta; see Paris, Chro-
nica majora, VI (1882), 138–44. See further Nicholas Vincent, The Holy Blood: King Henry
III and the Westminster Blood Relic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
Page 160
false miracles, on which the Jerarchie contains a short digression, was also much in
the air in the thirteenth century.58
The Jerarchie has received little attention, perhaps because its modern editor,
Dominica Legge, characterized it as a ‘puerile [application] of the theory of hierar-
chies to everyday life’ (p. 80). But it has many of the features of the texts so far dis-
cussed in their circulation as clerically reliable texts produced under the aegis of an
elite woman’s household and adds a further well-known factor not so far considered
here: the productivity of the household as metaphor. In Pecham’s text for Eleanor,
mystical theology is subordinated to an allegory mapping earthly and heavenly royal
households onto each other in moral exposition:
[C]il est benuré qui en terre meine vie celestre [. . .] Qui donc veut tele vie mener, il
covient k’il sache aucune chose del estat de paradis, e qu’il adresce sun quer a la guise
des citeins du ciel. Pur ceo deit hom saver ke il i a en paradis treis ierarchies des angles.59
(He is blessed who leads a celestial life on earth [. . .]. Whoever wants to lead such a
life must know something of the estate of paradise and must model his heart on the
ways of the citizens of heaven. For this reason one needs to know that there are in
paradise three hierarchies of angels.)
As with the verse commentaries earlier discussed, there is, even in this extremely
succinct work, some attention to linguistic matters:
Le mot de ierarchie est grek, si vaut en franceis autant com compainie ordeinee
seintement et araee par offices. (p. 82).
(The word ‘hierarchy’ is Greek, and in French is as much to say as a company holily
ordained and ordered according to their office.)
In some of its aspects, the allegory is the familiar one of the human being as figura-
tive castle, prominent both in insular culture and elsewhere.60 In order to live as a
microcosm of the heavenly household the individual soul must try to recapitulate
within itself all the special perfections of each kind of angelic retainer, becoming (in
descending order) like (p. 83) the following:
58
On, for example, Grosseteste’s opposition to miracle plays, see his Ep. 107 in Epistolae,
ed. by Luard, p. 318; Southern, Grosseteste, pp. 229–30.
59
‘John Pecham’s Jerarchie’, ed. by Legge, p. 82: further references by page number in
the text.
60
For an excellent study, see Christiania Whitehead, Castles of the Mind: A Study of
Medieval Architectural Allegory (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2003), esp. ch. 5,
‘Cloister’, and ch. 7, ‘Household’.
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1. First Hierarchy
‘seraphin’ in devotion and ardent love of God
‘cherubin’ in illuminated contemplation and continual mediation on God
‘thrones’ in ordering of the conscience which makes judgments in life
2. Second Hierarchy
‘seignories’ in freeing the heart of evil desires so that one has it in control
‘vertuz’ in doing vigorously what reason perceives as needed
‘Potestas’ in not ceasing to do good for weariness or sorrow so that the enemy can
gain any ground
3. Third Hierarchy
‘principaus’ . in love of one’s neighbour, thereby having charity as prince of one’s heart
‘archangles’ in being completely centred on God in all one’s deeds and seeking him out
‘aungels’ in guarding their eyes and other senses so that no evil message can enter
And, Pecham concludes,

quant vostre alme, Madame, serra issi paree, dunke serra ele ierarchizee et serra vostre
queor levee a Deu pur estre seraphinant et cherubinaunt et thronizaunt, e serra en sey
bien garni par seignorie, vertu e poer e bien ordeynee en eovres par adrescement de
charité, par espirement de Deus e par disciplines de sens foreyns.
Si vus trovéz, Madame, ke meuz le vous die,
Sachéz ke jeo n’en averey pas envie.
[in a different hand] Icy finist la gerarchie. (p. 84)
(When your soul, Madam, is made ready in this way, then it will be set in its proper
station and your heart will be raised to God to be like the seraphim and like the
cherubim and thrones and will be within itself well-equipped with lordship, virtue, and
power, and well ordered in works through the ordering of charity, through the
inspiration of God, and through the discipline of the outer senses.
If you find, Madam, someone who can tell you more,
I will not begrudge it, you may be sure.
Here ends the Hierarchy.)
For all its apparent simplicity, the Jerarchie contains a number of categories any of
which could be detailed and expanded according to doctrinal schema in the mapping of
Eleanor’s and God’s household personnel onto each other. What seems a plain or even,
as Legge complained, a perfunctory allegory, is in fact susceptible to several different
but interrelated conceptualizations, just as the royal household itself is at once an icon
of centralized power and a peripatetic and constantly shifting organization. As well
as a template for the ordering of the individual soul, Pecham reworks Ps-Dionysius’s
three interfused but subtly and strictly hierarchized orders of angels to make them,
like Lady Aëliz de Cundé’s Jerome, a form of royal servant. He compares them with
the three kinds of courtly servitors familiar from the royal household:
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Issi l’enseigne mi sires seynt Denis. E si vus, Madame, volez saver d(i)unt ces ordres
et ces ierarchies servent, perneit garde que a meynee de Reys apartient treis maneres
de genz, aucuns ke sunt ausi cum tuz jurs a curt, et aucuns ke sunt ausi cum tuz jurs
hors en lur baillies e aucuns ke vont et vi[e]nent. De ces ke sont adeissement a meyson
aucuns sunt del estreit conseil, e ceo sunt treis maneres de genz. (p. 82)
(So my lord St Denis teaches it. And if you, Madame, wish to know what function
these orders and these hierarchies serve, note that in the household of the King there
belong three kinds of people; some who are normally always at court, some who are
normally in their bailiwicks, and some who come and go. Among those who are cur-
rently in the household some are of close counsel and they are three kinds of people.)
Pecham’s series of comparisons is fairly elaborate, even in a very short and succinct
treatise, and is best set out as a table (the Jerarchie’s definitions of each are used):
1. First Hierarchy
Officers of ‘estreit cunseil’, ‘close counsel’ with the king, with whom God devises ‘le
gouvernement del monde’.
‘seraphin’ (p. 82) (‘enbrase de ‘ke plus léaument eymunt le Rey’ (who most loyally
amur’) love the King)
‘cherubin’ (p. 82) (‘plenté de ‘sage genz ke mut seyvent de clergie’ (wise people of
science ou de sen’) much learning): ‘kar li empereur ke conquistrent le
monde et ke firent les leys furent governes par bons clers
ke l’en apele “philosophes”’ (for the emperors who con-
quered the world and who made the laws were them-
selves governed by good clerks called ‘philosophers’)
‘thrones’ (p. 82) (‘valent ceo ke le ‘genz esprovéz en jugemenz e en granz fez’ (people of
mot sone’) (means what the word proven judgement and great deeds)
sounds like)
2. Second Hierarchy
Officers who announce the counsels of the first hierarchy to those who must carry them out.
‘dominaciones’ (p.83) (seignuries: ‘li mareschal del ost’ (marshal of the army)
‘lordships’)
‘virtutes’ (p. 83) (‘c’est a dire ‘avancement de bien’ (promotion of the good)
vertuz’) (these carry out ‘God’s
true miracles’)
‘potestates’ (p. 83) (‘c’est a dire ‘ke refreinent les enemis’ (who hold enemies in check)
potestaz’)
3. Third Hierarchy
Officers concerned with ‘baillis forains’, external jurisdictions.
‘principatus’ (p. 83) (‘c’est a dire ‘principaus gardeyns de gens e de pays’
poer de princes’)
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‘archangles’ (p. 83) (c’est a dire ‘seneschaus generaus de pays et baillifs ke l’en envoie
principaus messagers’) pur eschaites [escheats] et pur aventures especiales’
(these inspire the prophets)
‘aungles’ (p. 83) (‘ceo sunt ‘bailiffs ke gardent les chasteus e les maneres Nostre
messagers generaus’) Seignur’ (baillifs who guard the castles and manors of
our Lord; i.e. angels who guard human beings)
In Pecham’s allegory the three hierarchies of love, lordship, and princely power
are not only spiritually apt, but compare with what is known of Eleanor of Castile
and Edward I’s households. In his edition of Eleanor’s accounts John Carmi Parsons
shows that in 1290 her household included at least 150 persons (so perhaps not
unimaginable as a heavenly choir of angels).61 They were disposed in three main
groups: the wardrobe clerks and other administrators (including treasurer, steward,
marshal, and the scriptorium staff); Eleanor’s attendant knights and ladies or dam-
sels; and the functionaries of the household, who may have answered to either the
steward or the marshal.
Pecham’s distribution of hierarchy is not a point by point correspondence of
heavenly and earthly royal servitors, but certainly in its tri-partite division preserves
the main lines of the Queen’s household and includes some specific parallels.62
Among Eleanor’s familia in 1290 there was a high complement of messengers
(Edward had only three messengers in 1298 as opposed to the Queen’s eight).63 Of
these, three or four were given the formal title nuncius and carried messages to arch-
bishops, bishops, and abbesses, while the others held the less distinguished title of
cursor and were grouped along with the cokini (unmounted couriers). This cor-
responds to the Jerarchie’s distinction between the lower two ranks of the third and
lowest hierarchy. Comparing this third hierarchy to retainers with external responsi-
bilities (‘baillis forains’, p. 83), Pecham distinguishes its two lower ranks as arch-
angels (‘principaus messagers’, p. 82, and ‘haut messagers Nostre Seignur’, p. 83)
who are used to inspire the prophets and on other great affairs (‘granz choses’, p. 83)
and angels (‘messagers generaus’, p. 82) who are appointed to guard ‘les chasteus e
61
The Court and Household of Eleanor of Castile in 1290: An Edition of British Library
Additional Manuscript 35294 with Introduction and Notes, ed. by John Carmi Parsons
(Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1977), esp. ‘The Liber Garderobe and its
Significance’, pp. 3–27. The upper offices in particular were sometimes hereditary and might
play a role in a family’s advancement over several generations.
62
The angels’ functions as messengers of God would not be inappropriate to the political
and administrative duties of the knights of the king’s household and, insofar as they are a
heavenly troop, could also embrace their military function: see Michael Prestwich, Edward I
(London: Macmillan, 1988; repr., New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), ch. 6, ‘The
Royal Household’, pp. 147–54.
63
See Court and Household, ed. by Parsons, p. 18, and on messengers generally, Mary C.
Hill, The King’s Messengers 1199–1377 (Stroud: Alan Sutton, 1994).
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les maneres Nostre Seignur’ or human beings since these ‘were created so that God
may lodge in them’ (‘sunt fet pur ceo ke Deus en eus se herberge’, p. 83).
John Parsons suggests that the household’s division of the functionaries between
those who answer to the marshal and to the steward is a distinction between those
involved in the house’s transport (with the marshal in charge of sumpters, shield
bearers, yeomen, and grooms) and those concerned with arrangements once arrived
(with the cook, butler, saucerer, etc. responsible to the steward).64 In addition to the
‘vertical’ distribution of rank in the various officers which Pecham uses throughout
(especially in the allegorical model for how Eleanor’s soul is to become ‘ierar-
chisee’), these ‘lateral’ divisions as between steward and marshal (stability/travel)
are comparable with Pecham’s ‘baillis forains’ (concerned with external peoples and
regions) and the seneschals and bailiffs in charge of excheats, ‘les chasteus e les
maneres’ (within the kingdom).
Angels’ roles in Ps-Dionysius, and following him, medieval culture generally,
were gendered male when they were seen as the counselling, military, and executive
officers of God’s royal court, even though angels themselves were thought to have
no sex or gender. Two notable contemporary clerics known to Eleanor were cele-
brated as two cherubim guarding God’s own — Richard, Bishop of Chichester, and
his patron Edmund, Archbishop of Canterbury (whose household chancellor he had
been).65 The cult of the Guardian Angels, as is well known, developed its own office,
which was included in books of hours, specially, it seems, popular among women.66
Clergy were often administrative and spiritual assistants to their female patrons, in a
melding of function not unlike that of Pecham’s angelic messengers. If we do follow
Aëliz de Cundé’s perspective on St Jerome in seeing male staff from the lady of the
household’s point of view, angels become especially elite and powerful household
staff, intimate but chaste in their relations with her.67
64
Court and Household, ed. by Parsons, pp. 28–31.
65
‘Ces cherubims’, in La Vie de Seint Richard de Chichester, ed. by Delbert W. Russell,
ANTS, 51 (London: ANTS, 1995), vv. 687–92, and ‘duo cherubin’ in ‘Vita Sancti Ricardi
episcopi Cycestrensis’, in St Richard of Chichester: Sources for his Life, ed. by David Jones,
Sussex Record Society, 79 (1995), II, cap. vii, p. 93.
66
For the thirteenth-century peak of this cult, see David Keck, Angels and Angelology in
the Middle Ages (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998). For a notable late medieval exam-
ple, see Anne F. Sutton and Lydia Visser-Fuchs, ‘The Cult of Angels in Late Fifteenth-
Century England: An Hours of the Guardian Angel Presented to Elizabeth Woodville’, in
Women and the Book: Assessing the Visual Evidence, ed. by Lesley Smith and Jane H. M.
Taylor (London: British Library; Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997), pp. 230–65.
67
In the light of the desertion of some of Eleanor’s father-in-law’s household knights to the
barons in the 1240s–50s, the Jerarchie’s allegory of the household as staffed by the unques-
tionedly loyal angels may have had special force. (Henry III had been paying his knights
irregularly and principally with money, whereas wardships, land, marriages were also
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As with the works earlier discussed, the extant manuscripts of Eleanor’s Jerarchie
show that it was found useful by clerics. In a thirteenth-century manuscript now
Paris, Bibliothèque Ste Geneviéve, MS 2899, the Jerarchie is accompanied by ver-
nacular versions of confessors’ manuals, penitential manuals, and doctrinal texts.68
The manuscript was copied by friar Jordan of Kingston and resigned by him before
1315 to the Franciscans of Southampton, where an alphabetic index was added in the
fourteenth century along with a note of the manuscript’s history.69 The prestigious
initial production of the text is also kept in view in the manuscript: at the bottom of
the first folio of the text of the Jerarchie, a fourteenth-century hand adds,
Ceste Ierarchie translata frere Johan de Pecham, de latin en fraunceis, a la request la
reine de Engletere Alienore, femme le rey Edward. (fol. 174r)
(Brother John Pecham translated this Hierarchy from Latin into French at the request
of the Queen of England, Eleanor, wife of King Edward.)
A more recently identified Jerarchie text in a Madrid manuscript70 circulates with
doctrinal and theological works in a miscellany which could equally bespeak a lay
patron or a cleric’s materials for use with lay people: a treatise on the Ten Com-
mandments, a prose translation and commentary on Proverbs, a short account of the
Creed, an Assumption homily (in effect a series of Anglo-Norman prose commen-
taries on the liturgy for the Feast of the Assumption preceded by a verse prologue), a
translation and exposition of the Magnificat, and the Anglo-Norman version of the
Speculum ecclesie of St Edmund of Canterbury (initially composed for religious and
adapted for female and lay use).71 All are in Anglo-Norman except for a Latin prayer
expected: see S. D. Church, The Household Knights of King John (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1999) p. 98.)
68
These are the Somme le roi, the well known confessional manual by Friar Laurent,
confessor of Phillip III (fols 12–172v); the Jerarchie (fols 174r–176v); a French version of the
Tractatus de tribulatione attributed to Peter of Blois (fols 174r–211v: dated 1297 on fol. 211v).
The fourteenth-century index and the resigning of the manuscript to Southampton are added
on fol. 1r: other notes give information at the ends of texts on fol. 172v and fol. 211v.
69
Charles Alfred Kohler, Catalogue des manuscrits de la Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève
(Paris: Plon, Nourrit et cie, 1893–96), II (1896), pp. 530–31; ‘John Pecham’s Jerarchie’, ed.
by Legge, p. 78.
70
Madrid, Biblioteca Nacionale, MS 2899, fols 95r–97v.
71
The Madrid manuscript is noted in Dean, Anglo-Norman Literature, no. 631. I am
grateful to the Biblioteca Nacionale for supplying a microfilm of the manuscript. Bibl. Nac.
MS 18253 opens with some fragmentary musical text: the other contents are as follows (num-
bers in square brackets refer to Dean’s Anglo-Norman Literature): (1) fols 3r–5v acephalous
treatise on the Decalogue [678]; fol. 6r–v blank; (2) fols 7r–91r prose translation and commen-
tary on Proverbes (unedited), copied by ‘Robertus Pichford’ (whose inscription appears after
the explicit, ‘Ci finist li premiers liures Salemons’ on fol. 91r) [460]; (3) fols 91v–93v prose
treatise on the Creed (incomplete) [678]; fol. 94r–v blank; (4) fols 95r–97v Jerarchie [631];
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with an Anglo-Norman rubric. The manuscript was copied in the late thirteenth or
early fourteenth century: a professional scribe names himself as Robert Pitchford
(probably of Shropshire) at the end of the prose commentary on Proverbs and the
homily on the Assumption liturgy.72
Eleanor’s Jerarchie is thus the highest ranking text of those discussed here:
appropriately enough for a royal patron whose internal spiritual economy is to be
modelled on a divine household with considerable resemblance to her own, her
Jerome figure is the Archbishop of Canterbury, while his correlative servitors in the
text are not just stewards but angels. The prestigious origins of the text do not pre-
vent and probably conduce to its circulation first among the Franciscans and perhaps
(in light of the Madrid manuscript) more widely among clerics and/or laypeople. The
Jerarchie is customized for its initial patron but its image of spiritual aspiration in
terms of an internalized household had wide applicability. The metaphoric power of
such allegory is, as already noted, well known and widespread, but it is perhaps
worth remembering that the metaphor’s power derives from the importance of
household: it is no accident that so much doctrinal and devotional literature draws so
heavily on it for mapping both God’s house and the spiritual economies of his crea-
tures, for the interchange between cloister and household is of continuing importance
in medieval societies and medieval thought.73
(5) fols 98r–116v Assumption Homily for three offices (‘Ci commence de l’Assumption
Nostre Dame’, ed. by Michel Debroucker, Bulletin de la Faculté des Lettres de Strasbourg 33
(1955), 329–53) [494]; (6) fol. 117r–v, Le Exposicioun del Magnificat (verse, unedited) [824];
(7) fol. 118r Latin prayer for meditation on the crucifixion, with a rubric claiming it to have
been sent by ‘Seint Eamoun de Pountenuy’ to King Stephen ‘en Engletere’ [985]; fols 114r–
147v ‘Le Mireour seint Eamoun de Pountenuy’ (not known in Mirour de Seinte Eglise (St
Edmund of Abingdon’s Speculum Ecclesiae), ed. by A. D. Wilshere, ANTS, 40 (London:
ANTS, 1982).
72
The fact that the manuscript is a late thirteenth-century production by a professional
scribe could at this date be evidence either of lay or monastic provenance; see further Taylor,
‘From Manual to Miscellany’.
73
For another thirteenth-century text using household allegory for lay people of lower
social rank, but still with elite spiritual aspirations, see La sainte abbaye, a prose continental
French text with a later Middle English version. Here an allegorical female religious
household is offered to laypeople as a form of internalized cloister for lives lived funda-
mentally in the world; see Kathleen Chesney, ‘Notes on Some Treatises of Devotion Intended
for Margaret of York (MS Douce 365)’, Medium Aevum, 20 (1951), 11–39; Nicole R. Rice
‘Spiritual Ambition and the Translation of the Cloister: The Abbey and Charter of the Holy
Ghost’, Viator, 33 (2002), 222–62.
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Conclusion
Anglo-Norman traditions of female patronage from elite households were one source
of support for the vast thirteenth-century Anglo-Norman production of doctrinal and
pastoral works after Lateran IV. Even in manuscript circulation outside the initial
textual communities of these works, the figure of the noblewoman patron remained a
prestigious image of textual production, serving to authenticate vernacular pastoralia
as well as figuring the need for such works. So too, the neo-Hieronymian figure of
the clerical translator/narrator, especially as a collaborator with the female patron
whom he served as doctrinal steward, provided an important authorial stance for the
production of these texts. In the fourteenth century, Langland would satirize those
clerics who
serven as servaunts lordes and ladies
And in stede of stywardes sitten and demen.
Hire messe and hire matyns and many of hire houres
Arn doone undevoutliche.74
(serve lords and ladies as servants and sit and make judgements in the role of steward.
Their mass and matins and many of their offices are undevoutly performed.)
Here the blending of spiritual and socio-economic authority which made the noble-
woman and her cleric a powerful image for textual production is seen as corruption
in the figure of the cleric himself. Nevertheless, texts continued to be produced by
clerics for noble patrons in Middle English as in French or Anglo-Norman. The most
celebrated example in insular culture of household religious literary production is the
work of the Gawain-poet, produced by a cleric who was either a household chaplain
or who, if non-resident, had close ties with a baronial household. In his best-known
poem, the noble household of Hautdesert includes Mass in its own chapel among its
many other rituals and social practices, and the issues pursued by the poem are
subtly posed dilemmas of authority and identification in ethics and faith, judgment,
mercy, and redemption. Notoriously, Sir Gawain renders a fuller confession to his
chivalric host Sir Bertilak than to the priest of Bertilak’s Hautdesert. The single
extant manuscript of the Gawain-poet’s works75 contains Sir Gawain and the Green
Knight and three other works accepted as by the same author: two homiletic poems
on Patience and Cleanness, and Pearl, a dream-vision concerned with the tensions
between human understanding and feeling, the nature of heaven, and the Christian
eschatological community. All are usually classified as literature in modern scholar-
ship, though recent studies have examined them in the category of vernacular
74
William Langland, The Vision of Piers Plowman: A Critical Edition of the B Text, ed by
A. V. C. Schmidt (London: Dent, 1995), Prologue, lines 95–98.
75
London, British Library, MS Cotton Nero A.x.
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theology.76 In the context of household contributions to the Christian Church, the

Gawain-poet’s works and the Cotton Nero manuscript collection of his four
anonymous texts can be seen to owe something to their predecessors in Anglo-Norman
culture. The power with which religious and ethical dilemmas and the relations of
Church and household are articulated in the Gawain-poet’s poems is unrivalled and
the work of a very great artist indeed. But the traditions on which he draws need not
be seen as exclusively male, clerical, and chivalric: a vigorous Anglo-Norman insu-
lar culture supported by the patronage of the lady of the household and the work of
her clerics makes a cultural contribution to theological debate and doctrinal discus-
sion here as elsewhere in the Christianities of medieval Europe.
76
Nicholas Watson, ‘The Gawain-Poet as Vernacular Theologian’, and David Aers,
‘Christianity for Courtly Subjects: Reflections on the Gawain-Poet’, in A Companion to the
Gawain-Poet, ed. by Brewer and Gibson, pp. 293–313 and 91–101; Rhodes, Poetry Does
Theology.
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The Monastery as a Household

within the Universal Household
ELSE MARIE WIBERG PEDERSEN
A
s the title of this essay indicates, what I want to do here is to describe the
monastery as a household within the universal household. By the latter, I am
pointing to the theological context in which, so I claim, the monastic idea
should properly be viewed.1 Thus, when we speak of Christian, and not least of
Cistercian, monasticism in the High Middle Ages, as I intend to do, the term ‘house-
hold’ has at least three differing, even if closely related, meanings. Firstly, entering a
monastery was an actual shift of household, leaving one’s biological family for the
still more important religious and spiritual family. It meant leaving the saeculum in
order to live a spiritual life. Secondly and consequently, entering a cloister was con-
sidered the fulfilment of Jesus’s invitation to be his true disciple by renouncing
worldly allegiances, including family ties (Luke 14. 26), and thus becoming part of
Christ’s true spiritual family, being the brothers and sisters of Christ by doing God’s
will (Mark 3. 31–35). In this respect, it is a transformation of the paradigm of the
1
This does not mean that I see a total homogeneity between different monastic orders. On
the contrary, I agree with Jeffrey F. Hamburger that we must differentiate between the various
religious/monastic orders, treating them as different institutions with competing interests and
aspirations. See his The Visual and the Visionary: Art and Female Spirituality in Late Medie-
val Germany (New York: Zone Books, 1998), p. 37. Furthermore, a close reading of medieval
texts uncovers the marks of individuality, as Peter Dronke’s research has shown, in Women
Writers of the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), p. x. See also
Diane Watt for a strong argument against an essentialist, let alone a constructivist, definition
and categorization of ‘woman’ in her ‘Introduction: Medieval Women in their Communities’,
in Medieval Women in their Communities, ed. by Diane Watt (Toronto: Toronto University
Press, 1997), pp. 1–20 (pp. 5–6). What I contend is that several orders have the same
soteriological framework and eschatological telos in common. It is the precise modus vivendi
that may vary (even to a considerable extent), not so much the Christian paradigm.
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168 ELSE MARIE WIBERG PEDERSEN
earthly family into the spiritual (and indeed more egalitarianly conceptualized) com-
munity. Thirdly, the monastery in practice functioned as a larger household for its
inhabitants, in which a whole range of different functions — from the spiritual
leadership and administration of the abbot/abbess or prior/prioress to the practical
work of the lay brothers/sisters — had to be carried out for its maintenance.2
The Household of God — The Economy of Salvation

When employing the term ‘household’ we do not simply employ a term designating
a particular social form but, as indicated above, we also have to deal with an ancient
metaphor that entails a series of connotations.
The word ‘household’ is the same as ‘economy’ from the Greek word oikonomia
(oikos = house, oikonomia = household, or the way in which one’s affairs are
ordered), or the Latin terms dispositio and dispensatio. Originally ‘economy’ had the
wholly secular meaning of administering and managing goods or household, or
overseeing an office according to some plan or design.
In the New Testament the word designates servanthood and stewardship. Thus
Paul calls himself a servant of Christ and steward (oikonomos) of the mysteries of
God (I Corinthians 4. 1), or he refers to the commission (oikonomia) he has been
entrusted with, to preach the gospel (I Corinthians 9. 17). He is, he states, the servant
(diakonos) of the church according to God’s economy (oikonomian tou theou).
Oikonomia does not designate human dispensation solely, it is also utilized to mean
the plan of salvation, or how God administers God’s plan. In his letter to the Ephe-
sians, Paul explains the plan (oikonomia) of God as the plan of salvation set forth in
Christ, ‘to gather up all things in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth’ (Ephe-
sians 1. 9–10). It will take us too far from the present discussion to mention all the
biblical examples of the use of economy, but the principle may be summed up, in the
words of Catherine M. LaCugna, as ‘economy is the actualization in time and his-
tory of the eternal plan of redemption, the providential ordering of all things. A
certain order (taxis) marks the economy that expresses the mystery of God’s eternal
being (theologia).’3 This ‘order’ is a taxonomy that covers God’s actions in the
2
While monastic religious secluded themselves from the world, they also brought the
outside world with them into the orders, arranging their houses in much the same way as a
larger household in the world outside. As noted by Roberta Gilchrist in her pioneering study,
Gender and Material Culture: The Archaeology of Religious Women (London: Routledge,
1994): ‘gender and class combined to construct a habitus for women, a common-sense knowl-
edge constructed with reference to the material world, which connected monastic and secular
gender roles’ (p. 192). But as I shall show, gender roles were not so much copied as they were
transformed in different ways, both virtually and metaphorically.
3
See Catherine Mowry LaCugna, God for Us: The Trinity and Christian Life (San Fran-
cisco: Harper Press, 1991), p. 25.
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The Monastery as a Household 169
world from creation to re-creation, expressed in the two, ideally interrelated, dimen-
sions: economy, God’s actions in the world, and theology, God’s own eternal being.
The concept oikonomia came to play an even more important part in patristic un-
derstanding of, and vocabulary for, God’s providential plan of salvation, and hence
for all events pertaining to Christ. This was made explicit by Ignatius of Antioch
(martyred at Rome around 110) in his letter to the Ephesians: ‘Jesus Christ was con-
ceived in the womb of Mary according to the economy of God.’4 The most promi-
nent theologian of economy, however, was another apologist, Irenaeus of Lyon
(c. 130–c. 200). Against the Gnostic repudiation of the material world, Irenaeus
insisted that the whole inhabited world (oikoumene) was the work and creation of
the one and same God who was also presently at work to redeem the divine creation.
The one and same God was both creator and redeemer, fulfilling different roles in
order to maintain the same huge house, the entire inhabited world — as a good
householder. In explicating his theology, Irenaeus uses economy both as a synonym
for the Incarnation, and as an expression of the new relationship to God that results
from being redeemed, namely divinization/deification of the human nature elevated
by grace.5 In Christ, God recapitulated (anakefalaiosis) the fallen world. The Christ
who was not another God, neither just a human being, but who was always with God
emptied himself of divinity and took on our humanity ‘by means of the whole dis-
pensational arrangement’6 and gathered together all things in himself. In Irenaeus’s
scheme this means not only that all are restored to communion with God through the
work of Christ, but also that human nature is elevated (divinized). In the following
quotation, Irenaeus sums up his sweeping economy of history, the whole plan of
God realized through Christ since the beginning of the world:
[T]here is therefore only one God the Father, and one Christ Jesus our Lord, who has
come through the whole ‘economy’ and who has gathered together (recapitulated) all
things in himself. [Humanity] is also included within this ‘all’, that paradigmatic work
of God. He has, then, also recapitulated humanity in himself, through the invisible
becoming visible, the incomprehensible comprehensible, the impassible capable of
suffering, and the Word being made [human]. He has recapitulated everything in
himself so that he might draw all things to himself at the proper time.7
4
Ignatius, Ad Ephesios 18,2, PG, 5, 752B.
5
Irenaeus of Lyon, Adversus omnes Haereses [Adv. Haer] I,33,7, ed. and trans. by Adelin
Rousseau, Louis Doutreleau, and others, SC, 211 (Paris: Cerf, 1965), p. 819. For the
meanings of the term ‘economy’ in Irenaeus’s theology, see the classical work of A. d’Alès,
‘Le mot “oikonomia” dans la langue théologique de saint Irénée’, Revue des Études Grecques,
32 (1919), 1–9 (p. 6).
6
Irenaeus of Lyons, Adv. Haer. III,16,6 (SC 211:311). Cf. III,18 (211:343–71, esp. 355).
7
Irenaeus of Lyons, Adv. Haer. III,16,6 (SC 211:313–15). Cited from LaCugna, God for
Us, p. 26.
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The later Christian Church followed this teaching, while different motifs which were
reflected in different interpretations of the doctrine of Trinity and the doctrine of the
person of Christ developed into formulations that came to be the common property
of all orthodox Christians, although with varying presuppositions and divergent em-
phases. Thus, one such formulation, the ecumenical creed of Nicea (325), followed its
statement of the ‘divinity’ (God in himself; theology) with one about ‘economy’ (God
in his plan of salvation) in the confession that ‘for the sake of us men and for the
purpose of our salvation’ Christ had come down into the world, had become incar-
nate, had suffered and died as a human being, had risen again on the third day, had
ascended to the heavens, and would come again to judge the living and the dead.8
It is as a continuation of this economy that we must see Christian monasticism in
general, including the Helfta nuns. Monasticism, as it was designed within the Chris-
tian tradition, is part of the economy of salvation, and consequently monastics are
professional Christians who scrutinize doctrine, seeking out the christological and
soteriological implications for the fallen world and for themselves as a household
participating in the divine household.
The Monastery of Helfta as a Household
I shall now focus on the convent of Helfta in the late thirteenth century, during the
time of the abbess Gertrude of Hackeborn (1231–91), the cantrix and teacher Mech-
tild of Hackeborn (1241–1291/92), and her pupil and scribe Gertrude of Helfta
(1256–1301/02). I will look at monastic life as it is depicted in the texts of the nuns
of Helfta to show how this understanding of household is employed both materially
and spiritually, functionally and metaphorically.9 I shall suggest that, although the nuns
8
Further detail is constrained by space here, but it is important to note that, as Jaroslav
Pelikan emphasizes, ‘each of [this creed’s] components, however, required careful scrutiny
for its christological implications; each of them had also been the subject of earlier develop-
ment’: Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine,
vol. I: The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100–600) (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1971), p. 229. Cf. LaCugna, God for Us, a work that concentrates on the development
of the two dimensions of the economy of salvation, theologia and oikonomia, from New
Testament times onwards. For the creeds of the Old Church that we in fact call ‘ecumenical’,
confessed as they are by the Christian Church as a whole, though with divergent emphases,
see Enchiridion symbolorum: definitionum de rebus fidei et morum, ed. by Henricus Den-
zinger (Barcione: Herder, 1976).
9
The critical and commented editions are Mechtild of Hackeborn, Revelationes
Gertrudianae ac Mecthildianae, ed. by H. Oudin, vol. II: Sanctae Mechtildis: Liber specialis
gratiae (Poitiers: Solesmensium O.S.B. Monachorum, 1877); Gertrude of Helfta, Exercitia
spiritualia [Exercitia], ed. and trans. by Jacques Hourlier and Albert Schmitt, Gertrude
d’Helfta, Oeuvres Spirituelles, vol. I: Les Exercises, SC, 127 (Paris: Cerf, 1967); Gertrude of
Helfta, Legatus divinae pietatis [Legatus] (Legatus I–II), ed. and trans. by Pierre Doyère,
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in their writings reflect the family roles and understanding of the secular household,
they transform these paradigms, using them as didactic models in the transmission of
knowledge about God and the divine, whilst turning material culture into spiritual
culture. Their texts transmit religious experiences as well as deep reflections on the
liturgical, sacramental, and spiritual life, all of which is truly understood only within
a theological context.10
The monastery of St Maria in Helfta was founded at Mansfeld by Count Burchard
of Mansfeld for a small group of nuns from Halberstadt as a house within the
Benedictine-Cistercian order in 1229.11 Aside from this, our knowledge of Helfta’s
institutional history is quite limited. We know that, due to various difficulties, the
Gertrude d’Helfta, Oeuvres Spirituelles, vol. II: Le Héraut I et II, SC, 139 (Paris: Cerf, 1968);
Legatus III in ibid.,vol. III, SC, 143 (Paris: Cerf, 1968); Legatus IV: ed. and trans. by Jean-
Marie Clément and Bernard de Vregille, Gertrude d’Helfta, Oeuvres Spirituelles, vol. IV: Le
Héraut IV, SC, 255 (Paris: Cerf, 1978); Legatus V in ibid., vol. V, SC, 331 (Paris: Cerf, 1986).
Apart from these works, the text by the beguine Mechtild of Magdeburg (1207–81), The
Flowing Light of the Godhead (Das Fliessende Licht der Gottheit), is connected with Helfta.
Mechtild came to Helfta in 1270–71 on account of ‘multas tribulationes’, and there finished
the work that she had commenced at the latest in 1250. In spite of this, I do not consider her
work part of the Helfta texts, but rather the expression of quite another type of spirituality: see
further Marianne Heimbach, ‘Der ungelehrte Mund’ als Autorität: Mystische Erfahrung als
Quelle kirchlich-prophetischer Rede im Werk Mechtilds von Magdeburg, Mystik in
Geschichte und Gegenwart I, Christliche Mystik, 6 (Stuttgart: Cannstatt, 1989), pp. 5 and 165.
10
I thus move a step further than does Bynum, who particularly highlights the spiritual life
of the Cistercians, be it in their devotion in her Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of
the High Middle Ages (Berkeley: Berkeley University Press, 1982), or their attitude to food in
her Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women
(Berkeley: University of California, 1987). I am emphasizing, rather, the theological context,
claiming that the nuns not only live out their faith spiritually as professional Christians but
that they also express themselves concretely as theologians. The texts composed by, among
others, the Cistercian nuns Beatrice of Nazareth and the Helfta nuns, are significant and
explicit examples of such theological works: see Sabine Spitzlei, Erfahrungsraum Herz: Zur
Mystik des Zisterzienserinnenklosters Helfta im 13. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: Frommann-
Holzboog, 1991); and (in spite of her pessimistic views on the authenticity of medieval texts
concerning women), Ursula Peters, Religiöse Erfahrung als literarisches Faktum: Zur
Vorgeschichte und Genese Frauenmystischer Texte des 13. und 14. Jahrhunderts, Hermea:
Germanistische Forschungen, n.s., 56 (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1988). For a comparable
approach to women’s texts as theology, see also Amy Hollywood, The Soul as Virgin Wife:
Mechtild of Magdeburg, Marguerite Porete and Meister Eckhart, Studies in Spirituality and
Theology, 1 (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995).
11
For the history of Helfta, see Urkundenbuch der Klöster der Grafschaft Mansfeld, ed. by
Max Krühne, Geschichtsquellen der Provinz Sachsen und angrenzender Gebiete, 20 (Halle:
Otto Hendel, 1888), pp. 129–92. The question of whether the Helfta nuns were Benedictine or
Cistercian has been a matter of great discussion, but is of less significance. For this, see
Bynum, Jesus as Mother, p. 174, and Spitzlei, Erfahrungsraum Herz, pp. 26–33.
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house moved to Rodarsdorf in 1234, and once more in 1258 to Helfta, just outside of
Eisleben, and still in the diocese of Halberstadt.12 Most of what we know of the
community of Helfta comes from the texts written by the Helfta nuns. These texts
give evidence of how the nuns, who were mainly recruited from noble families,
struggled to break with a feudal, hierarchical order to effect instead the egalitarian
social model of Christ within the monastic household, while obeying the Benedic-
tine Rule. In one of Gertrude’s visions, Christ explicitly corrects notions of monastic
hierarchy, emphasizing that no function within the monastery is higher than others,
but that they are all equally important and necessary. Concurrently, Christ explicates
his preference for the choir-sisters’ spiritual duties as being no stronger than that of
an emperor’s for having only noblewomen in his royal household.13
As earlier mentioned, the Helfta nuns followed the rule of Benedict, according to
which the monastery is an embodiment of the house of God.14 The rule as such can
in fact be read as a house rule that spells out the regulations according to which the
teaching of God is translated into action, explicating every function within the
monastery as a piece of work to be executed in respect of the house of God. Thus,
although the term ‘household’ is not explicitly mentioned, the awareness of being a
monastic community that should function as a household within the larger and uni-
versal household is the framework within which the texts of the Helfta nuns operate
and their theology is to be understood. Most pronouncedly we find it in Mechtild’s
Liber specialis gratiae: ‘The Order of St. Benedict is the centre of the church. It
sustains the church like a column on which the whole house rests.’15 As can be seen
12
Urkundenbuch, ed. by Krühne, and ‘Introduction’, in Gertrude of Helfta, Oeuvres
Spirituelles, vol. I: Les Exercises, ed. by Hourlier and Schmitt, p. 8, n. 4.
13
Gertrude, Legatus, III, 68, ed. by Doyère, III, 274 (explaining that an emperor is of
course equally pleased to have the services of lords and military men, i.e., in the terms of the
metaphor of the royal household used here, the work of the lay sisters).
14
In RB: The Rule of St. Benedict in Latin and English with Notes, 64.5, ed. and trans. by
Timothy Fry (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1981), p. 281, on the election of an abbot, it
is clearly stated that the community must ‘set a worthy steward in charge of God’s house’
(‘domui Dei dignum constituant dispensatorem’). Cf. RB 31.19, ed. and trans. by Fry, p. 229,
on the qualifications of the monastery cellarer, which states that the cellarer should be ‘like a
father to the whole community’ who, on the orders of the abbot, should provide everyone
with the necessary items at the proper times, ‘so that no one may be disquieted or distressed in
the house of God’ (‘ut nemo pertubetur neque contristetur in domo Dei’); and in RB 53.22, ed.
and trans. by Fry, p. 259, on the reception and treatment of guests, it is stressed that ‘the
house of God should be in care of wise men who will manage it wisely’ (‘Et domus Dei a
sapientibus et sapienter administretur’).
15
Mechtild, Liber, I, 28, ed. by Oudin, p. 97: ‘Medium ecclesiae est Ordo sancti Benedicti,
sustinens Ecclesiam, velut columna cui tota domus innitur.’ Mechtild reflects comprehen-
sively on this theme at the feast of Bernard of Clairvaux (celebrated from 1175), when the
antiphon ‘In medio Ecclesiae’ sounds in celebration of the order’s central position within the
church. Christ is the mouthpiece of the celebration.
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from this statement, the nuns of Helfta quite clearly understand themselves as placed
in the centre of the Church, and therefore an integral part of the divine household.16
This is for them a natural consequence of their being solidly founded on the rule of
Benedict and on the writings and example of Bernard. One of their major obligations
therefore is that of praying for the Church, both for the Church as an institution and
for individual members of the Church.17 The entire monastic life is aimed at mirror-
ing divine life, in the sense that the endeavours of the nuns are directed towards
being not only an imitatio Christi, but even more a conformatio Christi, in compas-
sio, in the Eucharist, and in everyday monastic life.18 This focus comes to the fore in
Gertrude’s description of the body of Christ as her cloister. Gertrude hears Christ
invite her to
behold my heart; now it will be your temple. And now look among the other parts of
my body and choose for yourself other workshops in which you can lead a monastic
life, because from now on my body will be your cloister.19
When Gertrude hesitates, Christ repeats his invitation, stressing that the essential rest
and refreshment offered by the cloister must be completed by alia, wherefore Ger-
trude must ‘choose [. . .] some other workshops which [she] thinks it expedient to
have in [her] cloister’. Responding to this, Gertrude points to the functions, not of
individual ascetic life, but of quotidian community life, and in so doing implicitly
teaches that God’s omnipresence calls for everyone to live a ‘Christ-formed’ life in
all its aspects.
16
See below, and Gertrude’s exposition referred to in note 22.
17
Gertrude, Legatus, II, 20, ed. by Doyère, II, 308–20.
18
For this, see further Spitzlei’s excellent exposition of the conformatio aspect so central
to monastic life, and which was explicated by the Helfta nuns through the heart metaphor:
Spitzlei, Erfahrungsraum Herz, pp. 140–80, and see below. See also Bernard of Clairvaux, De
gradibus humilitatis et superbiae, ed. by Jean Leclercq and Henri Rochais, Sancti Bernardi
Opera [SBO], 3 (Rome: Editions Cisterciennes, 1963), p. 14 and p. 42, where he teaches how,
through their daily life together, in prayer and work (‘ora et labora’), the monks learn the
importance of social behaviour and reciprocal love. The monks should not only learn to love
but also to be loved. It was the aim of a life of daily training in imitatio Christi to effect
compassio or empathy and thus insight into another person’s situation, so that each monk
might reach self-recognition and, eventually, the level of godly love, caritas. See further the
section A House of Love, below.
19
Gertrude, Legatus, III, 28, ed. by Doyère, III, 128. ‘Respice ad Cor meum, hoc manebit
templum tuum: et nunc quaere per caeteras corporis mei partes et elige tibi alias officinas in
quibus regulariter vivas, quia corpus meum de caetero erit tibi pro claustro.’ The English
translation is taken from Gertrude of Helfta, The Herald of Divine Love, ed. and trans. by
Margaret Winkworth, The Classics of Western Spirituality (New York: Paulist Press, 1993). I
have, however, replaced Winkworth’s translation of ‘officinas’ as ‘places’ with the more
correct translation ‘workshops’, which underlines Gertrude’s endeavours to give all functions
executed within the monastery an equal status.
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Then, at the Lord’s bidding, she chose the Lord’s feet for a hall or ambulatory; his hands
for workshop; his mouth for parlor and chapter house; his eyes for school, where she
might read; and his ears for confessional.20
Being a biblical and traditional image, the body of Christ normally signifies the Church
and its members (cf. I Corinthians 12; Ephesians 4). But Gertrude here uniquely
likens the different rooms of the monastery and the different functions of monastic
life, all equally important for its maintenance, to the members of the body of Christ.21
In the same way, all the functions in the monastery are equally important as partici-
pation in the divine household for the sake of the entire world, be it through the
prayers and keeping of the hours,22 meditation as well as manual work,23 celebrating
holy communion,24 counselling,25 or the writing down of theological reflections.26
20
Gertrude, Legatus, III, 28, quoted from The Herald of Divine Love, ed. and trans. by
Winkworth, p. 191.
21
The spiritual monastery is a recurrent theme in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. But
Gertrude’s employment of the metaphor as the body of Christ, highlighting embodiment, is
unique because most authors employ the monastery and its regular places as an image of the
soul. In some cases — for example, the Vita Beatricis: De autobiografie van de Z. Beatrijs
van Tienen O. Cist. 1200–1286, ed. by L. Reypens, Studiën en Tekstuitgaven van Ons
Geestelijk Erf, 15 (Antwerp: het Ruusbroec-Genootschap, 1964), II, 7 and 8 — the officials of
the monastery, from abbot and abbess to chantresses and cellarer, are compared to the virtues
expected to reside in the soul. Gertrude thus combines two traditional images in an
untraditional way to undergird the idea of equality and community and, concurrently, to
minimize tendencies toward hierarchy and individuality.
22
E.g. Gertrude, Legatus, IV, 19, ed. by Clément and de Vregille, IV, 194–95.
23
Gertrude, Legatus, III, 68, ed. and trans. by Clément and de Vregille, III, 274, Christ tells
Gertrude that both spiritual exercises and exterior labour are important to the maintenance of
the household: ‘Nam si solummodo in spiritualibus exercitiis delectarer, utique naturam
humanam post lapsum denuo talem reformassem, non indigentem victu vel vestitu aliisque
pro quibus humana insudat industria conquirendis et conficiendis vitae necessariis.’
24
E.g. Legatus, IV, 13, ed. and trans. by Clément and de Vregille, IV, 152, the sacrament
of communion is explicated as being ‘per totam ecclesiam communicatur’.
25
E.g. Legatus, II, 12 and 16, ed. by Doyère, II, 280–83 and 290–99, Gertrude’s counsels
are emphasized as being solely the work of God.
26
Mechtild’s Liber specialis gratiae, quite strikingly for a nun’s text, is called ‘lumen
ecclesiae’ (Liber, VII, 17, ed. by Oudin, p. 412) and authorized as being of fully divine origin,
nature, and cause (Liber, II, 43, ed. by Oudin, p. 192–93 and V, 22, ed. by Oudin, p. 353–55).
See also Gertrude’s Legatus which was written to the praise and glory of God the Saviour of
humanity: ‘Ad laudem et gloriam Dei amatoris humanae salutis conscriptus est liber iste’ (V,
36, ed. and trans. by Clément and de Vregille, V, 272). The book emphasizes that it was
written for the sake of salvation, so that people might find the right way, the way of God who
lives and reigns infinitely in perfect Trinity (‘in Trinitate perfecta vivit et regnat Deus per
infinita saecula saeculorum’).
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The monastic life in all its functions is part of the divine household, reflected in its
liturgically structured day. The nuns will have risen at midnight for Vigils, and then
returned to the dormitory for further rest.27 After the early morning care of the body
up to Prime, it was time for spiritual work through reading and praise. At Prime, the
sisters would assemble in the chapter for lectio divina, from scripture, from a saint’s
legend, from the Benedictine Rule, from the Cistercian consuetudines, or a sermon
together with a collatio, that is, an explanation of what has been read in the form of a
dialogue.28 In the chapter, the abbess would instruct the sisters before sending them
away to their various practical functions,29 upon which the sisters went to work in
the kitchen, the cellar, the bakery, the laundry, or the infirmary,30 or did sewing31 or
gardening,32 or looked after the administration of the monastery, took singing les-
sons,33 or gave and received teaching in the school,34 as well as working in the scrip-
torium. The work would be interrupted by Terce and Mass, but would continue until
Sext, when the communal meal was served.35 Work would be resumed until Vespers
whereupon an evening meal was served.36 Finally, Compline formed the entry into
the sister’s night rest until Nocturn, when another but similar day began.
In order to mirror ‘divine life’ as it was incarnated in Christ, the ideal monastic
life should be a life spent in service both of God and of one’s neighbour. That is the
true maintenance of the household, an ideal reflected in the way the monastery and
the life of the sisters are structured, and summed up in the praise of the abbess
Gertrude of Hackeborn:
27
See Mechtild, Liber, III, 29, ed. by Oudin, pp. 233–34: ‘De septem horis canonicis’,
where the liturgically structured day, according to the canonical hours, is expounded.
28
Mechtild, Liber, V, 1 is a collatio, a dialogue in prayer with Christ.
29
Thus Gertrude of Hackeborn’s instructions, both reproaching and comforting, given in
the chapter are briefly listed in Mechtild’s Liber, VI, 1, ed. by Oudin, p. 374.
30
Gertrude, Legatus, V, 1, ed. and trans. by Clément and de Vregille, V, 1, where the
abbess, Gertrude of Hackeborn, takes part in the cleaning up of the house, all related to these
functions.
31
Gertrude, Legatus, I, 13, ed. by Doyère, II, 194.
32
Gertrude, Legatus, I, 13, ed. by Doyère, II, 192.
33
Gertrude, Legatus, III, 80–81, ed. by Doyère, III, 330–32, where Gertrude’s function as a
chantress is seen as the fulfilment not only of the rule but also as a work for the glory of God,
‘laudem Dei’, and for the salvation of human beings, ‘salutem humani generis’ (at p. 332).
34
See Gertrude, Legatus I, 1, ed. by Doyère, II, 119–20, and Mechtild, Liber VI, 1, ed. by
Oudin, pp. 374–76, where the necessity of instruction, reading, and learning is firmly stressed.
35
See Gertrude, Legatus, II, 17, ed. by Doyère, II, 298–300, where Gertrude, having
washed her hands is waiting to enter the refectory, and reflects on God’s economy from crea-
tion onwards and in Redemption, stressing divine forebearance with imperfect creatures rather
than the employment of power and majesty.
36
See Gertrude, Legatus, II, 4, ed. by Doyère, II, 244.
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Everything one can imagine of virtue, knowledge, and religion, radiated from [Ger-
trude] as from a mirror. Fervent in her charity and devotion to God, supreme in her
tenderness and solicitude regarding her neighbour, she was first in humility and morti-
fication of herself. With children she was most mild and indulgent, with youngsters
most devout and discreet, with those of her own age most wise and obliging. One
could never see her idle, but always occupied with useful work, be it working with her
hands, praying, instructing, or reading.37
One Large Family
In accordance with the Cistercian tradition, the theology of the Helfta nuns is not
formulated through abstractions in any summa theologiae. Rather, they manage
superbly to transmit their theological knowledge through a large spectrum of God-
metaphors taken from everyday life.38 For instance, Gertrude of Helfta in one single
prayer has recorded a wide range of names for God known from the biblical literature
and from the Christian tradition in order to address a God who is an abyss of abundant
godliness. Thus, on the one hand, God is addressed as the distant, transcendent God:
king, ruler, and prince; on the other hand, as the near, immanent God: craftsman,
teacher, counsellor, supporter, friend, spouse, brother, companion, housekeeper, and
servant.39 The same plurality of God-metaphors is to be found in the work of
37
Mechtild, Liber, VI, 1, ed. by Oudin, pp. 375–76. ‘Ferventissima fuit in charitate et
devotione quantium ad Deum, summa in pietate et sollicitudine quantum ad proximum, prima
in humilitate et afflictione quantum ad seipsam. In pueris mitissima et dulcissima, inter juve-
nes sanctissima et discretissima, inter seniores sapientissima et jucundissima. Nunquam in-
veniebatur otiosa; aut semper erat utiliter manibus operans, aut orans, aut docens, aut legens.’
38
In spite of the problem of ‘ineffability’ typical of the medieval visionaries’ fear of re-
ducing God’s sovereignty and immensity to human standards, the Helfta nuns are utterly
outspoken. Indeed, when transmitting their reflections on and knowledge about God, they
choose to employ a wide range of images precisely to avoid any reduction of God as incom-
prehensible, infinite, and invisible. For further discussion, see my article ‘Gottesbild –
Frauenbild – Selbstbild: Die Theologie Mechtilds von Hackeborn und Gertrud von Helfta’, in
Vor dir steht die leere Schale meiner Sehnsucht: Die Mystik der Frauen von Helfta, ed. by
Michael Bangert and Hildegund Keul (Leipzig: Benno Verlag, 1998), pp. 48–68 (pp. 56–60).
It is quite in accordance with the Augustinian tradition that God has set godly traces
(‘vestigia’) in creation. According to Bernard of Clairvaux, the invisible God is compre-
hended through creation, and he points to the body as the necessary means to understanding
creation. See for example in Sermones super Cantica canticorum [Cant.] 5,1, ed. by Jean Le-
clercq and Henri Rochais, Sancti Bernardi Opera, 1–2 (Rome: Editions Cisterciennes, 1957–),
pp. 21–22.
39
Cf. Gertrude, Legatus, III, 65, ed. by Doyère, III, 264–66. See also Exercitia spiritualia,
where Gertrude incessantly employs the whole spectrum of metaphors.
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Mechtild of Hackeborn, where God, apart from being the heavenly Lord, Father, and
judge, is also the more intimate friend, spouse, doctor, mother, and sister.40
This range of images taken from everyday life should not be mistaken as a naive
theology. On the contrary, the wide range of God-metaphors reflects the dialectics of
theology. God is not simply the transcendent (distant) God, but much more so the
immanent (near) God who loves and supports his creatures, stressed through the
continuous encounter of and communication with the triune God, corporeally exper-
ienced in Christ who is God incarnated. To emphasize further how divine imma-
nence is understood as always supporting human inadequacy, it can be said that all
theology by the Helfta nuns, literally speaking, is God-talk. In other words, Helfta
theology is not talk about God but God’s self-communication, God talking with or
through the nuns. In many ways, the Helfta nuns could be said to transmit Christian
orthodoxy in an unorthodox way, or at least to articulate in an explicit and creative
way what is already implicitly expressed in Christian tradition.41
Of particular interest here is the fact that amongst the many metaphors, most reflect
the very idea of a household or of family relations: housekeeper, servant, spouse,
father, mother, brother, and sister (to emphasize only the most frequently occurring).
Through this rich imagery, the relation between God and humanity is depicted as a
kinship and as family life. It is a prominent feature of the theology of the Helfta nuns
that God, despite his unquestionable divine incomprehensibility, is a God of relations,
that is, a God who can be experienced only in relations, reflecting the interrelationship
of the three persons of the Trinity: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.42 In the
Liber specialis gratiae, Mechtild, praying for another person, illustratively expands
the Trinitarian theology depicting God and the God-relation as a nuclear family:
I am her [the sister for whom Gertrude is praying] father in creation, her mother in re-
demption; I am her brother in sharing the kingdom; I am her sister in tender
community.43
40
See, as one example among others, Mechtild, Liber, I, 19, where Christ is presented as a
deacon and servant (ed. by Oudin, p. 64) and as a father with his son, a friend with his friend,
a spouse with his spouse, and a traveller with his companion (p. 68).
41
See also Mechtild, Liber, III, 21, ed. by Oudin, p. 224, where contemplation of the face
of Christ as well as the Eucharistic reception of the body and blood of Christ are stressed as
ways of understanding the triune God. For other examples of women’s ‘unorthodox’ trans-
mission of theology, see Felicity Riddy’s article on informal and oral culture exemplified by
Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe, ‘Women Talking of the Things of God: A Late
Medieval Female Sub-Culture’, in Women and Literature in Britain, 1150–1500, ed. by
Carol M. Meale, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 104–27.
42
As the theology of the Helfta nuns is a Christ-centred Trinitarian theology, in accor-
dance with the Augustine-Bernardine tradition, this understanding is recurrent. See e.g.
Gertrude, Legatus, II, 2, and compare note 80 below.
43
My translation of Mechtild, Liber, IV, 50, ed. by Oudin, p. 304: ‘Ego sibi pater in crea-
tione; ego mater in redemptione; ego frater in regni divisione; ego soror in dulci societate.’
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This remarkable divine ‘self-description’ is part of a sequence of short auditions in

Liber IV, all explicitly expressing God’s loving forgiveness of sinful humanity. The
passage clearly reflects the economic Trinity: God who creates, redeems, and par-
ticipates in human life, also in the cloister, till death and after. Two things in this
rephrasing of doctrine are noteworthy. Firstly, the use of family structure is remark-
able. It ‘refurnishes’ the roles of the divine persons, in that Christ the Son and
Redeemer, the second person of the Trinity, who is usually understood to be the
brother of Christians, is called mother in redemption, whereas the Holy Spirit, the
third person of the Trinity, is called the brother. Secondly, the phrase ‘I am your
sister in tender community [or, ‘sociable/pleasant communion’]’ is a striking articu-
lation, as is this whole section of auditions in Liber, of how strongly the community
of nuns pictured itself as an integral part of the triune God’s work of salvation. The
community of nuns is part of the godly family and plays a significant role in the
larger economy (household) of salvation.
First and foremost, however, the frequent family portraits of God are expressions
of divine ubiquity and immanence. They demonstrate that God is everywhere at all
times, not least when needed in times of trouble and tribulations, like a mother car-
ing for her children. Thus, Mechtild explains the parental love of God to the faithful
soul, expounding how Christ will receive any human being (homo) who wanders in
truth with him: ‘I shall receive her as a mother who receives her dearly beloved child
with fatherly embraces, never to let him go.’44 Through this gender-transcending
God-language, the fatherly mother or the motherly father, Mechtild transmits the
teachings of divine economy: the ‘child soul’ shall not only receive the love of the
‘fatherly mother’, but will also share this love with her neighbour, eventually to
return it to God.45 The same fusion of ‘fatherly’ and ‘motherly’ in divinity recur-
rently appears in the work of Gertrude of Helfta, for example, in this consolation of
the dying Gertrude by Christ:
44
Mechtild, Liber, IV, 7, ed. by Oudin, p. 264.
45
Gertrude, Legatus, II, 9, ed. by Doyère, II, 270. This gender-transcending language is
explicit also within the writings of Bernard of Clairvaux, who for instance in Cant. 9 attrib-
utes breasts to Jesus as a symbol of his compassion and forgiveness. But Bernard further
applies this way of speaking to the superiors of this world. Thus, in Cant. 23, 2 he encourages
those who are under rule to learn that ‘you must be mothers to those in your care, not masters;
make an effort to arouse the response of love, not that of fear: and should there be occasional
need for severity, let it be paternal rather than tyrannical. Show affection as a mother would,
correct like a father. Be gentle, avoid harshness, do not resort to blows, expose your breasts:
let your bosoms expand with milk, not swell with passion’: Bernard of Clairvaux, On the
Song of Songs, trans. by Kilian Walsh, Cistercian Fathers Series, 7 (Kalamazoo: Cistercian
Publications, 1983), II, 27. This gender-crossing symbolic language, which was so superbly
developed by Bernard, is inherent in the Christian tradition. It may be found in biblical
language and is explicitly taken up by Irenaeus in the second century. Again Bynum’s Jesus
as Mother brought this theme to the attention of a broader public. The basic work was done
by J. Cabassut in his essay ‘Une dévotion peu connue: La dévotion à Jesus Notre Mére’,
Révue d’Ascétique et de Mystique, 25 (1949), 234–45.
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When your soul is about to leave you, I will take you into my fatherly protection as a
mother takes her beloved child into her bosom, covering her with her coat while
traversing a rough sea.46
Another highly pertinent example can be found in Legatus, III, 63, where Gertrude
demonstrates this at once fatherly and motherly love and consolation in a chiasmus:
being simultaneously a dialogue between the Lord Father and his daughter, and the
relationship between a mother and her little boy. Accordingly, God comforts the
soul ‘as a tender mother kisses away the troubles of her little child [. . .] whispering
soft words of fondest love’, and assures Gertrude that (s)he helps the soul in all its
adversities:
In this and in every circumstance I show the most delicate care and tender love for
you, like a mother tenderly loving her delicate little child.47
It is noteworthy that it is Gertrude, who entered the monastic household as an orphan at
the age of five, who so often invokes the parental God for help. Once more using her
personal experience, Gertrude invokes herself as an ‘orphan without a mother’48
whom God has adopted as his daughter,49 or again, reversing Luke 15. 11–32, as a
‘prodigal daughter’ referring to her exigent sins.50 Through her spiritual exercises,
mirroring the liturgy of the cloister and the professional life of a nun from her
entrance into the monastery and first conversion (rebirth) until her preparing for
death (life in death), Gertrude depicts Christians, the heirs of the new covenant who
shall obtain new life and be a new race, as an adopted people.51 Gertrude’s God is
the God of salvation, of the heart, deus cordis mei, and of life, deus vitae meae, who
will never forsake his adopted children, humanity.
Ah, Jesus, only-begotten of the heavenly Father, lovingly kind and merciful Lord, you
never leave your adopted children behind in desolation — alas, alas, much have I
transgressed with my tongue. Ah, O my glory (Psalm 3,4(3)), fill my mouth with your
praises (Psalm 70 (71). 8). My cherished one, through the lively might of the dulcet
words of your blessed mouth, wipe away every offence from my defiled mouth so that
gladness in the kiss of your mellifluous mouth alone can console my innermost heart
46
Gertrude, Legatus, V, 25, ed. and trans. by Clément and de Vregille, V, 206; my translation.
47
Gertrude, Legatus, III, 63, ed. and trans. by Clément and de Vregille, III, 250–52.
48
Gertrude, Exercitia, III, 48, ed. by Hourlier and Schmitt, I, 96. Translations into English
of Gertrude’s Exercitia are from Gertrud of Helfta, Spiritual Exercises, ed. and trans. by
Gertrud Jaron Lewis and Jack Lewis, Cistercian Fathers Series, 49 (Kalamazoo: Cistercian
Publications, 1989).
49
Gertrude, Exercitia, V, 510, ed. by Hourlier and Schmitt, I, 196.
50
Gertrude, Exercitia, IV, 184–85, ed. by Hourlier and Schmitt, I, 137.
51
See Gertrude, Exercitia, I, 221, III, 218, V, 305, VI, 531, VII, 329, 537, 627, ed. by
Hourlier and Schmitt, I, 76, 108, 180, 238, 282, 296, 302.
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(cf. Song 1.1). Ah, radiant love, pierce my heart with the dart of your living, cherish-
ing love, that I may fall drained of life into the abyss of the source of your life.52
Thus Gertrude in prayer addresses divinity, deploying allegories or similes (love and
loving kindness personified among others), all of which symbolize God’s salvation
of his adopted children, inhabitants of, and participants in, the godly household.
Indeed, the soteriological and eschatological hope of the believer is very fre-
quently expressed in family relations, explicitly underlined by Mechtild’s belief in
God’s all-embracing salvation that ‘God will be all in all’ (I Corinthians 15. 28) as
the mother, father, Lord, spouse, and friend of the soul.53
A House of Love
To be a true member of the household of God, who is all love (totus amor)54 in crea-
tion and redemption, instruction is needed. The Helfta nuns, who are deeply rooted
in the Cistercian theology of love, understand themselves to be the disciples of Christ
in the school of love,55 and to be consciously entering a profession of imitating the
loving kindness of God Christ. Gertrude explicates how we learn about God through
his creation, and how love for neighbour as true humanity is given to humanity as a
gift of grace (donum gratiae) and love (caritas).56 In Exercitia V, Gertrude com-
poses a series of hours, from Prime to Compline, in which God is invoked as Love,
personalized as the life-sustaining teacher who will adopt his children through his
saving teachings (dogmata salutaria), thereby removing them from their own sinful
selves and gaining them instead for the ‘ministry of living charity and cherishing
love’ (vivae charitatis et dilectionis ministerium).
At Prime, pray to the Lord to lead you into the school of love where you may learn
further to recognize and love Jesus. And [say] this with prayer and verse:
I am your handmaid, most loving Jesus; grant me the understanding to learn your
commandments (Psalm 118 (119).73).
O God, love, how well and how diligently you foster and nourish your chicks in the
bosom of charity. If only, and a thousand times if only, you would now open to me the
school of chaste, cherishing-love that therein I might experience your dearest discipline
and through you be allotted a soul not only good but, in truth, both holy and perfect.
Ah! O love, dip my senses in the marrow of your charity so that through you I may
become a gifted child and you yourself may be, in truth, my Father, teacher, and mas-
ter. And under your fatherly blessing, let my spirit be wholly purified and refined from
52
Gertrude, Exercitia, VII, 626–636, ed. by Hourlier and Schmitt, I, 302.
53
Gertrude understands this same universal and eschatological hope, whilst imagining that
she is holding the Godchild in her arms: Legatus, II, 6, ed. by Doyère, II, 258.
54
Gertrude, Legatus, II, 8, ed. by Doyère, II, 264.
55
Gertrude, Exercitia, V, 311–18, ed. by Hourlier and Schmitt, I, 180.
56
Gertrude, Legatus, II, 8–10, ed. by Doyère, II, 262–76.
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all the dross of sin. May it thus be given back, altogether fit — and able to receive
your forgiving words. And may your holy, upright, and foremost (principalis) Spirit
dwell wholly within me, O love. Amen.57
Divine care and love is the central theme of the Helfta texts. These constitutive char-
acteristics of divinity, time and again described through family relations, are sym-
bolized through yet another metaphor typical of both Mechtild and Gertrude, namely
‘the heart of God’. It is of paramount importance that this heart symbolism is not
mistaken for the later sentimental piety of the ‘Holy Heart’.58 On the contrary, it is a
fundamental expression of the love and friendship between God and humanity. Thus,
the heart symbolism of both Helfta nuns complies with a larger complex of theologi-
cal anthropology,59 in which the heart of the Trinity, the heart of the Father, the Son,
and the Holy Spirit, the heart of Jesus, the heart of the Holy, the heart of the angels,
and the heart of human beings each plays its particular role.60 In this complex, the
heart is the very symbol of the communication between God and human beings, pic-
tured as a dialogue ‘from heart to heart’. For humanity, the heart is the centre of
everything spiritual and carnal, whereas the heart of God is provenance and centre of
all grace and salvation, the latter alluding to the pierced heart of the crucified Christ.61
Thus, this heart symbolism is a didactically designed illustration of the loving God’s
unique grace (sola gratia)62 on which humanity is totally dependent whether onto-
57
Gertrude, Exercitia, V, 311–329, ed. by Hourlier and Schmitt, I, 180–82, where the nuns
document their profession. Cf. Gertrude, Exercitia, IV, 232–245, ed. by Hourlier and Schmitt,
I, 140–42.
58
The later ‘Sacré Coeur’ piety has a totally different substance and direction. The heart
metaphors stem from the twelfth century while the Sacré Coeur feast was introduced in the
Catholic church in 1765. See Cyprien Vagaggini, ‘La dévotion au Sacré Coeur chez Sainte
Mechtilde et Sainte Gertrude’, in Cor Jesu: Commentationes in litteras encyclas Pii pp. XII:
‘Haurietis aquas’/ quas peritis collaborantius ediderunt Augustinus Bea, ed. by Augustinus
Bea and others (Rome: Herder, 1959), II, 31–48 (p. 47); and Kurt Ruh, Geschichte der abend-
ländischen Mystik, vol. II: Frauenmystik und Franziskanische Mystik der Frühzeit (Munich:
Beck, 1993), p. 323, who both correct the assumption stemming from Carl Richstätter, Die
Herz-Jesu-Verehrung des deutschen Mittelalters: Nach gedruckten und ungedruckten Quellen
dargestellt (Paderborn: Bonifacius-Druckerei, 1919), that the modern ‘heart of Jesus’ piety
has its roots in Mechtild’s and Gertrude’s divine heart symbolism. Kurt Ruh even makes the
point that Gertrude’s spirituality is of such a true nature that she could never be ‘la
théologienne du Sacré-Coeur’.
59
Cf. Margot Schmidt, ‘Mechtild von Hackeborn’, in Mein Herz schmilzt wie Eis am
Feuer: Die religiöse Frauenbewegung in Porträts, ed. by Johannes Thiele (Stuttgart: Kreuz
Verlag, 1988), p. 91.
60
In this order, see Mechtild, Liber, I, 46, 5 and 18, 23, ed. by Oudin, pp. 18 and 23. Cf.
Gertrud’s Exercitia in its entirety.
61
John 19. 34.
62
Mechtild, Liber, II, 16, ed. by Oudin, p. 150: ‘Ibi etiam de Corde Christi suavissimo
esuxit fructum dulcissimum, quem assument de Corde Dei in os suum posuit: per quod signi-
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logically, christologically, ecclesiologically, or liturgically-sacramentally. In explaining

and giving instruction in the love of God symbolically articulated as the heart of
Jesus and God, the nuns of Helfta most frequently choose the house metaphor.
So Mechtild, with whom God had begun making himself familiar (ad modum
familiaris)63 when she entered the convent, every day associates with Christ in a
familiar way.64 In a vision Mechtild sees the heart of Jesus as a door opening to a
round, white house paved with gold, symbolizing divine eternity. In this house a
conversation is taking place, as in the similitude where the Lord inhabits Mechtild’s
heart,65 a house with only one window, symbolizing her mouth through which God
communicates to the whole world. Once again we see the combination of household
and communication, signifying the economy of salvation.
Reflecting this same divine economy we find what is perhaps the most striking
household metaphor, the image of the divine heart of Christ as a kitchen (coquina
mea est Cor meum deificum) which is open and common to everyone, both slave and
free (cf. Gal. 3. 26–28), and from which everyone is freely fed. The cook is the Holy
Spirit (coquus est Spiritus Sanctus) who continually replenishes the supply of abun-
dant freedom (abundatissima liberalitate) which continuously flows into the bowls,
that is, the hearts of the holy and elected ones.
My kitchen is my divine heart: as a kitchen in a home is communal and open to all, to
slaves as well as to the free, so my heart stands open to all, ready to fulfil their desires.
ficabatur illa aeterna laus, quae de corde Dei procedit; quia omnis laus qua ipse laudatur,
effluit ab illo qui est purus etiam fons omnis boni. Deinde alium assumpsit fructum, scilicet
gratiarum actionem; quia nihil potest anima a seipsa nisi praeveniatur a Deo’; and Gertrude,
Exercitia, VII, 401–408: ‘O praedilectum cor, ad te nunc clamat meum cor. Esto mei memor:
tuae charitatis dulcor reficiat, quaeso, meum cor. Eia moveatur super me tuae miserationis
medulla, quia heu mihi sunt mala merita multa, merita bona nulla. Iesu mi, tuae pretiosae
mortis meritum, quod solum efficax fuit ad solvendum universale debitum, condonet mihi in
te quicquid male merui et redonet mihi in te omnia bona in quibus deperii, convertens me tam
efficaciter ad te.’
63
Mechtild, Liber, I, 1.
64
Mechtild, Liber, III, 5, ed. by Oudin, pp. 201–03, a dialogue between Christ and
Mechtild recollecting orthodox Christian faith from creation of man (homo) in the image and
likeness of God to re-creation, the loving heart being the absolute centre of this faith. Christ is
here the best of all teachers (‘omnium optimus magistrorum’) as he in his instruction is both
father (accentuating communication), friend (accentuating fidelity), and spouse (accentuating
diligence or love) — i.e. the economic Trinity.
65
Mechtild, Liber, III, 1, ed. by Oudin, p. 195: ‘videbatur sibi quasi stare Dominum coram
se, et apertum coram se, et apertum est Cor ejus velut janua, et visum est ei quod illud intraret
quasi magnam domum, habentem pavimentum aureum. Et Domus erat rotunda, significans
aeternitatem Dei; et Dominus stabat medio domus, et anima cum eo, multa ad invicem
colloquentes.’
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The cook in this kitchen is the Holy Spirit, whose invaluable sweetness incessantly
fills my heart with its abundant freedom.66
Although Beryl Smalley, perhaps a trifle impatiently, spoke of the thirteenth century
as one in which ‘what had been seen as secret and holy ceased to be secret and by
familiarity became less holy. The tabernacle served as the kitchen cupboard’,67 to
my knowledge, Mechtild is the only writer so explicitly to employ this image of the
kitchen to illustrate God’s divine actions. She uses it as a description of the circula-
tion of divine love which from its very provenance abundantly flows to creation,
thus illustrating the church as communio sanctorum, the community of the holy.68
However, a possible point of inspiration can be found in the Benedictine Rule where
kitchen service is highlighted as an aspect of the practice of stewardship. Thus,
everyone in the monastery, except for those ‘who are engaged in important business’,
is requested to ‘serve without distress [. . .] and serve one another in love’.69 But
whereas the Benedictine Rule presupposes a certain hierarchy, the way Mechtild, on
the authority of scripture and the Trinity, employs the kitchen as an image of Christ
obliterates the otherwise inbuilt hierarchy of the rule to highlight equality in Chris-
tian service. Another inspiration may stem from Bernard, who employs the store-
room as an image of morality and equality. The storeroom serves as the place where
all, having proceeded from the garden of discipline, have learned ‘to live peacefully
and sociably with all those who share their nature, with all men, no longer through
fear of discipline but by the impulse of love’ (Cant. 23. 6). These sources of inspira-
tion taken together with Mechtild’s own understanding of the kitchen as a place where
everyone is served regardless of their status (as in Gal. 3, there is no difference
between slave and free) and where freedom is abundantly dispensed, makes me see
the vision as an allegory of the free, even freeing, dispensation of divine love. I there-
fore disagree with Rosalynn Voaden, who in this ‘vision’ sees an inscription of the
66
Mechtild, Liber, II, 23, ed. by Oudin, p. 165: ‘Coquina mea est Cor meum deificum,
quod in modum coquinae, quae domus est communis et pervisa omnibus tam servis quam
liberis, semper patens est omnibus, et promptum ad cujuslibet delectamentum. Hujus coquinae
coquus est Spiritus Sanctus, cujus inaestimabilis suavitas illud sine intermissione abundantis-
sima liberalitate infundit, et replet, replendoque facit abundare.’ (My translation.)
67
Beryl Smalley, ‘Use of the “Spiritual” Senses of Scripture in Persuasion and Argument
by Scholars in the Middle Ages’, Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale, 52 (1985),
44–63 (p. 47); quoted in Hamburger, The Visual and the Visionary, p. 148.
68
Ruh, Geschichte der abendländischen Mystik, p. 311 and 336. In this work, Ruh strongly
opts for acknowledging Gertrude’s metaphorically and symbolically transmitted theology as
an authentic and legitimate Latin mysticism as opposed to ecstatic and eccentric ‘German’
mysticism.
69
The element of service is stressed thus in RB, 35, ed. and trans. by Fry, p. 232: ‘Fratres
sibi invicem serviant [. . .] sibi sub caritate invicem serviant.’ We find one biblical reference
to the kitchen in Ezekiel 46. 24, where it is the place ‘where the ministers of the house shall
boil the sacrifice of people’, also thematizing ‘service’.
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female in that it, in her view, ‘incorporates those images of enclosure which are so
much a part of the visions of the Helfta nuns’.70 In my view, the Helfta nuns are
much more engaged in transmitting a theology that accentuates the economic Trinity,
here seen as the household in which the motherly Father is the ‘lovely’ nourishment,
Christ the ‘heart’/ kitchen, and the Holy Spirit the sweet cook who prepares and
dispenses the ‘free’(ing) food. Rather than the enclosure of the monastic household,
the focus is on the sociability, inclusivity, and equality of the divine household and,
concomitantly, on the efforts of the monastic household to imitate it.
As the heart is the centre of communication between divinity and humanity: Jesus
Christ, true God and true man,71 is the fundamental and unquestionable mediator and
the guide to the divine tabernacle (ingrediar locum tabernaculi) and ‘even to the house
of God’ (usque ad domum dei; cf. Psalm 41. 5 (42–43. 4)). So Gertrude teaches, in a
less allegorical yet more symbolic language than Mechtild.72 To Gertrude, the divine
heart is the heart of Jesus and as such is first and foremost the wound in the side of
the crucified Christ, from whence the abundance of inner grace flows, a manifesta-
tion of salvation. Liturgically bound as her reflections are, she prays in connection
with a Sunday Mass before Advent that she may have her own heart pierced to let
love flow freely in order to participate in the divine circulation of love.73
Who is the True Mother in the Household?
Before concluding this essay, let me briefly touch upon a figure in the divine house-
hold that I have not yet mentioned, but who actually plays a significant role within
both the monastic and the divine household as such, namely the figure of Mary.
It has been a general assumption that nuns were either highly devoted to Mary or
at least keen on imitating her and her virginity, an assumption that seems quite
logical in relation to nuns within the Cistercian order, which had Mary as its protec-
trice. However, this picture is not quite true. As we have already seen, the Helfta
nuns, like other Cistercians, transmitted their theology through a rich and ‘gender-
crossing’ imagery, never binding the triune God to one concept or model, or to one
gender, whether male or female.74 Likewise, when we examine the texts of the
70
See Rosalyn Voaden, ‘Community, Gender and Vision at Helfta’, in Medieval Women in
their Communities, ed. by Watt, pp. 72–91, esp. p. 84.
71
Gertrude, Legatus, II, 6, ed. by Doyère, II, 258, echoing the Nicene (325) and the
Chalcedon (451) Creeds.
72
Gertrude, Exercitia, VII, 655–57, ed. by Hourlier and Schmitt, I, 304.
73
Gertrude, Legatus, II, 9, ed. by Doyère, II, 270. Cf. II, 23, where Gertrude in reciprocal
familiarity interchanges love ‘like friend with friend in his own home, or rather like husband
with wife’.
74
The Belgian medievalist Simone Roisin was the first to observe that female visionaries
seemed to feel far less devoted to Mary than their male counterparts. Based on her thorough
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Helfta nuns (as also the texts by another Cistercian nun, Beatrice of Nazareth), their
theology is so christological in scope that the figure of Mary is almost superfluous,
except for her role in the incarnation as the mother of God (theotokos). Thus, on the
feast of the Annunciation, Gertrude in a dialogue with Christ confesses that she, un-
like the preachers who extol and celebrate Mary, has him, the Incarnated and source
of salvation, as her supreme object of devotion:
she was grieved and, after the sermon, as she was passing in front of the altar of the
glorious virgin, in saluting her she did not feel moved exclusively by sweet affection
toward the mother of every grace, but instead every time that she saluted her and praised
her, her loving thoughts always went out toward Jesus, the blessed fruit of her womb.75
When Gertrude, however, expresses her worries about not being devout enough
towards the Mother of Christ, Christ assures her that Mary cannot be praised more
agreeably than through salutations directed to him, her son. In another telling
dialogue, the need to emphasize the proper way of addressing and praying to the
mother of God is revealed, when Gertrude asks her brother, Christ, to help her in the
praising of his mother, in which action she seems to be lacking.76
The texts by the Helfta nuns offer further examples of a minimalist devotion to
Mary, but it will be enough here to highlight one more. Gertrude tells how, at the
feast of Nativity, she symbolically receives the baby Jesus from the womb of his
virginal mother, a symbol of compassion. During the subsequent period until Purifi-
cation, she strives to maintain the feeling of compassion for an afflicted person, but
does not succeed until she prays for all souls. Then, so her narration continues,
[I] felt the effects of my prayer, particularly one evening when I proposed to pray for
all souls. While, up to that time, I had always preferred to begin by praying for my
parents, with the Collect: ‘Almighty eternal God, who commanded us to honour our
father and mother.’77
In choir Gertrude chants praises to Christ, the innocent Son of God, the Saviour and
Redeemer, through whom she will be saved. Notwithstanding this, during the pro-
cession on the feast of Purification, Mary asks Gertrude to return to her the child of
analysis of various female and male vitae, she propounded the theory that attitudes to Mary
were a matter of a heterosexual psychological gendering: a male mystic would feel more
attracted to Mary, his opposite gender, than a female mystic who would feel more attracted to
Christ. Among her excellent work from the 1940s, see esp. L’Hagiographie cistercienne dans
le diocèse de Liège au XIIIme siècle (Louvain-la Neuve: Bibliothèque de l’Université, 1947),
pp. 81–91. The theme was later taken up by Bynum in Jesus as Mother; see esp. pp. 172–73.
75
Gertrude, Legatus, III, 20, ed. by Doyère, III, 110; quoted from Winkworth, Herald of
Divine Love, p. 186.
76
Gertrude, Legatus, III, 19, ed. by Doyère, III, 108.
77
Gertrude, Legatus, II, 16, ed. by Doyère, II, 293. Gertrude is reciting the Collect for
deceased parents, which can still be found in the Roman Missal. Cf. trans. by Winkworth,
Herald of Divine Love, p. 148 n. 80.
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her womb, and ‘her face wore a severe expression, as though she were not pleased
with the way I was looking after you, the pride and joy of her immaculate virginity’.
Mary is appeased, however, when Gertrude begins praising her as co-operatrix in
reconciliation due to her motherhood and subsequently as advocatrix. As a result,
Gertrude is again allowed by Mary to receive and hold the Christ child.
This narration is of particular interest for more than one reason. Firstly, it illus-
trates what significance, monastically, was attributed to leaving aside one’s secular
family on behalf of the celestial family of the heavenly Father and the mother of
Christ. Concurrently with that, it stresses, theologically, that the two natures of Christ,
the divine and the human, are equally significant. The human side of God must
never be superseded by the divine, but both sides must supplement each other.
Thirdly, it shows us that, mariologically, the Helfta nuns were not unproblematically
devoted to Mary, perhaps because they not only imitated her but actually identified
with her, taking her place within the family.78 In addition, their apparent reluctance
to praise Mary as an advocate and intercessor may be ascribed to the fact, as evi-
denced in their writings, that they have their own direct communication with Christ,
and that to them, God is both father and mother. All three aspects taken together
may be the reason why Gertrude, almost bluntly, characterizes Mary as the jealous
mother of Christ, in this case jealous of God the Father who is being praised for the
act of salvation through his son.79 Last but not least, this narration reveals the Helfta
nuns’ preference for the crucified and risen Christ (as in their use of heart symbol-
ism) to that of the newborn Jesus in their devotion and theology. Their focus is on a
theology of the cross rather than on the incarnation, as it is through the pierced heart
of Jesus crucified that the love of God so abundantly is being dispensed.
Conclusion
The Helfta nuns, transmitting biblical and orthodox tradition, use common experiences
from the secular world to explain the economy of salvation. Thus Mechtild explains
divine love to humanity as the embrace of a loving father or the caressing of a mild
78
Cf. Else Marie Wiberg Pedersen, ‘Gudsbillede – Mariabillede – Kvindebillede: Om
Beatrice af Nazareths teologi og spiritualitet’ (‘Image of God – Image of Mary – Image of
Woman: On the Theology and Spirituality of Beatrice of Nazareth (1200–1268)’) (unpub-
lished doctoral dissertation, University of Aarhus, 1991).
79
In a legend found in the Vita Idae Nivellensis (another Cistercian nun) Mary is described
as a severe mother-in-law. In chapter 25 we are told how Mary is jealous of a nun who with
Ida was ‘cor unum et animam unam in Christo’ and asks the nun to love her as the most
beloved by Christ while she (Mary) then will love the nun as her beloved son’s beloved: ‘Me
itaque amabis sicut dilectissimam Dilecti tui, ego quoque te diligam sicut valde dilectam
dilecti Filii mei.’ Thus the hierarchical order is settled. See Quinque Prudentes Virgines, ed.
by Chrysostom Henriquez (Antwerp, 1630), pp. 262–63.
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mother, and God’s creative relation to his creation is like a caring mater familias.
Analogously, Gertrude of Helfta depicts the triune God as a nuclear family: God is
father in creation, mother in salvation, brother in participation, and sister in the com-
munity. Gertrude, who came to the convent as a five-year-old orphan, sees her entry
into this spiritual household as God’s fatherly reception of the ‘prodigal daughter’
(cf. Luke 15. 11–32) and her status as a nun as that of God’s adopted daughter.
Accordingly, the texts and teachings of the Helfta nuns, based on experience and
conveyed in concrete pictures, can be said to be an outspoken way of transmitting
the Christian doctrine on the economic Trinity, God’s work of salvation. The nuns
reflect on the roles of Christ, the Son of the heavenly Father and second person in
the Trinity, and his earthly mother, Mary, and on what role they themselves as pro-
fessional Christians play in this universal household. In so doing, the community of
Helfta places itself in the mainstream of Western Christianity, drawing analogies
between divinity and humanity, between the Trinitarian community and human com-
munities, whilst understanding the dogma of the Trinity as a social programme. The
image of Christ’s heart as a kitchen and the divine Trinity as a kitchen service is an
original and significant illustration of that. Although the nuns stress that God is
totally other than creation, they also stress that God through love’s abundance claims
social behaviour, love of neighbour, from his human creatures.80 The monastery is
portrayed as the place to learn and live out this social programme — indeed, every
office of the monastery is a part of Christ’s body, all equally important. Through a
rich variety of images from the everyday life of a household, it is stressed that life is
social and as such ‘triangular’. The divine Trinity, characterized by interaction be-
tween distinct but equal persons should be mirrored in a true human life. In other
words, the divine household must be mirrored in the worldly household as a life in
relation to others, depicted as a kinship or a nuclear family (with the jealous mother-
in-law, Mary, as the humorous touch). Such a triangular life is in particular char-
acterized by the service of love and by the communality and equality of everyone
within this service, described through the heart symbolism. In the endeavours to
mirror the divine household in such a communal, egalitarian way, the household of
Helfta offers an ideal way of life according to the Christian paradigm, forming a
direct contrast to the hierarchical order of the feudal society as well as of the Church
institution of its time.
80
Cf. Gertrude, Legatus, II, 8 (God invisible makes God’s self known through creation)
and especially Legatus, II, 9. Much modern theology views the triune life of God in a similar
way. It is not just an eschatological promise, but a present reality and therefore a historical
programme. See for example Miroslav Volf, ‘“The Trinity is our Social Program”: The
Doctrine of the Trinity and the Shape of Social Engagement’, Modern Theology, 14.3 (1998),
403–23.
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The Household as a Site of Civic

and Religious Instruction: Two Household
Books from Late Medieval Brabant∗
ANNEKE B. MULDER-BAKKER
I
n his Werke for Householders (beginning of the sixteenth century) Richard
Whytford advises his householder to read aloud on Sundays to all those residing
in the house. To as large a company as could be gathered together, the house-
holder (who could be a man or a woman) should read the meanings of the Pater
Noster and other prayers, of the Creed and the Ten Commandments, as well as other
texts of central importance to the Christian faith, texts which Whytford had compiled
in his book.1 A Werke for Householders is therefore a fine and explicit example of a
household codex or family book such as undoubtedly played a role in family life of
the late Middle Ages. Like the family Bible in Protestant circles of later centuries,
the household book appears to have served as a sort of family handbook for faith and
morals in the late medieval city.
∗
An earlier version of this essay was presented and published as a paper at the Leiden
Workshop on the Antwerp School (1999); see Al t’Antwerpen in die stad: Jan van Boendale
en de literaire cultuur van zijn tijd, ed. by Wim van Anrooij and others (Amsterdam: Prome-
theus, 2002), pp. 109–26. I wish to thank the organizers of the workshop, particularly Wim
van Anrooij, Frank Willaert, and Jos Reynaert, as well as the participants for their stimulating
criticism and their useful suggestions. The section about Beatrijs is an adaptation of parts of
my study ‘Views of the Laity: Women and Religious Teaching in the Low Countries’, in Vita
Religiosa e Identità Politiche: Universalità e Particolarismi nell’Europa del Tardo Medioevo,
ed. by Sergio Gensini (San Miniato: Pacini, 1997), pp. 301–24.
1
Quoted by Ann M. Hutchison, ‘Devotional Reading in the Monastery and in the Late
Medieval Household’, in De Cella in Seculum: Religious and Secular Life and Devotion in
Late Medieval England, ed. by Michael S. Sargent (Cambridge: Brewer, 1989), pp. 215–27
(p. 227).
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192 ANNEKE B. MULDER-BAKKER
This study will focus on two manuscripts of the late fourteenth or early fifteenth
century from the province of Brabant in the Low Countries (probably from Brussels
or Antwerp), which I believe were compiled for use as household books.2 Like the
English Werke for Householders, both manuscripts contain basic texts of the Chris-
tian faith, such as the Ten Commandments, and in addition texts of a moralistic-
didactic nature, intended to instruct the members of the family and household staff in
their civic duties. In all the sober beauty of their careful but not luxurious design,
these are codices which testify to a lay identity, both religious and civic, which took
shape in writing in the commercial centres of the Low Countries at this time. In the
following pages I will explore the nature of this identity and especially the role it
assigned to the mistress of the house. What stands out is that texts with a female pro-
tagonist were given a crucial place in both codices. Apparently the authors wanted
not only to demonstrate what was expected of a pious Christian and good citizen (the
woman figure as object); they also, more surprisingly, portray her as taking a great
deal of initiative and differentiating herself in a positive way from her male counter-
parts. Therefore, also as subjects the women are given all credit. It seems that the
authors opted for these main characters not only because women constituted their
main target group but also because they saw in women, especially the ladies of the
house, their most important allies in the struggle for a city life dominated by good
Christians and good burghers.3
Two Household Books
The first manuscript, The Hague, Royal Library, MS 76 E 5, dates from 1374 or
shortly before.4 This beautiful volume, often designated the ‘Beatrijs Codex’ after
2
By this term I do not mean the type of Hausbuch or booklets with practical and/or finan-
cial information which have been the subject of German research, but well-designed manu-
scripts that provided a practical ethics for the family. For Hausbuch, see Wolfgang Herborn,
‘Bürgerliches Selbstverständnis im spätmittelalterlichen Köln: Bemerkungen zu zwei Haus-
büchern aus der ersten Hälfte des 15. Jahrhunderts’, in Die Stadt in der Europäischen
Geschichte: Festschrift Edith Ennen, ed. by Werner Besch and others (Bonn: Röhrscheid, 1972),
pp. 490–520. A good status questionis is given by Herman Brinkman, Dichten uit liefde: Litera-
tuur in Leiden aan het einde van de Middeleeuwen (Hilversum: Verloren, 1997), pp. 191–94.
3
I am aware of the pitfall that women might have served only a literary role, as Lorna Hutson
maintains for literary works in sixteenth-century England. See Lorna Hutson, The Usurer’s
Daughter: Male Friendship and Fictions of Women in Sixteenth-Century England (London:
Routledge, 1994). My Brabantine manuscripts’ representation of women, as my argument will
show, is related in multiple and powerful ways to women’s civic roles and duties.
4
See Beatrijs: een middeleeuws Maria-mirakel, ed. by Theodoor Meder, trans. by Willem A.
Wilmink (Amsterdam: Prometheus, 1995); and the codicological description by Gerard I.
Lieftinck, ‘Beschrijving van het handschrift’, in Beatrijs, ed. by Armand L. Verhofstede
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The Household as a Site of Civic and Religious Instruction 193
the most famous text found in it, was designed and written with great care and
includes neatly executed illuminations or historiated initials as well as rubrics and
section marks to guide the reader through the texts. The codex must therefore be
treated as a whole, even though it contains texts by various authors. It must have
been made for a wealthy person, a member of the Brabant elite. This may have been
a nobleman at court, or his wife, or — more probably — a rich patrician from the
city of Brussels or Antwerp. I suspect it to be a household manuscript of a well-to-do
merchant family.5
The manuscript contains texts which the mistress of the house could read to her
sons, texts which the head of the household could use as a guideline for his public
duties, and texts such as the rhymed Creed, the Ten Commandments, and the Seven
Mercies, which all family members could learn by heart. The first text in the manu-
script is Dietsche Doctrinale (Morals in Dutch). It is a book of wisdom teachings,
the Dutch version of De Amore et Dilectione Dei et Proximi et Aliarum Rerum et de
Forma Vitae of Albertanus of Brescia, a legal expert and city author from Brescia in
the thirteenth century, probably translated by Jan van Boendale, who served as a city
clerk in Antwerp (c. 1310–c. 1350).6 This is followed by the Miracle Story of Bea-
trice, copied into the heart of the codex where, together with a few basic texts of the
Christian faith, it functions as the centrepiece of the volume. The codex concludes
with Heimelijkheid der Heimelijkheden (Secreta Secretorum in Dutch), a mirror for
princes written by the well-known author Jacob Maerlant.7 The manuscript thus
belongs to the cornucopia of codices containing didactic, moralistic, and/or
devotional texts which were often directed at a lay audience in the Low Countries.8
(Antwerp: De Vlijt, 1947), pp. 25–35. The manuscript has an Easter table giving a calculation
of the date of Easter, 1374. This date functions, therefore, as an ante quem, the codex may
actually have been written years before.
5
Meder (Beatrijs, pp. 39–40) assumes that the manuscript may have been made for the
Duchess of Brabant, Johanna. In one of the texts, however, a vernacular version of the Ten
Commandments, ‘And buying and selling is prohibited unless it is food or drink’ was added to
the third commandment, which points in the direction of a merchant family in the city. See
Nederlandsch Proza van de dertiende tot de achttiende eeuw, vol. I: Verzameling van
Nederlandsche Prozastukken van 1229–1476, ed. by Johannes van Vloten (Leiden: Gebhard,
1851), pp. 61–63. According to Miriam Piters, whom I thank for this information, this addi-
tion was taken over from Boendale’s Der Leken Spieghel.
6
The text is edited from the The Hague, Royal Library MS 76 E 5 by W. J. A. Jonckbloet,
Die Dietsche Doctrinale, leerdicht van den jare 1345, toegekend aan Jan Deckers, clerk der
stad Antwerpen (The Hague: Schinkel, 1842).
7
Jacob van Maerlant’s Heimelijkheid der Heimelijkheden, ed. by A. A. Verdenius (Am-
sterdam: Kruyt, 1917).
8
Some 70–80% of all manuscript production of vernacular texts in the Low Countries was
didactic, moralistic, and/or devotional literature. This is quite extraordinary in comparison to
France (30 or 40%) or Italy. See Thom F. C. Mertens, ‘The Modern Devotion and Innovation
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The second manuscript, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Marshall 29, belongs to

the same category.9 Soberly executed in two columns, with clear rubrics as well as
initials and section marks, it — like the Hague manuscript — was written by a single
hand and clearly designed as a whole. This codex also seems to have been intended
for a family in the city. Written around 1400, it contains three texts which are also
attributed to Boendale, and is thus the single richest source of writings by him. It
opens with Melibeus, a Middle Dutch version of another work by Albertanus of
Brescia, Liber de Consolatione.10 Adapted directly from the Latin, it contains a
number of characteristic passages which are missing in the version of Melibeus best
known to Anglophone readers, namely Chaucer’s Tale of Melibee. This text will
come up for detailed analysis in the last part of my discussion. It is followed by Jans
Teestye (John’s Lessons), a didactic dialogue composed by Boendale himself; and
Boec der Wraken (Domesday Book), very likely also by Boendale. After a few
shorter texts, including Noch meer vanden wiven (More about Women), it closes
with Dit zijn die x plagen ende die x gebode (The Ten Plagues and the Ten Com-
mandments). It is especially Melibeus and Jans Teestye that provide telling material
for this study. The manuscript is usually referred to as the Oxford codex, after the
library in which it is preserved.
Boendale and the Antwerp School
Both manuscripts contain texts with elementary religious teachings and ethical rules
of conduct for the individual citizen as well as texts intended to aid those in positions
of government. The latter make an appeal to the responsibility of the city magistrate
as well as the duke and his court. The texts cannot therefore be characterized as
in Middle Dutch Literature’, in Medieval Dutch Literature in its European Context, ed. by
Eric Kooper (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 226–41. See also Wat is
Wijsheid? Lekenethiek in de Middelnederlandse letterkunde, ed. by Joris Reynaert and others
(Amsterdam: Prometheus, 1994). This huge corpus of texts has only begun to be studied in
very recent years. One of the main issues is whether the texts were mainly directed at a semi-
religious audience (Modern Devotion and so forth, as is argued in older studies) or at an urban
lay audience. As to the Beatrijs codex, Lieftinck, ‘Beschrijving’, p. 35, still held that this
codex must have come from a male convent.
9
For a description of the Marshall manuscript, see Jan Deschamps, Middelnederlandse
Handschriften uit Europese en Amerikaanse Bibliotheken (Brussels: Koninklijke Bibliotheek,
1972), pp. 118–20.
10
Jan van Boendale, Melibeus, Het boec van Troeste ende van Rade, in Nederlandsche
Gedichten uit de veertiende eeuw van Jan van Boendale, Hein van Aken en anderen: Naar het
Oxfordsche handschrift, ed. by Ferdinand-A. Snellaert (Brussel: Hayez, 1869), pp. 1–136.
This edition also contains Jans Teestye, pp. 137–286, and the other texts mentioned here.
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exclusively ‘courtly’ or ‘urban’.11 They are, however, set clearly against the back-
drop of urban trading centres.
The codices must be viewed in terms of developments in Flanders and Brabant in
the fourteenth century. The political scene in this period — the up-and-coming trad-
ing centres of Brussels or Antwerp were taking their place beside the feudal capital
of Louvain; a crisis in ducal power arose first with the death of John II in 1312 and
again during the last years of John III (1312–55), when the only heirs left to the
throne were female — left the duke and the cities no choice but to cooperate.12 On
the one hand, flourishing commerce and textile manufacture in the cities formed the
economic base of ducal politics. The duke was dependent on city taxes and therefore
had to remain on friendly terms with the merchants. On the other hand, good ducal
government was conducive to urban prosperity. If the duke provided for peace and
effective government in his duchy, the city economy benefited.13 And when the
merchants went travelling, they had to rely on the protection of their ruler.
Urban self-interest led the towns to resent the extravagant and expansionist
politics of some of the dukes, particularly John II and his noble advisors. In 1314,
during the minority of his son, Duke John III, the ‘seven good cities’ of Louvain,
Brussels, Antwerp, and four others installed a regency of their own in Kortenberg
(1314–20). And in John III’s old age, they forced him and the prospective Duchess
Joan (1355–1406) to sign the ‘Joyeuse Entrée’, a treaty in which the cities’ claims
were recognized. In the meantime, urban aristocrats intermingled with noble coun-
sellors at court, and noble families intermarried with the town patriciate. It is no
wonder that their ethics and morals intermingled as well.
The overriding concern of ducal and city politics was to establish a ‘modern’ form
of government. Goaded on by the clergy, who naturally favoured a decent Christian
and peaceable government, and by jurists educated in Roman law, the duke and the
city magistrate strove to introduce an efficient form of rule which placed ordinary
administrative tasks in the hands of trained public servants. No longer would the
11
Wat is Wijsheid?, ed. by Reynaert and others, p. 19.
12
Raymond van Uyten, ‘Vorst, adel en steden: een driehoeksverhouding in Brabant van de
twaalfde tot de zestiende eeuw’, Bijdragen tot de Geschiedenis, 59 (1976), 93–122; Jan van
Gerven, ‘Nationaal gevoel en stedelijke politieke visies in het veertiende-eeuwse Brabant: Het
voorbeeld van Jan van Boendale’, Bijdragen tot de Geschiedenis, 59 (1976), 145–64; Paul de
Ridder, ‘Dynastiek en nationaal gevoel in Brabant onder de regering van Hertog Jan I (1267–
1294)’, Handelingen Kon. Zuidned. Mij voor Taal- Letterkunde en Geschiedenis, 33 (1979),
73–99; Piet Avonds, Brabant tijdens de regering van hertog Jan III (1312–1356), vol. I: De
grote politieke krisissen (Brussel: Paleis der Academiën, 1981); and vol. II: Land en
Instellingen (Brussel: Paleis der Academiën, 1991).
13
For this reason Boendale heaps praise on Duke John I in his John’s Lessons, vv. 2370–
77: ‘Therefore he was a good man, noble Duke John, who was the first of this name in
Brabant: No matter how great his enemy, his people were able to travel without fear, with
their goods, through his lands; no one at all would harm them.’
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self-reliance of feudal lords and the interests of the clan (amicitia) — with its feud-
ing and taking of the law into its own hands — serve to maintain order in society,
but rather a modern system of government based on legislation and rules of law14
and guided by the common good of the citizens.15
This idea finds succinct expression in the poem Hoemen ene stat regeren sal (How
One Should Rule a City), which according to Van Anrooij must have originated in
the circle of what he calls the Antwerp School in the first decade of the fourteenth
century.16 I paraphrase:
Those who wish to govern a city [in keeping with the new ideals] have to remember
the following points: [instead of being led by a sense of family honour and family
interests] cultivate harmony and loyalty; keep in mind the common good; do not
violate the freedom of the city [i.e. the autonomy which the city had gained from the
ruler of the land]; speak often about the common good; have the city governed by wise
persons [i.e. legal experts]; keep careful watch over public funds and use them for the
common good; remain on ‘friendly’ terms with the subjects [i.e. give priority to the
interests of the total community of subjects]; give equal treatment to rich and poor;
abide by the [written] statutes; always exile malevolent persons from the city; be loyal
to the ruling prince. This is the teaching of the wise elders. And if it is not observed,
the city will find itself in fear and terror.
It was Boendale or a group of clerics called ‘the Antwerp School’ who took it upon
themselves to advocate these ideals.17 Jan van Boendale is the sole author known by
14
Boendale, Jans Teestye, vv. 1032–34: ‘And you can be sure of this, no point of virtue is
more befitting to rulers of the land than justice; for with this they fulfil all their tasks.’
15
The raison d’être even of the duke was the common good. See Boendale, Jans Teestye,
vv. 1045–51: In the beginning people robbed each other as they pleased, ‘so mere necessity
forced people to create a ruler who ensured that each be given its own; thus the lord of the
land was first elevated to honour and high rank all for the sake of justice.’ But merchants and
farmers contributed the most to the common good; see ch. xxvii: ‘Vanden groten orbore die
comt vanden Coepman en vanden Ackerman.’ See for this Piet Avonds, ‘Ghemein Oirbaer:
Volkssouvereiniteit en politieke ethiek in Brabant in de veertiende eeuw’, in Wat is Wijsheid?,
ed. by Reynaert, pp. 164–80.
16
Wim van Anrooij, ‘Hoemen ene stat regeren sal: Een vroege stadstekst uit de Zuidelijke
Nederlanden’, Spiegel der Letteren, 34 (1992), 139–57, with an edition of the various versions
of the text. I quote the version as it is found in Boendale’s own work in Brussels, Royal
Library, MS 15.658, fol. 122r. Jans Teestye, in the Oxford manuscript, also contains a section
on ‘Hoemen ene stat regeren sal’. There, as well as elsewhere in the text, the same ideals are
set forth. See below.
17
J. G. Heymans, ‘Geschiedenis in Der Leken Spieghel’, in Wat duikers vent is dit! Opstel-
len voor W. M. H. Hummelen, ed. by G. R. W. Dibbets and P. W. M. Wackers (Wijhe: Quarto,
1989), pp. 25–40; Wim van Anrooij, ‘Recht en rechtvaardigheid binnen de Antwerpse
School’, in Wat is Wijsheid?, ed. by Reynaert, pp. 149–63; Joris Reynaert, ‘Profaan-ethische
literatuur in het Middelnederlands: enkele grote lijnen’, in Grote Lijnen: Syntheses over
Middelnederlandse Letterkunde, ed. by Wim van Anrooij (Amsterdam: Prometheus, 1995),
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name.18 More than half of the works identified with the Antwerp school bear his
name — and recent research shows that he probably wrote the other half as well.19
Characteristic for his work is that it always attempts to make learning from the
classical and medieval Latin tradition accessible to a public unschooled in Latin. Just
as Chaucer’s work has been characterized as ‘a range of different kinds of transla-
tion’, we can also view Boendale as a translator or transmitter of beneficial knowl-
edge, and in a variety of forms.20 He translated or adapted existing works (Dietsche
Doctrinale and Melibeus) and created new ones (Der Leken Spieghel, Boec der
Wrake). He made use of the genre of historiography (Brabantse Yeesten, Van den
derden Eduwaert), but also of the treatise (Der Leken Spieghel) and the dialogue
(Jans Teestye). He derived his knowledge from the writings of his predecessors,
especially Maerlant, but even more so from the late classical and Christian tradition
and — like Chaucer — from Italian city authors, in whom he recognized the same
dedication to civic virtues and city autonomy as in Albertanus of Brescia, the same
struggle to put an end to interference by the ruling prince and to destructive feud-
ing.21 Like the Italian authors, Boendale tried to provide his fellow citizens with
pp. 99–116. The following works are generally considered part of this group: Brabantse
Yeesten (The Deeds of the Brabantines) with five sequels written by Boendale between 1316
and 1351; a Korte Kroniek van Brabant with a sequel (c. 1322–33), also by Boendale, and a
third historical work by his hand, Van den Derden Eduwaert (shortly after 1340); then Der
Leken Spiegel (Mirror for Lay People) (c. 1325–30), Boendale’s main work; Jans Teestye
(John’s Lessons) (c. 1330–34), and the Boec vander Wraken (Domesday Book) (two versions
1346 and 1351), all by Boendale himself. There is also Sidrac (1318, definitely not by Boen-
dale), Melibeus, and Dietsche Doctrinale; these last two are Dutch adaptations of the work of
Albertanus of Brescia, published anonymously under the name of Jan de Clerk. There are
sound reasons for attributing these works to Boendale as well: he was a clerk, and the content
is exactly what one would expect of him. Finally, there are two very short pieces: Boec Exem-
plaer and Hoemen ene stat regeren sal.
18
Peter C. van der Eerden, ‘Het maatschappijbeeld van Jan van Boendale’, Tijdschrift voor
Sociale Geschiedenis, 5 (1979), 219–39; the study by Jan van Gerven in the same issue of this
journal is wide of the mark.
19
Joris Reynaert, ‘Boendale of “Antwerpse School”? Over het auteurschap van Melibeus
en Dietsche doctrinale’, in Al t’Antwerpen, ed. by Van Anrooij, pp. 127–57.
20
Glending Olson, ‘Geoffrey Chaucer’, in The Cambridge History of Medieval English
Literature, ed. by David Wallace (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 566–88
(p. 576). Herman Pleij, ‘The Rise of Urban Literature in the Low Countries’, in Medieval
Dutch Literature, ed. by Kooper, p. 75, calls it a ‘passion for annexation and adaptation as a
cultural principle among the middle class’.
21
For Chaucer, see David Wallace, Chaucerian Polity: Absolutist Lineages and Associated
Forms in England and Italy (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), esp. ch. 8, pp. 212–
46: ‘Chaucer and Albertano [and Boendale, I would add] are in many respects kindred spirits:
figures balancing allegiances to associational and hierarchical structures in the attempt to
establish a new form of authorial identity’ (p. 216).
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knowledge and a healthy dose of self-confidence to equip them for their task. In
doing so, he placed a striking emphasis on the education of the ordinary citizen while
criticizing academics who may have spent as many as thirty years studying in
Paris.22 Equally striking is the absence of saints’ legends and saint lore. These were
no longer necessary for the good Christian city-dwellers of his day, he maintained,
and they were probably too much abused for clerical purposes.23 What he did make
use of were adages and popular sayings. His works were therefore not at all devo-
tional or spiritual, nor were they mystical or pious; they testify to a moral-ethical
awareness and a sturdy sense of self-esteem in the upper levels of urban society.24
The texts seem to have been intended for adults who often had wasted their years in
school, like Wouter in Jans Teestye and Melibee, and for young people, who were
urged not to make the same mistake.25 They were probably read mainly in small cir-
cles. The texts provided instruction — seldom entertainment — for both listeners
and readers, and stimulated reflection as well. The dialogues, which exploit the inter-
ests and personalities of the participants, as well as the contradictory views found in
one and the same work are the provocative raw material for discussion. This is a
clever strategy for ‘remedial’ (young) adult education.26 And the best imaginable
ambience for carrying it out was the household.
22
Boendale, Jans Teestye, vv. 3424–29: Jan remarks to his conversation partner Wouter:
‘Even if you are blind as far as biblical knowledge is concerned, do not doubt in the least:
your simple, clear faith is as genuine to God — of this I am sure — as a cleric’s who spent
thirty years in Paris.’ See also Melibeus below.
23
Boendale, Jans Teestye, vv 536–625: In the early days miracles and wonder-working saints
were necessary because the people were heathen. Now that is no longer the case: ‘Wouter, I tell
you truly that among the people now more holy persons can be found than ever before. Indeed
they are as holy as Saint Nicholas or Saint Augustine or Saint Agatha or Saint Gertrude.’
24
The nobility as a separate category is hardly mentioned in Boendale’s texts. His topic is
the cities and their relationship to the ruling prince. Needless to say, however, that town
society as a self-confident, unified whole was likely more an ideal image of Boendale’s than a
historical reality.
25
Now and then Boendale forgets that he is writing a dialogue and speaks directly to his
‘dear children’ (Jans Teestye and also in Dietsche Doctrinale), or to ‘you farmers’ or ‘you
merchants’ (in Jans Teestye). Reynaert believes that the author of Dietsche Doctrinale had
mainly young people in mind. I would suggest extending that to entire families with children
growing up. In Jans Teestye Boendale uses the figure of Wouter to portray a (young?) adult
man who spent his school days in the pub and now regrets this, as he has to prepare himself
for administrative tasks in the city. Exactly the same is true of Melibeus. See also Van
Anrooij, ‘Recht en rechtvaardigheid’, p. 156.
26
Boendale, Jans Teestye, vv. 1731–33: Jan says to Wouter: ‘I had thought you much wiser,
and you know nothing at all. Yet you did go to school in the past.’ But Wouter preferred the
pub to school: ‘This made me extremely frivolous, so I learned little that was good — which I
regret, I can tell you. So you people should study hard now.’ Melibeus also complains that he
failed to pay attention in school and for this reason asks his wife to instruct him.
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Along with Maerlant, Boendale belongs to the oldest group of secular authors in
the vernacular. This means that he could not fall back on an authoritative tradition. A
treatise included in Der Leken Spieghel suggests that Boendale was aware of his
unusual position.27 He attempts to invest the lay poet with authority and to distance
himself from compromising colleagues. On the one hand he objects to the authors of
vernacular fiction who peddle highly unlikely fantasies. These writers apparently
discredit the vernacular as such.28 On the other hand, he attempts to lay claim to the
Latin tradition. By telling lay authors (like himself) that they should follow the Latin
rules of writing and grammar and rely on the authority of the ‘greats’, he appropri-
ates this tradition. As a non-academic, a non-monk, and a non–ordained priest he
does not, however, automatically enjoy the authority of those who are supported by
the institution of the Church and the auctoritates. For this reason he demands that
the behaviour of lay authors be beyond reproach — the same requirement made of
women if they wished to be heard. They have to earn their authority by practicing
what they preach, something the clergy, in his view, failed to do. They should write
by following their nature; his own occupation he considers a natural drive: ‘My mind
cannot be idle, I have to write, compose poetry or read; for it is in my nature’ (vv
62–63). With these words he exposes his vulnerability and seems to move danger-
ously close (at least it must have appeared so to his contemporaries) to the position
of women. Did they not also, simply, follow their nature? In the Canterbury Tales
this ambivalence is wonderfully exploited in the persuasive tactics of the Parson in
the Parson’s Tale on the one hand and of Prudence in the Tale of Melibee on the
other.29 Just how all this can be interpreted I will clarify later, in the discussion of
Prudence and women in Boendale’s work.
Boendale makes a distinction between ‘dichters’ — authors of literary texts in
prose or verse for which French contemporaries would use the term ‘faits’ and the
27
Boendale, Der Leken Spieghel III, c. xv, ed. by M. de Vries, 3 vols (Leiden, 1844–48),
pp. 158–72; English translation in ‘A Fourteenth-Century Vernacular Poetics: Jan van
Boendale’s “How Writers Should Write” (with a Modern English translation of the text by
Erik Kooper)’, ed. by J. P. Gerritsen and others, in Medieval Dutch Literature, ed. by Kooper,
pp. 245–60.
28
Gerritsen and others assume that Boendale is annoyed by the historical untruths. The
point is rather that these stories contain dishonourable insinuations that tarnish the good name
of people like Charlemagne, who is presented as an illegitimate child and as stealing.
29
See Jane Cowgill, ‘Patterns of Feminine and Masculine Persuasion in the Melibee and
the Parson’s Tale’, in Chaucer’s Religious Tales, ed. by C. David Benson and Elisabeth
Robertson (Cambridge: Brewer, 1990), pp. 171–83 (p. 178–80): The pattern of feminine
persuasion ‘suggests that women must persuade in a certain way, through virtuous acts as well
as through wise words, because of the social realities of the medieval world in which women
were powerless and distrusted. [. . .] [L]ocating their validity in the support of male authorities
and the power of the exclusively masculine church hierarchy’ makes it possible for the parson
‘not [to] include himself in the lessons he teaches or implicate himself in the sins he describes’.
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English ‘makynge’30 — and true ‘poëten’.31 The latter occupy the highest category,
in his view: they expound the ‘knowledge and wisdom’ of the ancients (v. 193); they
gather together lessons of eternal value (v. 60). In keeping with the rules of the Latin
art of writing, they illustrate these lessons with authorities and exempla (vv. 28–29),
or by taking over parts or all of works by great predecessors. The modern notion of
plagiarism and intellectual property was foreign to them. In his old age Boendale
even encourages his reader as follows: ‘And he who practices writing should write
down what he finds in the material of an earlier time.’32 A logical consequence of
this approach is to compile instructive texts, either newly composed or translated,
into codices like the two household books of this study. And just as Boendale him-
self sprinkles exempla through his work, a codex can also be livened up with an
exemplary tale.33 In the two manuscripts, the tales of Beatrice and Melibee are more
than merely graphic illustrations, a picture to accompany a story. They fulfil the role
of exemplum described by Larry Scannon:
In its narrative the exemplum re-enacts the actual, historical embodiment of communal
value in a protagonist or an event, and then, in its moral, effects the value’s re-
emergence with the obligatory force of a moral law. [. . .] [T]he exemplum expects the
members of its audience to be convinced by its sententia precisely because it expects
them to put themselves in the position of its protagonist, to emulate the protagonist’s
moral success, or avoid his or her moral failure. It persuades by conveying a sense of
communal identity with its moral lesson.34
If, as in our texts, the protagonist is a woman, this has unsuspected ramifications.
The Power of Persuasion
Fully to appreciate the revolutionary changes these city authors had in mind, and to
have a clearer view of the role played in this scenario by women, we should remem-
ber that in the power structures of the high and later Middle Ages, princes and their
consorts had different tasks. Each had their own duties, their own sphere of influence
with the accompanying procedures and means of exercising power. Kings were men
of action; they fought and waged campaigns. Queens intervened with words; they
30
See the illuminating article by Olson, ‘Geoffrey Chaucer.’
31
Boendale, Der Leken Spieghel, III, vv. 57–60: ‘For a writer (dichter) who is a poet
(poëte) wants his teachings and writings to become known, and to endure forever.’
32
Sequel to Boec van der Wrake (vv. 2504–09), quoted by Wim van Anrooij, ‘Boendales
Boec van der Wraken: datering en ontstaansgeschiedenis’, Queeste, 2 (1995), pp. 40–53 (p. 51).
33
Boendale, Der Leken Spieghel, III, vv. 195–96: ‘For exempla can make a difficult
meaning clear.’
34
Larry Scanlon, Narrative, Authority and Power: The Medieval Exemplum and the Chau-
cerian Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994) pp. 34–35.
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talked and brought about peaceful solutions.35 This held for princes but appears to be
true of fourteenth-century patrician families also. ‘Means of exercising power’ may
at first sight seem too weighty a term for these women’s entreaties. Accustomed as
we are to power based on strength and coercion, we almost automatically think of
the blind power of the state and the ability to coerce. Pauline Stafford, in her work
on English queens, argues, however, that a peaceful ‘influencing’ or ‘persuasion’
which leads to the same result should be given the same status of means of power.36
And in view of its peaceful character, this persuasive influencing deserves an even
higher status than the power of the sword — certainly in a Christian society.
At the heart of the Christian message, with its emphasis on peace and justice, lies
an aversion to violence. Therefore, in Brabant of the fourteenth century, a world in
which the Christian faith had penetrated into everyday life, the ruling prince and the
governing authorities had to make serious work of basing their rule on peaceful
Christian principles. That is a main reason why clerks felt urged to compile house-
hold books which contained essential texts of the Christian faith along with rules
regarding the duties of those involved in city government. And that is why they
propagated ‘female’ ways of exerting power.
There was another, very different factor at work here as well. Ruling princes of
the fourteenth century and their educated clerks would have liked to impose their
will on the townspeople from above, but they did not yet have at their disposal the
means of power to bring this about. They were dependent on having accommodating
and agreeable subjects — and this was precisely where women and their power came
into play. A clerk like Boendale was possibly well aware of this. In a historical work
of his, Van den derden Eduwaert, he describes the bravura and display of power by
King Edward III and his allies in the first phase of the Hundred Years’ War. All the
attempts to impress and overawe came to nothing, however. Boendale saw only a
growing chaos and misery for the citizens.37 He even feared that ‘Now the time may
well have come which Christ spoke of’, alluding to the time of the Antichrist (vv.
1571–72). This situation continued until a woman appeared on the scene — Jeanne
of Valois, ‘the old duchess of Hainault’, whom we encounter as mediator in various
35
I have argued this case in another study, on Jeanne of Valois, the Countess of Holland,
Sealand, and Hainaut and powerful consort of William III; see Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker,
‘Jeanne of Valois: The Power of a Consort’, in Capetian Women, ed. by Kathleen Nolan (New
York: Palgrave, 2003), pp. 253–69.
36
Pauline Stafford, ‘Emma: The Powers of the Queen in the Eleventh Century’, in Queens
and Queenship in Medieval Europe, ed. by Anne Duggan (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1997), pp.
3–26; see also her Queen Emma and Queen Edith: Queenship and Women’s Power in
Eleventh-Century England (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997).
37
Jan van Boendale, Vanden derden Eduwaert, ed. J. G. Heymans (Nijmegen, ALFA,
1983), v. 1556: ‘with fire and sword, when neither man nor woman was spared’; and, v. 1565:
‘When he wrought great destruction with pillage and slaughter and set fire to every village he
found’.
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disputes.38 ‘She made great efforts for peace between each king and lord, unceas-
ingly, with all her might[!]; and, frightened by what they were doing, she went at
once’ first to the Duke of Brabant, an ally, then to the French and English kings.39
She gets them all around the table in Esplechin (v. 1340) and manages to force
through a truce (vv. 1670–1908).40 Boendale and the common people breathe a sigh
of relief. In Boendale’s view, then, it is a woman who brings this about. At some
other points in his historical work Boendale also portrays other women rulers as
playing remarkably positive roles.41
Women’s strength, it becomes clear, lay in their ability to reconcile opposing
parties and promote solidarity within a group by means not of violence and war but
of words and powers of persuasion. Someone like Jeanne transposed the old soli-
darity of friends and relatives in the clan to the level of the County of Holland; she
reconciled the old sense of honour and shame with the requirements of the new
government; she brought warring factions to a truce in Esplechin.
In historical reality, therefore, Jeanne acted no differently from Lady Prudence,
who ‘secretly’ arranged a reconciliation for her husband in the fictional setting of
Melibeus — I cannot help but jump ahead of my story here. The similarity is
striking, and it clarifies in one stroke the place of the two household books in the
historical context of (feudal) clan structures versus the new government in the cities.
As we shall see later, Melibeus has as its central theme Melibee’s desire to avenge an
attack on his house with a vendetta, while his wife — herself a victim of the attack
— tries to persuade him to bring the case to court or at least to agree to an amicable
settlement. Toward the end of the didactic poem, when Melibee is finally persuaded
not to seek vengeance by force of arms, Prudence asks for permission to go her own
way in secret for a time:
give me a short respite
[. . .]
Prudence quietly called
The adversaries together, who came to her in secret.
She told them about all the suffering
That would come from war and all the good from peace;
38
See further Mulder-Bakker, ‘Jeanne of Valois’.
39
Boendale, Vanden derden Eduwaert, vv. 1740–41: She convinces them that ‘it is better
for you to have less rather than more dishonour’. Prudentia also convinces her husband that
the small dishonour of losing face in a reconciliation is preferable to the great disgrace of
losing out in battle.
40
More than 10% of the entire text is devoted to these negotiations. Jeanne is therefore the
third main character in that work, along with the two antagonist kings.
41
Remco Sleiderink (Brussels), whom I thank for his information, called my attention to
the last section of the Brabantse Yeesten, first version, which sketches an extremely laudatory
portrait of the first wife of Duke John III.
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And that they should also understand that they had done great wrong
To her daughter and to herself, which so enraged her husband
That he was determined to take revenge at any price.
But if they were sorry for their misdeeds and wished to make amends
without delay,
They would remain on peaceful terms with Melibee, her husband,
And no harm would befall them. (vv. 3333–54)
Like Jeanne and dozens of generations of queens and mistresses of the house before
her, Prudence made use of her ‘authority’ to intervene and brought about a recon-
ciliation, a non-violent restoration of order and a peaceful redress of the dishonour
done to her husband’s good name.
The Household Books Again
As mentioned earlier, the two codices studied here both contain texts for individual
Christians (personal morality) as well as useful instruction for the government offi-
cial (political ethics). Those who abide by these rules, the message goes, can face
God and their fellow citizens with confidence. Relying heavily on Cicero’s De Ami-
citia, the author of Dietsche Doctrinale in the one codex praises the friendship and
love (minne) between God and man, between man and his neighbour, and between
husband and wife. A good citizen need never despair if he lives his life in keeping
with this friendship.42 Jans Teestye in the other codex declares: ‘The people were
never so well trained, both in the faith and in the law’ as they are now (v. 490). He
places the farmer and the merchant in secular life on the same level as the priest and
the virgin in the religious life. What exactly a self-confident, Christian life of this
sort amounts to in practice is then illustrated in the two exemplifications, short narra-
tives placed in the middle of mainly discursive texts: Beatrice in the one codex as an
example of unflagging friendship, and Prudence in the Oxford manuscript as polit-
ical virtue incarnate. Here the crucial role of women becomes visible.
In treatises such as Der Leken Spieghel and Jans Teestye, the role of women is
sketched by citing authorities and exempla. Jans Teestye even devotes five entire
chapters — more than five hundred lines, or one-eighth of the work — to the prob-
lem of women. As do most of his contemporaries, John takes for granted the funda-
mentally bad nature of women, although he does not trace this back to original sin.
When discussing this point of doctrine, he heaps all the blame on Adam.43 Neverthe-
less, he begins his tirade about women thus:
42
Boendale, Dietsche Doctrinale, I, vv. 596–99: ‘The person who sets his hope on Him
will surely be protected, saved, and fed — guarded from all ill.’ And III, vv. 1335–36: ‘Wise
men of old already wrote that one should not be dispirited.’
43
Boendale, Jans Teestye, vv. 306–07: ‘So the foolish man ate that apple because he
imagined he could be like God.’
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Woman is unreliable by nature, always miserly and greedy, Quarrelsome and inconstant,
vengeful and merciless. She is also credulous and uneducated: For this reason women
are forbidden To enter wise councils, whether at court or in towns. (vv. 2638–59)
A disastrous trait of women is that they can keep no secrets, and the higher they
climb up the social ladder, the more men they deceive (vv. 2670–2709). Woman
must be subordinate to man and orient herself to him, for he is the person who mat-
ters. ‘God has given men great blessings in his life: wisdom, courage, and strength,
with which they maintain the world’ (vv. 2822–25).
What strikes me about this list of womanly vices is that there are of course echoes
of the old formulas about women’s failings, but they seem to be ‘politically’ tinged
and chosen to demonstrate the weakness of the clan system. The point seems to be
that women are not suited for the new city government. Even more surprisingly,
Wouter, John’s conversation partner, who always comes with some complaint,
seems to jump to the defence of women.44 This is quite remarkable and harks back to
the prologue where Boendale admits that on an earlier occasion he was the target of
considerable criticism (vv. 92–101). As Herman Brinkman rightly argues, this must
refer to the misogynist portrayal of women in the Leken Spieghel and the objections
raised by Rogier van Leefdaal and his wife Agnes van Cleef, to whom the work was
dedicated. Boendale hastens to explain that he regards Agnes as highly as her
husband.45 And to Wouter he explains that a ‘vrouw’, that is, the good housewife,
should of course not be confused with a ‘wijf’, the generic woman. A good house-
wife has overcome her weak nature. She is
often wise, her advice is usually good and always honourable as well. She zealously
keeps her husband at peace when she can. (vv. 3052–56)
This does not alter the fact that
The good wise men of old who already knew about good and evil, Both Socrates and
Plato, Demosthenes and Cato, Solomon and Ovid, Seneca and Horace, And many
others, too, that I cannot now name for you, They all teach and write about the failings
of women And about their frail nature, more frail than that of other creatures. (vv.
3083–3117)
Boendale therefore has the auctoritates on his side. This passage merits close atten-
tion, I believe, because three things can be learned from it. First of all, if I am right
in assuming that Jans Teestye was intended to stimulate discussion in the family
circle, then the members of the family were actually given here all the arguments pro
and contra, complete with references. The organization of the chapters, with John’s
long tirade followed by a protest from Wouter, lends extra weight to the praise of the
44
Boendale, Jans Teestye, v. 2972: ‘Jan, I’m very surprised that you speak so fiercely
about women. It seems you have defamed them.’
45
Boendale, Jans Teestye, vv. 36–39: ‘I maintain that God our Lord created the one like
the other; they are equally endowed with both beauty and honour.’
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good housewife, however, and actually gives it a kind of authorial fiat. Secondly, the
fact that Wouter protests means that in the world of Wouter and John, Brabant of the
fourteenth century, there was quite likely a reasonably balanced image of women,
possibly even a positive one. A woman like Agnes van Cleef also testifies to this. In
the traditional family relationships they apparently played a role that could not be
overlooked. It is also clear — and this is the third point — that Boendale has great
difficulty accepting this. The two exempla in the manuscript will further exemplify
my three points.
The Miracle Story of Beatrice
Beatrice is the type of citizen whose actions are guided by friendship and loyalty —
loyalty to her lover and to her children.46 These qualities dominate her entire life.
Herself a member of the social upper crust of a commercial city, she is a fitting
example for Boendale’s circle of readers. She shares their way of life, at least during
the seven years of her marriage. Moreover, like a pious merchant’s wife, she knows
the basic texts of her faith, the Ave Maria and the Pater Noster, which — to make
things unmistakably clear for the reader — are copied into the codex immediately
following her life story.
At first sight Beatrijs seems to tell the well-known Marian legend of a runaway
nun and sacristan. Seduced by a man, she leaves the convent and spends all her
money with him. Coming back after years of wandering, she finds that Mary has
saved her place by filling in for her during her absence.47 Caesarius of Heisterbach,
the thirteenth-century collector of exempla, was the first to incorporate this exem-
plum into his work. He even includes it twice. The rhymed Beatrijs, as found in our
manuscript, follows the main outline of Caesarius’s text but completely changes the
tenor of the story. The religious exemplum has become a public exemplification.48
For Caesarius the nun is a hopeless (and nameless) case, a fallen woman, victim of a
man who only has designs on her money. As soon as the couple have gone through
the money, the seducer leaves the poor girl to fend for herself. She wanders around,
46
Beatrijs, ed. by Meder; see also the critical reconstruction of the text by Antonius M.
Duinhoven, De geschiedenis van ‘Beatrijs’ (Utrecht: HES, 1989), and the annotated edition by
Frenk Lulofs, Beatrijs, Nijhoffs Nederlandse Klassieken (Leiden: Nijhoff, 1983). See further
Frits P. van Oostrom, Beatrijs en tweefasenstructuur: over de betrekkingen tussen wereldlijke
en geestelijke cultuur in de Middeleeuwen (Utrecht: HES, 1983), and Jef Janssens, ‘Een
pleidooi voor Beatrijs’ geliefde: die iongelinck sach op die suverliken, Daer hi ghestade minne
toe droech’, in Tegendraads Genot: opstellen over de kwaliteit van middeleeuwse teksten, ed.
by Karel Porteman and Werner Verbeke (Leuven: Peeters, 1996), pp. 73–82.
47
Robert Guiette, La Légende de la sacristine: Étude de littérature comparée (Paris:
Champion, 1927).
48
For this distinction I am indebted to Scanlon, Narrative, Authority and Power, pp. 34–35.
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begging and prostituting herself until, in desperation, she comes back and finds that
Mary has saved her place. Caesarius’s lesson: this is what happens when pious
creatures run out into the wicked world. They should stay at home!
The Beatrijs is very different. Here an aristocratic young lady has entered the con-
vent at the age of twelve, at a time when she was already deeply in love with a noble
and courteous man. She is unable to forget him and, years later, begs him to come and
take her away. She leaves her habit and her keys with Mary, to whom she commends
herself. The initiative is therefore hers, and her motive for leaving the convent is
loyalty to her lover. The two share long years of love and happiness, and their union is
blessed with two lovely children. After the money is gone — his money — and famine
has fallen over the country, the lover is not able to cope with the situation and leaves.
He is the loser. Beatrice accepts her responsibility and starts to provide for the children.
For seven unhappy years she earns a living by selling her body. During this time she
continues praying to Mary and saying the Hours of the Virgin. She feels contrition
and never falls into black despair. After those years, grown older and wiser, she is
ordered by God to return to the cloister. She leaves her sons with a caring widow and
takes up her old profession. When Beatrice comes home, she is thirty-three years old,
an age which bears an obvious symbolism. If the time periods are intended literally as
well as symbolically, she is now in her ‘third age’. the time of life in which many
married women became widows and entered an anchorage or convent.49 She feels
remorse about her sinful life and makes a full confession, as a good Christian should.
The lesson? First, we are struck by the lessons which are stated explicitly.50 The
poet regularly stops the story to refer to last-minute conversions, to explain the need
for correction, or to set forth the meaning of the Ave Maria. He presumably added
the section on confession at the end.51 Its effect is heightened in the manuscript by
the Ave Maria, the rhymed Pater Noster, and the other religious texts which immedi-
ately follow Beatrijs. The reader may apply the lessons at once.
49
See my Lives of the Anchoresses: The Rise of the Urban Recluse in Medieval Europe
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005).
50
Following Van Oostrom, Beatrijs, I believe that the implied audience is a lay audience,
aristocratic and urban, and not the monastic audience of Caesarius.Van Oostrom analyzed the
Beatrijs without taking into account the context of the codex in which it appears. For a correct
interpretation, it is, to my view, essential to keep in mind the urban world view, the urban
intellectual background as it is phrased in the rest of the codex; see Lee Patterson, Negotiating
the Past: The Historical Understanding of Medieval Literature (Madison: University of
Wisconsin Press, 1978), pp. 115–53.
51
There is an ongoing debate as to whether the original text ended with Beatrice coming
home to the cloister (v. 864; aesthetically the most satisfying end and very comforting for a lay
audience) or whether it included Beatrice’s penitence and confession (more satisfying, not to say
necessary, from an ecclesiastical point of view). In the context of this manuscript one can under-
stand why such basic doctrines as penitence and confession belong to the core of the text.
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Secondly, according to Dietsche Doctrinale, the tract preceding the Beatrijs

narrative, a person does not earn paradise by his status — not even his monastic
status — but by his inclination: his trust in God, his friendship and love, his loyalty
to his family. If the reader is not impressed, he need only read Beatrice’s life story.
That provides what we might call a worst-case scenario, and even that case was
saved. Among the short religious texts following Beatrijs are ten lines comparing
Christ and his Church to a ship: though assailed by devils and men, it nevertheless
brings the faithful safely into the harbour of the Glory of God. Only he who drops
out of the ship and fails to climb aboard again will perish. Beatrice did not drop out,
and neither should the burghers of Brussels and Antwerp.
Thirdly, the question I find most intriguing, is why Beatrice, a woman and a
mother, is chosen to illustrate the ideal of a good Christian. Why not an exemplary
man, a Rogier van Leefdaal or a Willem Cornecolve, to whom Boendale dedicated
his texts. Why do we find a woman at the heart of this codex? Two possible reasons
come to mind. The first is that in the division of labour between men and women, in
the consortium of the merchant and his wife, the lady of the house was simply the
one responsible for the moral and religious education of the children and other mem-
bers of the household.52 This explains why she had to be the first person addressed in
the household book. As in advertising, the author places his message in the mouth of
a figure with whom the primary target group can identify. But there is another reason
as well, namely that in the city the woman is ‘the persuasive face of power’ similar
to the princesses at court. She, the patrician woman, the good housewife, was ex-
pected to embody these new qualities and live as an example of responsible citizen-
ship. She personifies Christian morality, to which the authors attached the greatest
possible importance. My second codex, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Marshall 29
makes this even clearer.
Melibeus
Nowadays Melibeus is not a favoured object of scholarly study.53 It is considered

boring and moralistic, and although the protagonist is a woman, modern-day femi-
nists do not wish to identify with Prudence. In the late Middle Ages, however, it was
a widely read didactic poem. Translations and adaptations were made not only by
52
See for instance Ruusbroec’s ‘Letter VII’, in Jan van Ruusbroec, Opera Omnia, ed. by
G. de Baere and others (Turnhout: Brepols, 1991), X, 607, vv. 25–27 (English translation
p. 606). I owe this quotation to Thom Mertens.
53
Lee Patterson, ‘What Man Artow? Authorial Self-Definition in the “Tale of Sir Thopas”
and “The Tale of Melibee”’, Studies in the Age of Chaucer, 11 (1989), 117–75; Cowgill,
‘Patterns’; C. P. Collette, ‘Heeding the Counsel of Prudence: A Context for the “Melibee”’,
Chaucer Review, 29 (1995), 416–33; David Wallace, ‘Household Rhetoric: Violence and
Eloquence in the “Tale of Melibee”’, in his Chaucerian Polity, 212–46.
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Boendale, but also by Dirc Potter, Chaucer, and even Christine de Pizan. And I read
it with fascination. What was it that so intrigued me?
At first sight the poem seems to function as an allegory. Mel-ibeus, literally the
man who likes to have his mouth smeared with syrup or honey, sees his daughter,
that is, his own soul, become critically injured while he is out giving himself over to
the temptations of the world. The entire setting of the story, however, is a patrician
house and the clan of a high-ranking person in the city — Antwerp, I would guess, in
the fourteenth century. This means that it is also a didactic poem about how a
Brabant patrician should behave in times of catastrophe. Melibee is a potentate with
an injured sense of honour, who takes great pride in his wealth and his many friends.
In order to avenge the wrong done to him, he calls his friends together and asks them
for advice. The author here portrays the old clan council, where the head of a house
confers with friends and relatives. But the friends prove to be mainly ‘pluym-
strijkers’, toadying types, with the exception of a surgeon and an old man. The group
includes many impetuous young men who are ready to run out and take immediate
violent action. At this point Prudence claims her right to be heard as well: ‘Your
injury is my injury; therefore do as I advise’ (v. 461). As Melibee’s spouse she is
also an interested party, but she can at the same time be impartial. She does not let
herself be swept away by emotions as the men do, not even by grief about her
daughter (behaviour of which modern scholars sometimes have little understanding).
She shows them that vendettas are bad — only ‘ordinary’ war is permissible. Crimes
must be brought to court, she argues, and no man has the right to take the law into
his own hands. Of course her husband’s honour has been violated, and something
needs to be done about that; but it is more honourable to work toward reconciliation
than to initiate a vendetta with an uncertain outcome.
In the course of her speech she subtly points out that Melibee missed the oppor-
tunity to pass sound judgment on the matter himself — he now has to leave that to
his wife — because of his negative attitude toward school and the artes.54 This
makes him sigh:
Lady, such wisdom I do not have in me, but in my youth I enjoyed the pleasures of the
world (vv. 1292–94)
[. . .] So I entreat you, lady, to support me with your council (v. 1317).
Prudence evidently did have the proper schooling, and like a full-fledged poet she
showers her listeners with quotations and auctoritates,55 always coming with just the
54
Several chapters are devoted to schooling and to matters related to pupils and teachers.
These belong to the heart of Albertanus’s and Boendale’s message, even though they are left
out in the French adaptation by Renaud de Louen, and therefore also by Chaucer and the
Dutch author Dirc Potter.
55
Melibeus says to her, vv. 1987–91: ‘But you explain things so beautifully, with laws and
decrees, with philosophers and poets, that I cannot raise any objection. So teach me now.’
Prudentia herself concludes near the end of the poem, vv. 3291–95: ‘I have herewith told you,
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right argument at just the right moment. As her name indicates, she has the power of
discernment, the critical insight to judge advice in terms of its usefulness,56 the
prudence to include in her judgement long-term effects. She possesses the wisdom
which she preaches:
Wisdom conquers many worries; wisdom is not hidden;
Wisdom gives mankind understanding of heaven and earth.
Wisdom grasps astronomy and all sorts of learning as well.
Wisdom can protect from all that is ill.
For it can see far in advance things that may happen. [. . .]
He whose mind is filled with wisdom has all virtue along with it (vv. 836–80).
Prudence, in short, is the ideal new citizen. She has just one shortcoming: she is a
woman. But she does her best to break down this prejudice, too. Her husband as well
as the other listeners are treated to a lecture on how wise and prudent women have
always been. God indicated as much already in the creation story. He created Eve:
So that she could support him [Adam] in word and deed,
And you can be sure that the world could not endure
Or remain in good order without the advice and help of women.
For our Lord himself says openly in the Gospel
That a man should leave both father and mother
And go with his wife, and the two become one flesh. (vv. 743–50)
At the same time she allows no room for fear that she as a woman will not place all
her knowledge and sagacity at the service of her spouse. To strive for supremacy
over men — what Boendale so fears in women — is simply alien to her.
Nevertheless it costs her the greatest effort to talk her husband out of his wounded
sense of honour and his call for revenge.57 This indicates, I believe, how deeply
rooted this injured pride and desire for revenge still was in both ruler and city-
dweller, and how much effort it cost the city government to persuade people to settle
disputes amicably or bring them to court. In the end Prudence manages to gain room
for secret diplomacy. This is followed by a wonderful glimpse of vendetta ritual with
secret deliberations, demonstrative self-abasement, and a genuine reconciliation:
demonstrated and explained many fine auctoritates by many wise persons who advised
against revenge.’
56
Boendale, Melibeus, ch. xxix: ‘How one should discern whether advice which has been
given is useful, and how one should follow it’, applying the principles found in ch. xxxvi.
57
Boendale, Melibeus, v. 2661: ‘It would be dishonourable for me to ask the judge to
avenge me in this matter’; and v. 2666: ‘I want to take such revenge that people will talk about
it forever.’ He is referring to the heroes of old who did the same. Here, to my mind, is the true
bone of contention about old vernacular fiction, the stories Boendale fulminates against in his
Hoe dichters dichten sullen. The problem is not that they are untrue in the sense of unhis-
torical but in their praise of vendettas and violence.
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Then he drew them up with his hand And kissed them on the mouth and spoke to them
at the same time: Go in peace with our Lord and do no more wrong. (v. 3751)
The author’s conclusion: ‘The highest honour of peace is due to the woman with
compassion’ (v. 3632).
Conclusion
Since time immemorial there was a division of labour between the man and the lady
of the house, with the man performing great deeds and the woman acting as spokes-
person. The man’s activities were outward-directed, while the woman provided in-
struction for the children and the household staff; she was in charge of the memoria
of the house. She often acted as intermediary with the gods as well. Because she was
especially concerned about what the future might bring, she thought ahead to how
things might turn out — she was, in other words, prudent. In the Christian context
she was the obvious candidate for ‘the persuasive face of power’. She became the
protagonist of ‘mercy and love’, of peaceful settlements to conflicts.58 She acted this
part in the feudal court of Holland and Hainaut and in the cities of Flanders and
Brabant at the time of Boendale. By virtue of her old role as arbitrator and mediator
in the circle of friends and relatives, the mistress of the house played a subtle part in
reshaping the aristocracy at the courts and in the cities, with their sense of knightly
honour and its macho behaviour, into flexible servants of the common good.
The lady of the house was therefore on the side of the clerks; or rather the clerks
took her side and attempted to oust her from her place. This explains why a clerk like
Boendale resorts to the rather unconvincing distinction between a ‘lady’ (‘vrouwe’),
meaning lady of the house, and woman (‘wijf’), the generic woman with all the
negative traits of the Latin misogynist tradition.
As long as city dignitaries continued to behave like heads of clans and were insuf-
ficiently educated to function as members of the new city government, the clerks —
and thus Boendale — had to rely on the support and mediation of mistresses of the
house. In their writings they stepped into her shoes and held up the examples of Bea-
trice and Prudence to their ruling prince and the city authorities. Perhaps they also
thought it ‘safe’ to hide behind a woman character: was her role not traditionally that
of using words and persuasive skills on men in power? And was it not her privilege
that the powerful could deny her nothing? They appropriate the role of woman ruler
for themselves and invite prominent burghers to do the same by immersing them-
selves in the exempla of Beatrice and Prudence. These dignitaries are won over, we
58
Michael Clanchy, ‘Law and Love in the Middle Ages’, in Disputes and Settlement: Law
and Human Relations in the West, ed. by John Bossy (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1983), pp. 47–68.
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can assume, because they realize that as merchants and city officials they will benefit
from the propagation of peace and the administration of justice.
In this way a new form of authorial identity was born, defined by Boendale as a
‘poëet’ in his Hoe dichters dichten sullen and personified by Prudence in Melibeus.
And in this way codices came about, compilations of texts written by these ‘poets’
together with related texts of other authors — household books I have called them.
As family codices they were intended for reading and discussion in a small circle.
Perhaps a Dutch codicologist will someday discover a codex with an appeal to the
lady of the house, similar to that found in the English Werke for Householders: to
read aloud to the assembled family on Sunday afternoons. Whether or not such
explicit reading directions are found, the contribution of the household books to
ethical, civic, and doctrinal formation of citizens and their values remains clear, and
offers significant evidence of the household as a locus of Christian formation.
Translation, Myra Heerspink Scholz
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The Bolton Hours of York:

Female Domestic Piety and the Public Sphere
SARAH REES JONES AND FELICITY RIDDY
Part One: Introduction
T
he categories public/private and spiritual/secular are notoriously shifty and
are constantly used in different ways. It is difficult, nevertheless, to see how
the holy household in the late Middle Ages in England can be discussed
without some recourse to them as tools of analysis. The first pairing is needed be-
cause, then as now, households and families occupied mediating positions in the
community between the official and public agencies of government on the one hand,
and the intimate and personal lives of their individual members on the other. In this
essay we use a particular piece of material evidence — a book of hours that was ap-
parently commissioned and owned in the fifteenth century by members of some elite
families in the city of York — in order to examine the ways in which the private and
public spheres interrelated and influenced one another, and women’s role in this. We
do not see the domestic sphere as peculiarly women’s. The pre-industrial household
was a place of work as well as a residential space, in which men and women con-
stantly interacted. And since our book of hours is a religious object whose meanings
are, nevertheless, not only religious, we need to map it on to the spiritual/secular
pairing as well.1
1
We wish to acknowledge a debt of collaboration to members of the ‘household project’ in
the Centre for Medieval Studies, University of York. This is a group of students and teachers
with common and overlapping interests in the family, domesticity, the house, and the house-
hold. We are particularly grateful for the stimulating contributions of Cordelia Beattie,
Charlotte Carpenter, Isabel Davis, Chris Humphrey, Lara McClure, and Sarah Williams, as
well as Andrew Butcher of the University of Kent, Canterbury. In addition, two other mem-
bers of the group have already published their views of some of the relevant material used in
this collaborative study: Jane Grenville, ‘Houses and Households in Late Medieval England:
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216 SARAH REES JONES AND FELICITY RIDDY
In exploring female domestic piety and the public sphere, both masculine and
feminine identities are at issue, but in this context the gender pairing is as unstable as
the other two. Indeed, by the end of this essay we argue that the image of a young
girl praying to a local saint may not represent simply maidenly virtue, but the wider
values of the urban mercantile group to which she belongs. Conversely, our starting
point is not women in the home but men in the town hall, where in 1428 a York
mercer named John Lyllyng was hauled up before his peers, accused of fraud.
A White-Collar Crime
Lyllyng, who imported metals, was found guilty of mixing tin with lead and selling
it in York and elsewhere, to the detriment of the city’s good name. At first he denied
it, but as more and more evidence of his dishonesty came to light over the summer in
a series of meetings of the civic authorities, he was forced to admit his guilt. He was
expelled from the freedom of the city, and there was discussion of his paying a fine
of £100. Luckily for him, he had powerful friends and he managed to get the Queen
to intercede on his behalf and eventually to procure his reinstatement. A record of his
various trials survives in the civic register and includes a letter he must have written
to the mayor and council at a late stage.2 Describing himself as ‘your concitezin
[fellow-citizen], John Lyllyng’, he begins by exonerating himself (though the
evidence brought against him in fact tells a miserable tale of forgery, threats, and
blackmail). He goes on to emphasize the hardships he has suffered, presumably
while debarred from the franchise:
what at has bene done or sayd touchyng my person it is noght vn knowen vnto you,
bot I put na defaute in nane [I do not blame anyone] that langes [belongs] to this
wirshipfull citee, ne noght wyll, bot nevertheles the charge is to me full hevy and
grevous forto ber that is put vnto me, after the grete losses that I have had and sustened
be diverses ways, als [as] it is wele knawen to diverses gude men of this cite.
He asks them to judge him mercifully, appealing to their consciences and their ‘gude
hertes’:
An Archaeological Perspective’, in Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts in Late Medieval

Britain, ed. by Jocelyn Wogan-Browne and others (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000), pp. 308–28;
Patricia Cullum and P. Jeremy P. Goldberg, ‘How Margaret Blackburn Taught her Daughters:
Reading Devotional Instruction in a Book of Hours’, in ibid., pp. 217–36. In an unpublished
lecture, Richard Marks has noted that the illuminations in the Bolton Hours reflected the
patrons of some of York’s religious houses.
2
A Volume of Miscellanies Illustrating the History and Language of the Northern Counties
of England, ed. by James Raine, Publications of the Surtees Society, 85 (Durham, 1888), p.
10. The mayor was John Aldstanemor of Micklegate, in York; see below, note 146.
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The Bolton Hours of York 217
wha[r]fore I pray you and besekes you for the grete mercie of God, that yhe will deme
[judge] this matier after gude conscience, and as yhe trow [believe] that God wyll
therof be most plesed, for I am hee that wyll noght offend your wyll, ne your
ordinance, nor na other suyte make [or make any other appeal], b[ut] fully forto be
demed be you in hegh and in laghe [high and low]; besekyng you alway wyth al my
hert to be gude maisters and frendes to me, and gif me your gude worde and to graunt
me your gude hertes for the werke of the haly charite.
Lylling’s letter interestingly connects the intimate and privatized world of the house-
hold with the world of civic governance in which household heads — masters of the
guilds — played so crucial a role. Lyllyng addresses his fellow mercers (the most
prestigious and wealthy guild in late medieval York) as equals: he calls himself their
‘concitezin’ and does not admit any intended wrongdoing. Their ‘gude hertes’ link
with his own ‘herte’, and with the ‘werke of the haly charite’ which is part of the
schooling of the heart. This text skilfully constitutes Lyllyng as a member of an elite
society: that is, as a citizen engaged with his fellow-citizens in the common enter-
prise of the marketplace.3 Yet he is also represented as an introspective man who
brings to the public and judicial sphere the tender and interiorized religious values of
the private sphere: he is simultaneously judge, guild master, friend, and man of con-
science. Lyllyng’s letter assumes that civic identities connect with domestic and inti-
mate ones, and that relationships and values shaped within the late medieval house-
hold also serve to underpin the public values of the town. In particular, it seems as if
these values are egalitarian: Lyllyng conspicuously does not abase himself before his
fellow citizens.4
What all this implies is the subject of our essay. Although Lyllyng’s letter belongs
in the masculine public world of civic office-holders and guild masters, nevertheless
he appeals to private ideas of mutuality and conscience — in which women played
as significant a role as men. Another way of putting this would be to say that he con-
nects justice with the good life. What is less obvious, perhaps, is how these relate to
one another. John Lyllyng’s letter suggests that mutuality, as a late medieval public
value, has its origin in the private sphere. The ‘gude herte’, which may seem at first
3
For the economic context, see Heather Swanson, Medieval Artisans: An Urban Class in
Late Medieval England (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989), pp. 67, 130, 133.
4
By contrast Robert Ellerbek, a mercer accused of causing the death of a fellow merchant,
did perform a public act of self-abasement before his victim’s son in the presence of the
mayor and other leading citizens in the city’s great chamber in 1390: York Memorandum
Book, A/Y, parts 1 and 2, ed. by Maud Sellers, Publications of the Surtees Society, 120, 125
(Durham, 1912–15), II, 30–31. The formal theatrics of power employed on this occasion were
strikingly similar to the abasement performed by John Holland before Richard II in 1386, after
Holland had killed the heir of the Earl of Stafford: The Westminster Chronicle 1381–1394, ed.
and trans. by Leonard C. Hector and Barbara F. Harvey (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), pp.
158–61. The different performance of contrition displayed by Lyllyng thus underscores the
different nature and fraternal context of his crime.
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glance to be a matter of purely personal disposition, is in fact political.5 To pursue

these ideas, we use as our main source a book of hours — a prayer-book for domes-
tic use — now known as the ‘Bolton Hours’, apparently made in the early fifteenth
century for a well-to-do mercantile family in York, whose social standing would
have been much like John Lyllyng’s.6
Part Two: A York Book of Hours

We need to begin by explaining the object of our study. The book of hours, or
‘primer’ as it was called, came into use in England in the late thirteenth century as a
prayer book for the laity.7 It was, essentially, a less complex version of the liturgical
handbooks — the breviaries and Psalters — used by monks and secular clergy for
prayer at the eight canonical ‘hours’ into which night and day were divided. The
book of hours was the product of late medieval Marian and Christocentric devotion:
it was organized round the hours of the Virgin, frequently also incorporating a
5
Underlying our argument is an engagement with Jürgen Habermas’s theorization of the
relation between the public, private, and intimate spheres in Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit:
Untersuchungen zu einer Kategorie der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft (Darmstadt: Luchterhand,
1962, 1974), translated into English as The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, by
Thomas Burger (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989). However, Habermas argues that there was no
bourgeois public sphere in the medieval period, a position with which we disagree.
6
York, Minster Library, MS Additional 2. It has been described by Neil Ker, Medieval
Manuscripts in British Libraries (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969–2002), IV, 786–91, and
Kathleen Scott, Later Gothic Manuscripts, 1390–1490 (London: Miller, 1996), II, 119–21.
The most recent discussion of the manuscript’s provenance and ownership is by Cullum and
Goldberg, ‘Margaret Blackburn’, pp. 217–36. See also Horae Eboracenses: The Prymer or
Hours of the Blessed Virgin Mary according to the use of the Illustrious Church of York, ed by
C. Wordsworth, Publications of the Surtees Society, 132 (Durham, 1920).
7
Still a fundamental source is Victor Leroquais, Les livres d’heures manuscrits de la Bib-
liothèque nationale (Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale, 1927). See also The Prymer or Lay Folks’
Prayer Book, ed. by Henry Littlehales, EETS OS, Parts 1 and 2 (London: Oxford University
Press, 1895–97), pp. 105, 109; Edgar Hoskins, Horae Beatae Mariae Virginis, or, Sarum and
York Primers (London: Longmans, Green, 1901); Horae Eboracenses, ed. by Wordsworth; L.
M. J. Delaissé, ‘The Importance of Books of Hours for the Study of the Medieval Book’, in
Gatherings in Honor of Dorothy E. Miner, ed. by Ursula McCracken, Lilian M. C. Randall,
and Dorothy E. Miner (Baltimore: Walters Art Gallery, 1974), pp. 203–25; John Harthan, The
Book of Hours, with a Historical Survey and Commentary (New York: Park Lane, 1977,
1982); Roger S. Wieck, Time Sanctified: The Book of Hours in Medieval Art and Life (New
York: George Braziller in association with the Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore, 1988); Claire
Donovan, The de Brailes Hours: Shaping the Book of Hours in 13th-Century Oxford (London:
British Library, 1991); Roger S. Wieck, Painted Prayers: The Book of Hours in Medieval and
Renaissance Art (New York: George Braziller, 1997).
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shorter hours of the Cross which in effect told the story of the Crucifixion through
the course of the day.8 The hours were usually prefaced by a perpetual calendar
showing saints’ days and ecclesiastical feasts, and were accompanied by prayers to
the Virgin and saints, the seven Penitential psalms and the Litany, and the Office of
the Dead.9 Many books of hours contained other offices as well, such as the hours of
the Holy Spirit or of the Trinity, and additional psalms or occasionally a complete,
non-liturgical Psalter, and these texts were very often (though not always) accom-
panied by images.10 Primers were thus anthologies of a kind: their contents were
chosen from a reasonably limited range of material, but they were not standardized.
Purchasers could often specify what they wanted the books to include, so that texts
and images — especially the devotions to particular saints — could represent their
owners’ tastes and interests. Most of the texts were in Latin, but they often included
vernacular prayers or forms of confession. Some books of hours were elaborately
decorated, and others quite plain; they were bound in different materials, and they
came in a range of sizes.11 Increasingly during the fifteenth century there developed
8
It seems likely that in the domestic context the hours were prayed at fewer than eight
times a day. The advice given to a fifteenth-century urban layman by his confessor includes
praying part of the Office of the Virgin once a day. See William A. Pantin, ‘Instructions for a
Devout and Literate Layman’, in Medieval Learning and Literature: Essays Presented to
Richard William Hunt, ed. by Jonathan J. G. Alexander and Margareth T. Gibson (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1976), pp. 398–420 (p. 399).
9
The Penitential psalms are 6. Domine ne in furore, 31. Beati quorum, 37. Domine ne in
furore, 50. Miserere mei, 101. Domine exaudi, 129. De profundis, and 142. Domine exaudi.
10
Many books of hours contain the fifteen Gradual psalms (119–33, to which is often
added 150). Non-liturgical Psalters, often owned by the laity, simply contain the texts of the
150 psalms; liturgical Psalters, used by the clergy, are organized as service books, with
particular psalms — some followed by antiphons — designated for different days of the week.
For a beautifully executed, high-status, fifteenth-century, non-liturgical Psalter with book of
hours, see <http://www.abdn.ac.uk/diss/heritage/collects/bps/>. This site presents a scholarly
on-line digitized version of Aberdeen, University Library, MS 25, the Burnet Psalter, possibly
made in the Netherlands, and certainly for English aristocratic ownership. There is overlap
between its contents and those of the Bolton Hours. Psalters seem to have been superseded in
popularity among laypeople by primers, though they did not disappear. Large numbers of
Psalters were produced by early printers.
11
York inventories show a variation in the value of primers, which presumably reflects the
size and/or the quality of workmanship: the primer ‘with devotions’ of Thomas Overdo, a
York baker who died in 1444, was valued at 9s, more than the primer covered with red velvet
which belonged to Thomas Morton, a canon of the Minster, and which was valued at only 6s
8d. A striking contrast with both of these is the primer of John Collan, a York goldsmith who
died in 1490, which was valued at 6d and may have been a little printed quarto version. For
Overdo and Collan, see Borthwick Institute for Historical Research (BIHR), Dean and
Chapter of York, Original Wills, 1383–1499. For Morton, York, Minster Library (YML),
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a continental market in ‘mass-produced’, decorated books of hours for English con-

sumption, and this market continued in the era of print, when they were imported in
large quantities from printing houses in Paris.12 We know from the evidence of wills
and inventories, and from the large numbers of surviving examples, that books of
hours were the most widely owned form of reading matter for laypeople in the late
Middle Ages.13
For this reason the book of hours can be seen as a vehicle for the dissemination
of, and participation in, a normative piety and a shared lay religious outlook and
values that crossed boundaries of status, age, region, and gender. Books of hours
were probably the only assemblages of texts that by the fifteenth century were being
widely used throughout Europe, by aristocrats as well as artisans, in town and coun-
try, by people of different generations and of both sexes. Their readers were part of
an international textual community of ‘even-Christians’: that is, fellow-Christians
who were united by a common faith, whatever their social standing. Books of hours
were local as well, however: they were used in church, although they were not
strictly service books, and they must have been read during Mass, since prayers to be
said at the elevation of the Host were quite a common vernacular addition. Neverthe-
less, they often included prayers to be said on getting up in the morning or before
eating meals, and so were also books for praying in the household or in solitude at
home. The book of hours can be located, then, at a number of points along a conti-
nuum that includes solitariness, intimacy, sociability, and publicness, and our discus-
sion of the identities the book makes possible is organized under these headings.
The particular book of hours with which we are concerned is known as the Bolton
Hours.14 Precisely which family commissioned it is unknown.15 A small book of 210
Probate Jurisdiction, Inventories, L1(17) 44. All printed in Probate Inventories of the York
Diocese, 1350–1500, ed. by Philip M. Stell and Louise Hampson (York: Typescript, 1999).
12
See Mary C. Erler, ‘Devotional Literature’, in The Cambridge History of the Book in
Britain, ed. by Lotte Hellinga and Joseph B. Trapp (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1999), III: 1400–1557, pp. 495–525. Erler is one of the few book historians to recognize (and
celebrate) ‘the extraordinary centrality in popular culture’ of the book of hours (p. 495).
13
For York evidence of ownership, see P. Jeremy P. Goldberg, ‘Lay Book Ownership in
Late Medieval York: The Evidence of Wills’, The Library, 6th series, 16 (1994), 181–89.
14
York, Minster Library, MS Additional 2.
15
Scott, Later Gothic Manuscripts, II, 119–21, dates it on stylistic grounds between 1405
and 1415; Ker, Medieval Manuscripts, IV, 786, in the first half of the fifteenth century. For the
texts in a book of hours of York Use, like the Bolton Hours, see Horae Eboracenses, ed by
Wordsworth. It is assumed to be of mercantile origin because (a) added to the calendar in a
fifteenth-century hand are the obits of members of merchant families, and (b) although very
expensively produced, it does not contain any coats of arms. Recent discussions of the
manuscript’s provenance and ownership are Pamela M. King, ‘Corpus Christi Plays and the
“Bolton Hours”: Tastes in Lay Piety and Patronage in Fifteenth-Century York’, Medieval
English Theatre, 18 (1996), 46–62; Cullum and Goldberg, ‘Margaret Blackburn’, pp. 217–36.
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pages, it has seemingly been assembled to cater for very specific devotional inter-
ests.16 It is a lavish volume: uniquely among surviving English primers, it contains
forty-seven full-page illuminations,17 three three-quarter page images,18 nine smaller
16
The contents of the Bolton Hours, as described by Ker in Medieval Manuscripts, IV,
787–90, are as follows: 1. Form of confession (and at end); 2. Common formulae: Pater
noster, ave maria, credo in deum; 3. Blessings and graces to be said before meals; 4. Calendar;
5. Hours of BVM with Hours of the Cross worked in; 6. Prayers, especially to BVM;
7. Penitential psalms and litany; 8. Prayers: incipits of penitential and first twelve gradual
psalms; prayers (to Christ); prayer to Richard Scrope; prayer on five wounds; prayer to be said
before the seven psalms; prayers of the Nativity; 9. Prayers: Psalm 118 with only one prayer;
added space fillers including prayer to virgin martyr; 10. Office of the dead; 11. Eight verses
of St Bernard; 12. Prayers: as protection against dying in mortal sin; 3000 years’ indulgence;
Bede’s seven words; the BVM and John the Evangelist; Stabat mater; prayer to BVM;
13. Memoria of Five Joys; 14. Prayers to vernicle; to wounded side; 15. Prayer for elevation
of host; 16 Prayer before a crucifix; 17. Memoriae of Holy Spirit, Trinity, Cross, Michael,
John Baptist, Peter and Paul, John Evangelist, Laurence, Nicholas, Katherine, Margaret, Mary
Magdalene, peace; 18. Memoriae: Passion, Anne, Anthony, William of York; 19. Hours of the
Holy Spirit; 20. Sign of the cross; memoriae of Thos of Canterbury, Andrew, Stephen, Blaise,
Cuthbert, Apollonia, John of Beverley; guardian angel; BVM; Christ; God the Father;
21. English prayer to be said between agnus dei and levation; St John of Bridlington; prayer to
God; 22. Conclusion of form of confession added in mid-fifteenth century.
17
Full references and descriptions can be found in Ker, Medieval Manuscripts, IV, 790, and
Scott, Later Gothic Manuscripts, II, 120. Scott associates the Bolton Hours with related books
of hours that she suggests originated from perhaps two workshops in York. Almost all the
forty-seven full-page miniatures are now in four separate quires that do not contain any texts
and are dispersed through the book, but this may not have been the original arrangement.
Texts and full-page images may have been commissioned independently, though some of the
text pages contain smaller illuminations that look as if they have come from the same work-
shop. In the list below, the full-page illuminations are grouped in pairs indicated by brackets
to indicate that they are painted on two sides of the same parchment leaf: (Crucifix-Trinity
with family group, St George and the dragon), (Agony in the Garden, Betrayal), (St Anne
teaching the virgin with two young female figures, Annunciation), (Nativity of Christ,
Resurrection), (Ascension, Virgin with God), (St Peter, St Thomas of Canterbury), (St John
the Baptist, St William Archbishop of York), (St Cuthbert as bishop with crowned head of St
Oswald, St Zita/Sitha), (St Peter Martyr as friar, St Mary Magdalene), (St Nicholas as bishop,
St Lucy), (St Martin on horseback, St Giles), (St Gregory, St Bridget), (St Michael archangel,
St Margaret on dragon), (St Edmund as king, St Paul), (St Thomas, St James the less), (St
James the Great, St John the Evangelist), (St Philip, St Matthew), (St Simon, St Jude), (St
Dominic, Virgin and Child), (St Anthony, ‘St’ Richard Scrope with mitre and windmill), (St
Leonard, St Catherine), (St Lawrence, St Bartholomew), (St Andrew, St Christopher), (Last
judgement with St Peter).
18
Above the ‘Benedictum sit nomen domini nostri ihu xpi’ [Blessed be the name of our
lord Jesus Christ]: Rose with IESUS and MARIA. In the Memoriae: ‘St’ Richard Scrope with
woman kneeling; Instruments of the Passion; see Scott, Later Gothic Manuscripts, II, 119.
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miniatures,19 and twelve historiated initials.20 The case for the York origin of the
book is based on the dialect of its vernacular prayers21 and on its distinctive contents.
These include two images of Richard Scrope (Archbishop of York 1398–1405), one
of which is accompanied by a hymn and a commemoration, and a picture of William
of York (Archbishop of York 1143–54). The hours of the Virgin and the calendar are
of the Use of York, and the latter includes memorials, added in a later hand, to four
York individuals who died in 1445 and 1472.22 These include a former mayor, John
Bolton, and his wife, Alice, after whom the book is now named.23
The earliest possible date for the compilation of the manuscript is 1405, the year
in which Archbishop Richard Scrope was executed on 8 June, in the fields of
Clementhorpe just outside the city walls, for his role in leading an armed northern
rebellion against Henry IV, six years after Henry had deposed and killed the last
Plantagenet king, Richard II.24 The trial and condemnation of a bishop by a lay court
was unprecedented, and Scrope’s tomb in York Minster rapidly became the focus of
a very popular unofficial cult that the Crown at first attempted to suppress.25 By as
19
In Formulae communes: Christ on the Cross. In the Devotions: Holy Face, heart with
five wounds. In the Hours of the Holy Spirit: dove in a nebuly. In the Memorials: St Stephen,
St Blaise as bishop, St Cuthbert as a bishop with St Oswald’s head and staff, St Apollonia, St
John of Beverley as archbishop; see Scott, Later Gothic Manuscripts, II, 119.
20
All at appropriate points in the offices: Holy Face, Virgin and Child, man praying,
flagellation, mocking of Christ, Christ beaten with clubs, road to Calvary, Crucifixion with
Mary and John, Deposition, woman kneeling with confessor, God with souls in cloth, monk
praying before coffin; see Scott, Later Gothic Manuscripts, II, 119.
21
E.g., at fol. 177 there is a rubricated instruction in the same scribal hand as the
accompanying Latin prayers in the quire, which opens: ‘Say yis kneland befor ye crucifix ilk
day anse.’
22
All four obits, of John and Alice Bolton, Agnes Lond, and Thomas Scauceby, may have
been entered at the same time, which cannot have been earlier than the death of Scauceby in
November 1472.
23
Ker, Medieval Manuscripts, IV, 91; Scott, Later Gothic Manuscripts, II, 120. Ker sug-
gests that the book may have been made for Bolton, but this view is not widely accepted.
24
For the Scrope rebellion and his execution, see Peter McNiven, ‘The Betrayal of
Archbishop Scrope’, Bulletin of John Rylands Library, 54.1 (1976), 173–213; Richard G.
Davies, ‘After the Execution of Archbishop Scrope: Henry IV, the Papacy and the English
Episcopate, 1405–8’, ibid., pp. 40–74.
25
For the cult of Scrope, summarized in this paragraph, see John W. McKenna, ‘Popular
Canonisation as Political Propaganda: The Cult of Archbishop Scrope’, Speculum, 45 (1970),
608–23; Stephen K. Wright, ‘The Provenance and Manuscript Tradition of the Martyrium
Ricardi Archiepiscopi’, Manuscripta, 28 (1984), 92–102; Jonathan Hughes, Pastors and
Visionaries: Religion and Secular Life in Late Medieval Yorkshire (Woodbridge: Boydell and
Brewer, 1988), pp. 298 and 305–15; Thomas W. French, ‘The Tomb of Archbishop Scrope in
York Minster’, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, 61 (1989), 95–102; Simon Walker,
‘Political Saints in Later Medieval England’, in The McFarlane Legacy: Studies in Late
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early as 1406, however, suppression had turned into tacit toleration. Indeed, gifts by
pilgrims to his tomb in the Minster became such an important source of revenue in
the first half of the fifteenth century that they contributed substantially to the costs of
the construction of the Minster’s imposing central tower.26
Other circumstantial evidence may suggest a date for the compilation of the
Bolton Hours within a few years of Scrope’s death. In 1416 Archbishop Chichele
raised St George’s day to the rank of a double feast, and a full-page image of St
George occupies an exceptionally prominent position in the Hours, on the reverse of
an image of the Trinity with a family group, which we shall discuss later.27 The
Hours also contains a historiated memorial to John of Beverley, whose office was
ordered by Archbishop Arundel to be included in the observation of the feast of St
Crispin, in celebration of the victory at Agincourt in 1415.28 The timeliness of the
book’s full-page miniature of St Bridget, which will be discussed later, is indicated
by the efforts of a group of northern lords and clergy to establish a Bridgettine house
in York after 1407, on the site of the hospital of St Nicholas in the city’s suburbs.29
The inclusion in the Bolton Hours of hymns to St John of Bridlington, whose
canonization was promoted by Henry IV and whose cult was further sponsored both
by Archbishop Scrope (with the establishment of a shrine at Bridlington Priory in
1404) and by Henry V (in 1409 and 1413), suggests another timely context for the
particular devotions of the book.30 Altogether these might suggest that the manu-
script was put together sometime in the years between 1407 and 1420.
This date would also fit well with the known popularity of the various city-wide
fraternities whose patrons may be reflected in the book’s devotions. The fraternities
of the Holy Cross, of Jesus and Mary, St George, St Christopher, and St John the
Baptist — all represented in the Bolton Hours — were all established before 1400.31
Medieval Politics and Society, ed. by Richard Britnell and Anthony J. Pollard (Stroud: Alan
Sutton, 1995), pp. 77–106.
26
By the reign of Edward IV (1461–83), the first Yorkist king, the Scrope cult was being
actively promoted. Although an attempt to have him canonized in 1462 was not successful,
local veneration for him continued into the sixteenth century.
27
Fol. 33r–v.
28
James Hamilton Wylie, The Reign of Henry V (Cambridge: Cambrindge University
Press, 1914–19), II (1919), 239–40.
29
The house was eventually established in 1415 under royal patronage at Syon, in
Twickenham (later moved to Isleworth); see David Knowles, The Religious Orders in
England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1955), II, 175–84; Neil Beckett, ‘St
Bridget, Henry V and Syon Abbey’, in Studies in St Birgitta and the Brigittine Order, ed. by
James Hogg, Analecta Cartusiana, 35.19 (Salzburg: Universität Salzburg, 1993), II, 125–50.
30
Hughes, Pastors and Visionaries, p. 303.
31
David J. F. Crouch, Piety, Fraternity and Power: Religious Gilds in Late Medieval
Yorkshire, 1389–1547 (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2000), pp. 262–64.
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However, although we lack foundation dates, the Corpus Christi Guild is first men-
tioned only in 1408, the Holy Trinity Guild of the Mercers in 1410, the St Anthony
Guild in 1415,32 and the Holy Trinity guild in the Dominican Friary in 1418.33 All
these devotions are represented in the book, as are those of the new civic chapel of St
Anne on Foss Bridge which was under construction between 1393 and 1424, and of
the Dominican Friary which acquired the hand of St Mary Magdalene some time
between 1384 and 1417.34 The devotions in the Bolton Hours, both visual and
textual, would certainly fit very neatly in this great flowering of public devotions in
the city that engaged not just the civic elite but nobility and clergy, both regular and
secular, as well.35
Public and Private: Masculine and Feminine
We have already suggested that the book of hours was constructed on (or by) the
axes of different kinds of publicness and privateness. In this it was like the late
medieval bourgeois household itself, which was simultaneously a public and a
private place, both protected from the intrusion of outsiders and subject to official
scrutiny.36 It cannot be fitted into that version of the public-private divide which has
been used by nineteenth-century historians to distinguish separate spheres of work
and domesticity, the one male and the other female.37 This model will not do for
32
Note that the image of St Anthony is painted on the reverse of the full-side image of St
Richard Scrope in the volume. See note 17 above.
33
Crouch, Piety, Fraternity and Power, pp. 262–64.
34
Ibid.
35
See also notes 103 and 104 below.
36
Eavesdropping on neighbours’ private affairs was among the offences most commonly
brought to the attention of local authorities in the fifteenth century. See Marjorie Keniston
McIntosh, Controlling Misbehavior in England, 1370–1600 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1998), p. 65. At the same time, as sites of manufacture and trade, bourgeois
households were subject to guild regulations forbidding householders to work beyond certain
hours and giving guild officials rights of entry to examine the quality of the workmanship that
went on in them. See Heather Swanson, Medieval Artisans: An Urban Class in Late Medieval
England (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989), p. 116.
37
For a brief survey of the topic, see Michael Anderson, Approaches to the History of the
Western Family 1500–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 31–33 and
71–72. A particularly influential study has been Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, Family
Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class 1780–1850 (London: Hutchinson
Education, 1987); for a reworking of the model in relation to class as well as gender, see
Elizabeth Langland, Nobody’s Angels: Middle-Class Women and Domestic Ideology in
Victorian Culture (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995). The model has recently been
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homes that were also places of manufacture and trade. No doubt there was a late
medieval set of ideas, or prejudices, which sought to confine the virtuous woman to
the home, like those expressed in The Book of Margery Kempe by the men of Bever-
ley, who cry: ‘Damsel, forsake þis lyfe þat þu hast, and go spynne and carde as oþer
women don, and suffyr not so meche schame and so meche wo’38 (Lady, give up this
life you are leading and go spin and card as other women do, and do not endure so
much shame and so much misery). Nevertheless shiftless men were equally suspect:
the new word ‘householder’, which seems to enter official urban discourses in the
vernacular in the early fifteenth century, implies that the master was understood as
firmly settled in his house.39 Urban homes were sources of masculine as well as
feminine identities.
The images in the Bolton Hours seem to confirm this; they include several of the
book’s presumed patrons, who cannot be firmly identified: a family group, which we
discuss below; two women, one represented as a maiden,40 and a man. The visibility
of the women suggests that female piety in the home must be one important context
for understanding the role of the book. This impression is further strengthened by the
inclusion of a full-page illumination of St Bridget of Sweden, representative of a
modern spirituality that allowed sanctity even to a woman who had been married and
had children.41 Nevertheless, three issues ought to prevent us from simply accepting,
as some scholars have done, that this is a book constructed solely for a female
audience and betraying solely the concerns of a female patron.42 First, there is the
criticized by John Tosh, A Man’s Place: Masculinity and the Middle-Class Home in Victorian
England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999).
38
The Book of Margery Kempe, ed. by Sanford Brown Meech and Hope Emily Allen,
EETS OS, 212 (London: Oxford University Press, 1940), p. 129. ME ‘damisele’ is used to
denote an unmarried woman of good family, not necessarily young; see MED ‘damisele’, note
1. Wearing white clothes and without her husband accompanying her, Margery Kempe is here
represented as a respectable single woman whose mobility is apparently baffling to those she
meets on the road.
39
See MED, ‘householder’. See also Sarah Rees Jones, ‘The Household and Urban
Government in the Later Middle Ages’, in The Household in Late Medieval Cities: Italy and
Northwestern Europe Compared: Proceedings of the International Conference, Ghent, 21st–
22nd January 2000, ed. by Myriam Carlier and Tim Soens (Leuven: Garant, 2001), pp. 71–87.
40
For this life-cycle phase, see Kim Phillips, ‘Maidenhood’, in Young Medieval Women,
ed. by Katherine Lewis, Noel James Menuge, and Kim Phillips (Stroud: Sutton, 1999), pp. 1–
24 (pp. 8–9).
41
André Vauchez, Les Laïcs au moyen age: pratiques et expériences religieuses (Paris:
Cerf, 1987), pp. 239–57.
42
Scott, Later Gothic Manuscripts, II, 120, assumes, from the presence of women in the
illustrations, that the book was commissioned by a female patron: ‘the mistress of the
household was apparently the guiding hand in the production of the book’. This view has been
brilliantly developed by Cullum and Goldberg, ‘Margaret Blackburn’.
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problem that a reading of the book that focuses on the female images is highly
selective, as it ignores the much larger number of prayers and images of male saints,
as well as the depiction of a man at prayer.43 Secondly, there is the wider context in
which books of hours commonly functioned as family books, with the implication
that their audience was not conceived of as only female.44 It is true that women
seemed to have owned more books of hours than any other kind of reading matter,
but men owned them too. They represent a rare cultural space available — possibly
equally — to both genders. Finally, there is the issue of the gendering of domestic
piety. Without wishing to turn medieval merchants into ‘new men’, we need to
consider whether a ‘feminized’ language of perfection, focusing on interiority and
emphasizing religious sensibility, did not apply to both sexes, within and outside the
home. This is the language that John Lyllyng uses in the letter to his ‘concitezins’.
There is a temptation, perhaps, to see books of hours as women’s reading because
they seem quintessentially private, and so the modern scholar in effect adopts the
position of the men of Beverley, urging Margery Kempe back into the home. In the
Bolton Hours, one of the women prays, appropriately enough, to St Sitha, the
servant-saint who represents domestic virtues,45 but the other prays to ‘St’ Richard
Scrope, the Archbishop who led a rebellion against the King. The cultivation of
religion within the home may well be an element in the making of bourgeois privacy
that has secular parallels in the use of local courts to restrain intrusive neighbours.46
But bourgeois privacy is not only private: it connects with the wider worlds of
neighbourhood, town, and nation.
Solitariness and Intimacy
Solitariness: ‘Prent in your hert a roose’
Let us begin by exploring some of the ways in which praying the book of hours was
a personal and solitary experience. This does not seem to be the case at first glance,
43
Historiated initial, Office of the Blessed Virgin, Lauds, fol. 48v.
44
For a similar point about conduct books, see K. Ashley, ‘The Miroir des bonnes femmes:
Not for Women only?’, in Medieval Conduct, ed. by Kathleen Ashley and Robert L. A. Clark
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001), pp. 86–105.
45
For Sitha/Zita, see Sebastian Sutcliffe, ‘The Cult of St Sitha in England: An
Introduction’, Nottingham Medieval Studies, 37 (1993), 83–89, and the discussion in Cullum
and Goldberg, ‘Margaret Blackburn’, p. 225 and n. 30.
46
See Helena M. Chew and William Kellaway, eds, London Assize of Nuisance 1301–
1431: A Calendar, London Record Society, 10 (Leicester: London Record Society, 1973), for
cases brought under the Assize of Nuisance in London in the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries. This Assize dealt with breaches of ‘rules concerning walls, gutters, privies,
windows, and pavements’ (p. x). It is the rules about windows which raise privacy issues.
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though, because the texts it contains position the reader sometimes as ‘I’ and some-
times as ‘we’, as if praying is a form of sociability. The very first line of the hours of
the Virgin, for example, is ‘Lord, open thou my lips, and my mouth shall show forth
thy praise’, but a few lines later, with the opening of Psalm 94, the singular has
become plural: ‘O come, let us sing unto the Lord, let us make a joyful noise to God
our salvation.’47 Nevertheless, the collectivity to which ‘we’ belong is indeterminate;
it only rarely suggests any recognizable kind of community. The Litany, with its
plural refrain ‘pray for us’, does hint, momentarily, at the possibility of something
that might be nation, town, or neighbourhood: ‘that you may deign to visit and
comfort our place and all who live in it: we pray you, hear us.’48 Some of the collects
of the Office for the Dead invoke ‘the souls of all your servants’ or ‘the souls of our
mothers and fathers’ or even ‘brothers and sisters of our congregation’.49 The com-
munities these imply — households, families, parishes — are only a frail and
temporary mitigation, though, of the aloneness that runs through this particular
office and for which no human source can provide comfort: ‘Lord, when you come
to judge the earth, where shall I hide from your anger? For I have sinned exceedingly
in my life’;50 ‘My spirit shall be made feeble; my days shall be made short; and only
the grave is left to me’.51 Even if read aloud, the texts the book of hours contains
seem to be for internalization and self-scrutiny rather than discussion: this is not a
book that gives rise to the kind of theological or ethical debates that we know devout
laypeople engaged in. Nevertheless the piety of the book of hours is in some ways
egalitarian, in that readers of all statuses are reduced to the same level, that of
famulus, or servant, which is one of the commonest subject positions in the book. In
a period in which service was institutionalized and, in England at least, part of life-
cycle experience, the role of servant must have been associated with lack of
47
Psalm 50. 15: ‘Domine, labia mea aperies. / Et os meum annunciabit laudem tuam’;
Psalm 94. 1: ‘Venite exultemus Domino, iubilemus Deo salutari nostro’.
48
Horae Eboracenses, ed. by Wordsworth, p. 95: ‘Ut locum nostrum et omnes habitants in
eo visitare et consolari digneris. Te rogamus, audi nos.’ This occurs in the York Use and not,
apparently, in the Sarum Use. See The Prymer or Lay Folks’ Prayer Book, ed. by Littlehales,
II, p. lxvi.
49
Horae Eboracenses, ed. by Wordsworth, p. 111: ‘Animabus [. . .] famulorum famula-
rumque tuarum’; ‘animabus patrum et matrum nostrarum’; ‘nostre congregationis fraters at
sorores’ (Collect, Lauds, Office of the Dead).
50
Horae Eboracenses, ed. by Wordsworth, p. 104: ‘Domine, quando veneris iudicare
terram: vbi me abscondam a vultu ire tua? Quia peccaui nimis in vita mea’ (Response, 3rd
reading, Matins, first nocturn, Office of the Dead).
51
Horae Eboracenses, ed. by Wordsworth, p. 106: ‘Spiritus meus attenuabitur: dies mei
breuiabuntur et solum michi superest sepulchrum’ (Job 17. 1; 7th reading, 3rd nocturn,
Matins, Office of the Dead).
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autonomy and submission.52 The piety of the book of hours is egalitarian, too, in the
direct access which prayer seems to offer to the divine, and to Mary and the saints.
The whole book — made up of prayers as it is — is like a peculiarly intense dialogue
of which we can only hear one side. It works over a particular complex of often
hectic feelings: exaltation, penitence, joy, love, sympathy, pity, anguish, mortifica-
tion, and so on. The prayers are affective rather than intellectual, providing for the
lewed — those without a technical or advanced Latin proficiency — the schooling of
the heart that had been provided for the litterati by Augustine in his Confessiones,
and following him, by Anselm, Aelred, Bernard, and many others.53 The heart recurs
in the texts:
‘holy, and humble of heart, bless ye our Lord’;54
‘Today if ye shall hear his voice, harden not your hearts’;55
‘I am afflicted, and am humbled exceedingly: I roared for the groaning of
my heart’;56
‘My heart is troubled’;57
‘Create a clean heart in me, O God’;58
‘a contrite, and humble heart O God, thou wilt not despise’;59
52
P. Jeremy P. Goldberg, ‘What Was a Servant?’, in Concepts and Patterns of Service in
the Later Middle Ages, ed. by Anne Curry and Elizabeth Matthew (Woodbridge: Boydell,
2000), pp. 1–20.
53
For the use of primers in teaching reading, see Marjorie Curry Woods, ‘Shared Books:
Primers, Psalters, and the Adult Acquisition of Literacy among Devout Lawomen and Women
in Orders in Late Medieval England’, in New Trends in Feminine Spirituality: The Holy
Women of Liege and their Impact, ed. by Juliette Dor, Lesley Johnson, and Jocelyn Wogan-
Browne (Turnhout: Brepols, 1999), pp. 177–94. The question of how laypeople, who are
generally presumed not to know Latin, used their Latin primers is still not understood. The
language of the texts is not complex, however, and the formal hands in which primers were
written (unlike the cursive hands used, for example, in documents) are legible and easy to
read. For many people, then as now, the difficulty in reading academic Latin must have been
in part a matter of presentation: small hands, and a system of abbreviation that almost amounts
to a code. Many primers, including the Bolton Hours (fol. 13r), include an alphabet along with
the Our Father, Hail Mary, and Creed (in Latin), which suggests that they may have been used
to teach reading to beginners.
54
‘benedicite sancti, et humiles corde Domino’: Canticle of the Three Boys, Office of the
BVM, Lauds.
55
‘Hodie si vocem eius audieritis, nolite obdurare corda vestra’: Psalm 94, Office of the
BVM, Matins.
56
‘Afflictus sum, et humiliatus sum nimis: rugiebam a gemitu cordis mei’: Penitential
Psalm 37.
57
‘Cor meum conturbatum est’: Penitential Psalm 37.
58
‘Cor mundum crea in me Deus’: Penitential Psalm 50.
59
‘cor contritum, et humiliatum Deus non despicies’: Penitential Psalm 50.
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‘I am smitten as grass, and my heart is withered’;60

‘he will speak peace [. . .] upon them, that are converted to the heart’;61
‘Do well O Lord to the good: and right of heart’;62
‘Come O Holy Ghost, replenish the hearts of thy faithful: and kindle in
them the fire of thy love’;63
and so on. The heart is humble, hard, troubled, groaning, pure, contrite, withered; it
is the seat of conversion and of rectitude; it is waiting to be filled with the fire of
love. Like the lover, the reader of the book of hours is provided with an interiorized
and embodied subjectivity, in which interiority is above all located in the heart as the
centre of feeling, understanding, and conscience, the ‘gude herte’ to which John
Lylling appealed.64
This interiorized subjectivity is in evidence from the very start of the book. After
several blank leaves, the Bolton Hours opens with an image of a rose which takes up
two-thirds of the page. Below it are the Latin words ‘Blessed is the name of our lord
God Jesus Christ and of his glorious virgin mother for ever and ever’.65 It is followed
by a prayer to the Holy Name of Jesus: ‘O good Jesus, o sweetest Jesus, o most holy
Jesus [. . .] O name of Jesus sweet name, name of Jesus delightful name, name of
Jesus comforting name.’66 The rose has five white outer petals that bear the letters
IESUS, and an inner circle of red petals bearing MARIA. At the centre is the sacred
monogram ‘Ihc’ below a crown. Devotion to the Holy Name had been fostered by
Bernard of Clairvaux, and in England was taken up by Richard Rolle and his
followers, whose works were influential among the Bolton circle, as we shall show.67
60
‘Percussus sum, ut faenum, et aruit cor meum’: Penitential Psalm 101.
61
‘loquetur pacem [. . .] in eos, qui convertuntur ad cor’: Psalm 84, Office of the BVM,
Prime.
62
‘Benefac Domine bonis: et rectis corde’: Psalm 124, Office of the BVM, Sext.
63
‘Veni sancte spiritus, reple tuorum corda fidelium: et tui amoris in eis ignem accende’:
Antiphon, Hours of Holy Spirit.
64
For a discussion of reading and praying from the heart, see Paul Saenger, ‘Books of
Hours and Reading Habits of the Later Middle Ages’, in The Culture of Print: Power and the
Uses of Print in Early Modern Europe, ed. by Roger Chartier (Cambridge: Polity Press,
1989), pp. 141–73. Eric Jager, The Book of the Heart (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
2001) discusses the metaphor of the heart as a book, which was widely used in the Middle
Ages. He calculates that the word ‘cor’ (heart) occurs in the Confessiones 188 times, p. 182.
65
‘Benedictum sit nomen domini nostri ihu xpi dei et gloriose virginis matris eius in
eternum et ultra’: fol. 4v.
66
Horae Eboracenses, ed. by Wordsworth, p. 179.
67
For devotion to the Holy Name, see Rosemary Woolf, The English Religious Lyric in the
Middle Ages (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), pp. 172–77; Denis Renevey, ‘The Name
Poured Out: Margins, Illuminations and Miniatures as Evidence for the Practice of Devotions
to the Name of Jesus in Late Medieval England’, in The Mystical Tradition and the
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Here the image of the rose brings together the Holy Name and another popular late
medieval devotion, to the Five Wounds. Jesus was sometimes identified with the
rose of Jericho alluded to in Ecclesiasticus 24. 18: ‘I was exalted like a palm tree in
Cades, and as a rose plant in Jericho’; the five petals represent his five wounds, in an
oblique allusion to the crucifixion. Mary was traditionally described as the ‘rosa sine
spina’, the rose without thorn, in reference to her sinlessness.68 The colours white
and red symbolize the shared purity and suffering of mother and son: white for
innocence and red for the blood of the Passion.69 The image is therefore, at one level
at least, an aid to the kind of private and interiorized meditative practice that the
fifteenth-century poet John Lydgate recommends in what is arguably his best lyric,
‘A Midsummer Rose’:
The sonne was clips and dirk in euery rem
Whan Crist Ihesu five wellys lyst vncloose,
Toward Paradys, callyd the rede strem,
Off whos five woundys prent in your hert a roose.70 (117–20)
(The son was eclipsed and dark in every realm, when Jesus chose to open five wells
towards Paradise, called the red stream, of whose five wounds print in your heart a rose.)
Lydgate uses the same image again in his crucifixion lyric ‘A Saying of the Nightin-
gale’, elaborating its meditative message:
His woundis fyve for man he did vnclose:
Of handis, of feete, and of his faire side.
Make of these fyve in thyn hert a Rose
And lete it there contynually abyde;
Forgete hym nought, where thow go or ride,
Gadre on an hepe these rosen-floures fyve,
In thy memorye prynt hem al thy lyve.71 (113–19)
Carthusians, ed. by James Hogg, Analecta Cartusiana, 130 (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik
und Amerikanistik Universität Salzburg, 1996), XIII, 127–47. For ownership of Rolle texts in
York and devotion to the Holy Name, see notes 95 and 97 below.
68
A thirteenth-century lyric, for example, uses this common metaphor: ‘Levedy, flowr of
alle thing, / Rosa sine spina, / Thu ber Jesu, Hevene King, / Gratia divina’ (Lady, flower of all
things, Rose without thorn, You bore Jesus, king of heaven, By divine grace). Ecclesiasticus
24. 18 was applied to both Jesus and Mary. For a discussion of Mary as rose, see Douglas
Gray, Themes and Images in the Medieval English Religious Lyric (London: Routledge and
K. Paul, 1972), pp. 99–92.
69
The ‘compassion’ of Mary — her shared suffering in the crucifixion of her son — was a
common theme in late medieval art and literature.
70
John Lydgate, The Minor Poems of John Lydgate, ed. by H. N. McCracken and Merriam
Sherwood, EETS OS, 192 (London: Oxford University Press, 1934), vol. II: Secular Poems.
71
John Lydgate, Lydgate’s Minor Poems: The Two Nightingale Poems, ed. by Otto
Glauning, EETS ES, 80 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1900).
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(His five wounds he opened for man in hands, feet, and his fair side. Make of these
five a Rose in your heart and let it abide there continually. Forget him not, whether
you walk or ride. Gather together these five rose flowers and print them in your
memory all your life.)
As a sacred image, the Bolton Hours rose is apparently unique, and Kathleen Scott
suggests that it may have been specifically commissioned by the book’s original
purchaser, presumably as an aid to private meditation.72 It is a way of representing
devotion to Christ and Mary that is in tune with the devotion of the book of hours as
a whole: allusive, introspective, penitential, and centred on the heart.
Intimacy: Family values
Like many other primers, the Bolton Hours also has several pictures in which the
patrons are depicted at prayer: a man kneels; a woman makes her confession to a
priest; a young woman prays to ‘St’ Richard Scrope, about whom we shall say more
later; another woman prays to St Michael, and possibly the same woman is repre-
sented as praying to the servant-saint St Sitha, in a reversal of everyday domestic
relations between mistress and employee that mystifies the idea of service that we
have already discussed.73 The private sphere that the Bolton Hours brings into being
was not, however, merely the sphere of solitary prayer that these images suggest.
The book also locates itself further along the private-public spectrum in the direction
of publicness, though still within the intimacy of the nuclear family. Immediately
before the text of the hours of the Virgin begins, there is a miniature depicting a
‘crucifix-Trinity’ in which a seated God the Father holds the crucified Christ on his
lap, with the Holy Ghost as dove at his shoulder. In front of the Trinity are four
kneeling figures who apparently form a family group of son, father, mother, and
daughter.74 Here is the nuclear family which is at the core of the household, with its
apprentices and servants. The focus is on the household’s reproductive and child-
rearing aspects; nevertheless, the family is represented less as a genealogy than as a
prayer group. There is, of course, an implicit but inescapable gender hierarchy in the
72
See Scott, Later Gothic Manuscripts, II, 120. Another contemporary York book of hours
(York, Minster Library, MS XVI.K.6) contains a similar drawing of a five-petalled double
rose, encircled by an inscription that associates it more explicitly with Christ’s wounds: ‘Hic
fons ortorum: puteus et aqua vivorum’ (Here is the fountain of the gardens: the well and the
water of the living), and bearing two scrolls saying ‘Hic sanguis’ (Here is blood) and another
two saying ‘Hic aqua’ (Here is water) (fol. 25r). We do not concur with Scott’s judgement that
this is a ‘different type of schematic rose’ (p. 120), although it is differently coloured. There is
no evidence for the white rose as a Yorkist symbol at this date.
73
These images are on fols 48r, 78r, 100v, 123r, and 40v.
74
Fol. 33r. The mother figure may be the suppliant before St Sitha/Zita at fol. 40v, while
the daughter may be the maiden supplicant before Archbishop Scrope at fol. 100v.
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image: the men are on the viewer’s left and God’s right hand, and this hierarchy is
sanctified by the Trinity to whom they pray, with its strong emphasis on father- and
sonhood. Nevertheless, working against this hierarchy is a kind of congruence or
mutuality. The family members all have petitionary scrolls issuing from their
mouths, containing Latin texts that form a single utterance, divided into two
couplets. The first couplet is spoken by the boy and the man, who share a rhyme: ‘O
father, o son, you who are called the kind spirit’ (‘O pater o nate tu spiritus alme
vocate’), says the son; ‘Grant what we seek from you through your compassion’
(‘Quod petimus a te concede tua pietate’), says the father. The second couplet with
its shared rhyme, which completes the prayer, is spoken by the woman and the girl:
‘Heavenly majesty, threefold god, one power’ (‘Celica magestas trinus deus una
potestas’) is the mother’s line, while ‘You who dispense gifts, make us chaste and
worthy’ (‘Premia qui prestas nos castas fac et honestas’) is spoken by the daughter.
Each member of the family has a voice; each voice contributes to the whole. There is
no conflict between the generations, no clash of interests between family members.
The space of prayer effaces all those negotiations and compromises that are the stuff
even of harmonious intimacy. Of course the prayerful unity of the family is ideo-
logical: we could perhaps put it alongside recent public images of the Blair family or
of the Bush family, which may have been deployed more cynically but which help us
to see that the idea of the harmonious family above all naturalizes and domesticates
heterosexual desire and provides an image of stability at the heart of the state. The
last and most specific voice is given to the daughter: ‘nos castas fac et honestas’. The
feminine endings of ‘castas’ and ‘honestas’ show that they apply only to the women,
so she enunciates what the whole family apparently seeks: namely, that its women
members should be chaste and worthy. This pair of virtues occurs elsewhere: the
prayer ‘Obsecro te, domina’ (I beseech you, lady), frequently found in books of
hours, asks that the Virgin may ‘vitam honestam et castam mihi tribuat’ (bestow on
me a worthy and chaste life).75 In the context of this ungendered prayer, worthiness
and chastity are virtues sought by individuals of both sexes, whereas here in the Bol-
ton Hours they are a family value. They are social as well as spiritual virtues, and as
such are essential elements in what constitutes respectability for the urban bour-
geoisie. They mediate between the intimate sphere of the home and the social sphere
of the town. It is as if the standing and reputation of the urban family are most vul-
nerable at this point — in relation to its daughter — and yet it also suggests, as Kate
Cooper has pointed out elsewhere in this volume, that the idea of the good woman
plays an essential role in the moral order of the town. She is represented as the
carrier of household virtue into society, and it is she who will perform, as we shall
show, a crucial role in advancing male social ambitions. Although the prayers of
these four kneeling figures seem to focus on the conduct of the female members of
75
For the Latin text of this prayer, see Horae Eboracenses, ed. by Wordsworth, p. 66; for
an English translation, see Wieck, Time Sanctified, pp. 163–64.
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the family, nevertheless the image is also grounded in other family values that are
less explicitly stated: unity, piety, deference, the sanctioned heterosexual relation-
ship, the rightness of procreation, and of course, male authority. These are the virtues
of the ‘holy household’.
Intimacy: The Bourgeois Home
The moral values of the virtues of the ‘holy household’ which were supported by the
images in the book, also overflowed into the very design and decoration of the home.
For if the book of hours was a didactic and devotional text, it was also, as a material
object, part of the everyday furnishings of the home and thus of secular habits and
values. Books, including primers, were commonly left among the material possessions
of testators in ways which suggest that they were not always differentiated in kind
either from the owners’ other personal effects, such as clothes or bedlinen, or from
other furnishings. Thomas Overdo, a York baker who died in 1440, seems to have
kept his expensive primer along with the rest of his valuable possessions: his silver
spoons, a piece of silver plate, a mazer, and a pair of decorated knives.76 The Bolton
Hours, with its opulent schemes of illumination, might well have been considered by
some of its early owners to be a prestigious addition to their domestic furnishings.
The decorative aspects of the book also both reflected and probably influenced
the decorative scheme of the house. The geometric patterns in the background of
some of the illuminations in the Bolton Hours imitate the design of soft furnishings
and floors found in prosperous mercantile homes. Several York inventories mention
painted and striped hangings and cushion covers, and a geometric pattern of late
medieval coloured tiles was discovered during excavations of the floor of what is
now Barley Hall, a reconstructed fifteenth-century town house in York.77 In other
respects, also, we know that the use of religious imagery in all kinds of domestic fur-
nishings was commonplace — in pottery, hangings, tableware, and light fittings —
as well as in the display of religious statuary, such as saints’ images and, indeed,
books. There was often no difference between the design of domestic and ecclesias-
tical furniture. Indeed, the blurring of distinctions between the sacred design of an
object and its secular use was a commonplace of later medieval domestic
76
Thomas Overdo, York, baker, 1444: BIHR, Dean and Chapter of York, Original Wills,
1383–1499, in Probate Inventories, ed. by Stell and Hampson, p. 83.
77
Striped hangings and cushion covers are mentioned in the inventories of Hugh de
Grantham, mason (1410): YML, Probate Jurisdiction, Inventories, L1(17) 40; Thomas Baker,
stringer (1436): BIHR, Dean and Chapter of York, Original Wills, 1383–1499, p. 72; Thomas
Overdo, baker (1444): ibid.; John Carter, tailor (1485): YML, Probate Jurisdiction Inventories,
L1(17) 6. All in Probate Inventories, ed. by Stell and Hampson. For Barley Hall, see
<http://www.r3.org/barley_hall/>; Charles Kightly, Barley Hall, York (York: Barley Hall
Trust, 1999).
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furnishings. The parlour of John Collan, a York goldsmith who died in 1490, was
elaborately hung with painted cloths depicting the Trinity, St George, and the
Blessed Virgin, all of whom are represented in illuminations within the Bolton
Hours.78 In 1439 John Cadeby, a Beverley mason, had cloths hanging in his hall with
images of St George and the Blessed Virgin, as well as ‘a blue and green tapet with
wheels of Saint Catherine’.79 The word ‘tapet’ means a hanging or a coverlet and is
used elsewhere figuratively to connote luxury.80
Even intimate devotional images, such as the rose in the Bolton Hours, may have
been used in domestic furnishings. John Scardeburgh, a prebendary of the Minster
had a blue quilt with white roses on it, a design which was repeated on one of his
belts, while Archbishop Bowet had striped cushions with embroidered roses in his
hall.81 John Cadeby, the mason, had a ‘green and grey bed spangled with red and
white roses’.82 Further afield, the early fifteenth-century ‘Fares’ chest, a wooden
merchant’s counter chest, has two five-petalled double roses on the front panel that
are very similar to the rose in the Bolton Hours.83
We can see this blurring of secular and sacred throughout the domestic setting.
Merchants kept statues and images of saints in their parlours and offices: the London
grocer Richard Toky had alabaster images of St Mary and St John the Baptist in his
counting house in 1391.84 The houses of merchants and substantial artisans were
presumably saturated with such consumer items. The question for us is, how should
we read such saturation? Was it a sign of devotion, or was it an aspect of the middle-
class consumerism that has been identified by historians of this period?85 Can these
78
BIHR, Dean and Chapter of York, Original Wills, 1383–1499, in Probate Inventories,
ed. by Stell and Hampson, p. 172.
79
For the inventory of Cadeby’s possessions, see YML, Probate Jurisdiction, Inventories,
L1(17) 5, in Probate Inventories, ed. by Stell and Hampson, p. 76.
80
See MED tapet (e n. (a)).
81
John de Scardeburgh, York, Prebendary, 1402, BIHR, Dean and Chapter Cause Papers,
1402/1; Archbishop Henry Bowet, York, 1423, YML, Probate Jurisdiction, Inventories,
L1(17) 2, in Probate Inventories, ed. by Stell and Hampson, p. 31.
82
John Cadeby, Beverley, 1430x1439, YML, Probate Jurisdiction, Inventories, L1(17) 5,
in Probate Inventories, ed. by Stell and Hampson, p. 76.
83
See Charles Tracy, English Medieval Furniture and Woodwork (London: Victoria and
Albert Museum, 1988), p. 178.
84
Calendar of Select Pleas and Memoranda of the City of London, 1381–1412, ed. by
A. H. Thomas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1932), p. 213.
85
See, for example, David Gaimster and Beverley Nenk, ‘English Households in Transi-
tion, c.1400–1550: The Ceramic Evidence’, in The Age of Transition: The Archeology of
English Culture 1400–1600. Proceedings of a Conference Hosted by the Society for Medieval
Archeology and the Society for Post-Medieval Archeology at the British Museum, Londen,
14th–15th November 1996, ed. by David Gaimster and Paul Stamper (Oxford: Oxbow Books,
1997), pp. 171–98.
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in fact be separated? Such questions take us to the heart of much debate, both con-
temporary and modern, about the nature of lay religious practices, about the conflict
between the active and contemplative lives, about the use of images and about the
place of material wealth in the church. The growth of ‘popular’ lay devotional
culture has often been interpreted, not in personal terms at all, but as a product of the
growth of towns in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Indeed, it has become
relatively commonplace to characterize the proliferation of religious goods and ser-
vices as a symbol of the growing prosperity, literacy, and assertiveness of the mer-
cantile classes, and it would be easy to suggest the same of the Bolton Hours. This
modern view ties in with the criticism of lay devotion by some contemporary clerics
and other elites who were alarmed by the superficial worldliness and materialism of
much lay religion and the domestic lifestyles on which it depended. Since at least the
later twelfth century, preachers had attacked excessive consumption in towns, con-
demning what they saw as the lavish homes of the urban elite which were wasteful
of resources and exploitative of labour, and which tempted their proud owners to
‘scorn the more beautiful heavenly home’.86 Nicholas Love’s widely read Mirror of
the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ, composed around 1410 in the Yorkshire monastery
of Mount Grace, uses the lack of ostentation in the household run by the Virgin to
launch a digressive attack on the morality of contemporary domestic tastes. She is
used as an anticonsumerist exemplar: Love pictures the Holy Family’s life of quiet
industry and asks how we should imagine their ‘household, as of beddynge,
clothinge and othere necessaries, whether they hadden in this superfluite or curiosite
[sophistication]?’ He goes on:
Nay, God forbade, for [. . .] thise vice of curiosite is one the moste perilous vice that is
[. . .] Also, it is to hem that hauen likynge in suche curiosites, matere forto drawe hir
hertes fro God and heuenly thinges, for as seynt Gregory seith: In also moche as a man
hath delite here bynethe in erthely thinges in so moche he is departed fro the loue
aboue of heuenly thinges.87
(No, God forbid, for this vice of sophistication is one of the most perilous vices there
are. Also for those who take pleasure in such sophistication, it is a preoccupation that
draws their hearts from God and heavenly things. For as St Gregory says: to the extent
that a man takes pleasure here below in earthly things, to the same extent he is sep-
arated from the higher love of heavenly things.)
86
Beverley Mayne Kienzle, ‘Cistercian Views of the City in the Sermons of Helinand of
Froidmont’, in Medieval Sermons and Society: Cloister, City, University, ed. by Jacqueline
Hamesse and others (Louvain-la-Neuve: Fédération Internationale des Instituts d’Etudes
Médiévales, 1998), pp. 165–82 (p. 176).
87
Nicholas Love, Nicholas Love’s Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ: A Critical
Edition Based on Cambridge University Library Additional MSS 6578 and 6686, ed. by
Michael G. Sargent (New York: Garland, 1992), p. 54.
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Orthodox and heterodox thinking coincided in this: to reformers such as the authors
of the Twelve Conclusions of the Lollards that were presented to Parliament in 1395,
the consumption of ‘false idols’ within the domestic setting may have been as much
a cause of concern as the use of such images in more public displays in churches and
civic drama. They use the same term as Love — ‘curiosite’ — in their attack on the
products of ‘goldsmiths and armourers and all manner crafts not needful to men’,
who produce the needless luxury goods used in religious contexts.88 Moreover,
material wealth might become a source not only of false pride, but also of false faith.
Everyday living might lead a lay person to develop a domesticated view of theology
which could seem downright heretical, as in the case of Margery Baxter, tried for
Lollardy at Norwich in 1429.89
Intimacy: Holy Households and Elite Piety
These different strands in contemporary criticism provide an important context for

reassessing the role of an expensively illustrated book of hours in its domestic
environment. By about 1400 more conservative attitudes to lay piety were emerging,
directed particularly at laywomen, which sought to provide a ‘model of decent, well-
bred and non-disruptive piety’ for their non-cloistered readers.90 As we have sug-
gested, the Bolton Hours reflects a local piety in which local elites embraced the new
interiorized devotions of writers such as Richard Rolle, with an emphasis on devo-
tion to the Holy Name and the Holy Heart. Yet it is also a lavishly and expensively
(if somewhat crudely) illuminated book, which seems to contradict the aims of
mystical asceticism. The path to spiritual perfection which Rolle advocated was the
ideal, but it demanded an absolute denial of all sensual and especially visual
stimulation. It was an imageless devotion, best practised by the spiritual elite.91 For
the less literate, however, it was conceded that images were a spiritual necessity, a
safe means of protecting them from false faith, and safe images (such as the Trinity)
in particular were advocated as aids to devotion. The image-laden devotions of the
88
H. S. Cronin, ‘Twelve Conclusions of the Lollards’, English Historical Review, 22
(1907), 292–304 (p. 204).
89
Although Baxter’s ‘heresy’ arose from imagining the Eucharist in a domestic material
environment that was far from luxurious: Women in England, c. 1295–1525: Documentary
Sources, ed. and trans. by P. Jeremy Goldberg (Manchester: Manchester University Press,
1995), p. 292.
90
Daniel Bornstein, ‘Spiritual Kinship and Domestic Devotions’, in Gender and Society in
Renaissance Italy, ed. by Judith C. Brown and Robert C. Davis (London: Longman, 1998), pp.
173–92 (p. 182).
91
Margaret Aston, ‘Imageless Devotion: What Kind of an Ideal?’, in Pragmatic Utopias:
Ideals and Communities, 1200–1630, ed. by Rosemary Horrox and Sarah Rees Jones
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Bolton Hours look in both directions. It aspires both to the elite spirituality of the
mystics, but at the same time is laden with more prosaic, ‘safe’ images, such as the
Holy Trinity around whom the family is formed in prayer.
The Bolton Hours may thus be, in André Vauchez’s words, an example of the
way the laity ‘remodelled the religious message transmitted by the clergy in line with
their own sentiments and their own specific needs’.92 Yet the Bolton Hours chal-
lenges the idea that lay devotions might be simply divided between a devout minor-
ity who pursued ‘spiritual consolations’ and the majority who remained attached to
more utilitarian religious practices, both individual and collective. For the book em-
braces both worlds. It seems to occupy a liminal ground between the spiritual
disciplines of the mystics and the colourful opulence of middle-class homes, rich in
religious visual imagery. Such a luxury book of hours became a means of infusing
the taste for allegedly irreligious ‘superfluite and curiosite’ with a new spirituality.
It is not hard to find examples of the kind of comfortable York homes in which
such books of hours and spiritual tastes were present. The home of Elizabeth
Sewerby, the well-to-do widow of an East Riding gentleman in 1468, was located in
Bishophill, York, a neighbourhood we shall discuss later. The house was not particu-
larly large, but it looks as if it was geared to the bodily and spiritual comforts of a
devout elderly person, who lived alone with her female servant.93 Her house con-
tained a chapel which was furnished with statues and cloths painted with religious
images, as well as a number of books, including a Psalter, the Revelations of St Brid-
get, a life of Christ (perhaps Nicholas Love’s version), the Mystery of the Passion of
Our Lord, all in English, and what looks like an unbound tract on the visitation of the
Blessed Virgin.94 In addition, there were Latin books, including meditative texts
such as Rolle’s Meditatio Passionis Domini and a Vita Christi, and a missal that may
have been used by the priest who came in from Elizabeth Sewerby’s parish church of
St Mary, Bishophill, to say Mass.95 She also owned quite valuable family silver. This
is a ‘holy household’ then, typical of that piety of devout elderly widows that is so
visible a feature of the landscape of late medieval England — comfortable and well-
off, in which ‘spiritual consolations’ were pursued.96 Such households were not
92
Vauchez, Les Laïcs au moyen âge, p. 287. Our translation.
93
Elizabeth Sewerby [Sywardby], YML, Probate Jurisdiction, Inventories, L1(17) 47, in
Probate Inventories, ed. by Stell and Hampson, which is also printed with notes in Testamenta
Eboracensia or Wills registered at York, illustrative of the history [. . .] of the Province of
York, from the year MCCC downwards, ed. by James Raine, Publications of the Surtees
Society, 30 (London, 1855), II, 161–68.
94
Elizabeth Sewerby’s psalter, like the Burnet Psalter referred to in note 10 above, could
also have contained a book of hours.
95
At her death Elizabeth Sewerby owed 6d to John Clerk, clerk of the church of St Mary,
Bishophill, for his salary.
96
Elizabeth Sewerby was a widow for nearly twenty years. Her daughter, Lady Margaret
Pigot, who also had a long widowhood, became a vowess the year after Elizabeth Sewerby died.
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uncommon in the city. Two of Archbishop Richard Scrope’s nephews, the brothers
Henry and John, third and fourth Lords of Masham, similarly combined an interest
in mystical devotion with an opulent lifestyle. Henry (executed in 1415) is famous
for his interest in St Bridget and also owned a copy of Rolle.97 The family owned at
least two town houses in York, and by 1441 John seems to have made one of these
his permanent base. It too contained a chapel lavishly furnished with every kind of
religious imagery and plate, which he left to his widow Elizabeth who became a
licensed vowess immediately after his death in 1455.98 Slightly lower down the
social scale the household of the Dawtry family, who were city clerks (notaries),
contained a similar mixture of religious imagery and devotional works together with
philosophical and legal texts, romances and histories.99
The material and social context of this aspirational piety therefore leads us to go
further than Vauchez and to map spiritual exclusiveness onto other kinds of exclu-
siveness, and specifically onto the divide that becomes increasingly visible from the
late fourteenth century marking off those elite groups in towns who lived in com-
fortable, multi-room houses — the kinds of people who, increasingly, had parlours,
private kitchens and latrines, and even chapels. They were able to withdraw into the
97
C. L. Kingsford, ‘Two Forfeitures in the Year of Agincourt’, Archaeologia, 2nd series,
20 (1920), 71–100 (pp. 82, 94); Jeremy Catto, ‘Religious Change under Henry V’, in
Henry V: The Practice of Kinghsip, ed. by G. L. Harriss (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1985), pp. 100, 102. Scrope’s books, which include Richard Rolle and the Revelations of St
Bridget, are listed in Testamenta Eboracensia, ed. by James Raine, Publications of the Surtees
Society, 45 (London, 1864), III, 33; Hughes, Pastors and Visionaries, p. 92.
98
John Scrope probably lived in the parish of St John Ogleforth near York Minster in
1441, since he left a small bequest to the church for his mortuary. Both the original will and a
codicil added in 1453 mention his dwelling house, with a chapel, in the city. He was buried
next to the ‘Scrope Chapel’ in York Minster next to his son, John. BIHR, Probate Registers
[PR] 2, fol. 321; Testamenta Eboracensia, ed. by Raine, II, 184.
99
BIHR, PR 2, fol. 413 (John Dautre, d. 1458), PR 3, fol. 493v (Thomas De Alta Ripa, d.
1437); Testamenta Eboracensia, ed. by Raine, II, 59–61, 230–34. Thomas Dawtry bequeathed
in 1437 inter alia plate inscribed JHC to the Carthusians at Hull, a book called Chobham, a
book of Vices and Virtues, to John Dawtry a book of Bonaventure, Deeds of Troy, Deeds of
Alexander, a quarto of chronicles, a small book called Scrope, a book of the art of kalendars
and a psalter, to his daughter a primer, to his clerks three registers called C, D, F, a book of
Trojan Wars, a book called Francisci Petrarce laureati, to his church a book called Pupilla
Oculi. John Dawtry (who was a widower) bequeathed in 1458 inter alia a Scrope book to his
parish priest, a funeral torch to Scrope chapel outside the walls, to his son William a book of
devotions, books of law, to his son Guy a book of life of Thomas Martyr, to his son John a
book of Trojan Wars, Cato and Solempnia Pharaoris, to his son Richard a psalter, a book
called Brito, to his daughter Eustacia the best primer which belonged to her mother, to his
daughter Isabella a small primer, to Guy Fairfax the Magistrum Registrum. He left the family
home to Martin Youle, his ‘ancient’ servant for his life, for service to him and his parents,
with stern warnings to his son and heir not to molest him.
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privacy of their homes and to separate themselves from the cottagers whose lives
spilled on to the public street, who cooked their food in communal ovens, used com-
munal privies, and prayed in church. And of course, the elite home-owner was more
likely to be literate than the cottager, because literacy was one of the drivers and
markers of the former’s success. Although recent work has emphasized how far
down the social scale books of hours penetrated, nevertheless they can rarely have
been the property of the poor.100 The urban artisans who acquired them — like the
York baker, Thomas Overdo, whose book of hours was valued at 9s, and like the
mercantile family who commissioned the Bolton Hours — may have done so in part
at least because books of hours were markers of an elite piety: the textual community
to which they provided access was rather like membership of a prestigious interna-
tional guild.101 When the devout were also members of the civic elite — as Margery
Kempe, the mayor’s daughter, for example, is represented as being — the combina-
tion of civic status and spiritual prestige was a particularly potent one. In a social
context in which poverty was no longer regarded simply as a sign of holiness but
could look like idleness or scrounging, the creation of wealth was no doubt also open
to reinterpretation: it could look like the reward for piety and hard work.102 Never-
theless, not only the opulence but also the intimacy and emotional intensity charac-
teristic of the Bolton devotions had a social function in the formation and definition
of this social elite, in addition to its private function within the home in the creation
of the affective family. It is these social functions to which we turn next.
Sociability and the Public Sphere
Sociability: The Holy Neighbourhood
Just as the contents of the Bolton Hours suggest that it is on the cusp between two
spiritual worlds, so the social context of its probable owners was equally ambivalent.
The well-off householders who embraced devotions such as those in the book were
members of a new civic elite and were, as we shall show, insecure in their authority
and operating in contexts in which their personal achievements counted for more
than their inheritance of power from the past. Several of them, although extremely
wealthy, were newly arrived in the city, either from other parts of Yorkshire or from
100
See Goldberg, ‘Lay Book Ownership’.
101
See above, note 76.
102
Compare Christopher Dyer’s arguments that a ‘work ethic’, rewarded and displayed
through material consumption, emerged in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, rather than
in the period after the Reformation: Christopher Dyer, ‘Work Ethics in the Fourteenth Cen-
tury’, in The Problem of Labour in Fourteenth-Century England, ed. by James Bothwell and
P. Jeremy Goldberg (Woodbridge: York Medieval Press, 2000), pp. 21–42.
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abroad, and they were not closely connected to the older families who had domi-
nated civic government in the earlier fourteenth century. Intermingled with this
group was a number of Yorkshire gentry families, also probably newly settled in the
city, and prospering from the expanded opportunities offered to their male members
for legal employment, both locally and nationally. Finally, both groups were closely
connected to an even more elite aristocratic circle who enjoyed close connections
with the new Lancastrian kings and especially with Henry V, who could be not
unfairly characterized as a parvenu king who had inherited an unstable and still not
completely legitimate throne.
The ambiguous social position of this elite, which was at the same time both
urban and rural, both bourgeois and aristocratic, both local and national, adds con-
siderable depth to the ‘histories’ and identities which a reader of the Bolton Hours
might acquire from its contents. Although it contains many devotions that were pop-
ular across north-western Europe, the particular combination of devotions chosen for
the book provided the local York reader with no less than a virtual tour of the devo-
tional sites of the early fifteenth-century city.103 The subjects of both the illumina-
tions and the prayers in the book would call to mind the patrons of many city
churches, fraternities, hospitals, and religious houses, including, as we have already
suggested, new institutions that came into being in the late fourteenth and early
fifteenth centuries.104
103
In a city the size of York (population c. 15,000), with over fifty parish churches or
chapels and sixteen monasteries and friaries, the ubiquity of some of these images is hardly
surprising. However the fact that Scott (Later Gothic Manuscripts, p. 120) has identified a
number of the images as being unusual as subjects for illumination within the context of
English books of hours — namely Nicholas, Lucy, Martin, Giles, Leonard, Dominic, Blaise,
Cuthbert, John of Beverley, and Zita/Sitha — suggests that the illuminators may have deliber-
ately gathered together a collection of images which were intended to represent the devotions
of the York faithful.
104
Thus St Peter was the patron of York Minster and appeared on the city’s common seal,
while St William of York, whose shrine was in the Minster, was also the patron of the civic
chapel on Ouse Bridge and his feast day was an occasion of celebration for both Minster and
City; see Rosalind M. T. Hill, ‘From 627 until the Early Thirteenth Century’, in A History of
York Minster, ed. by Gerald E. Aylmer and Reginald Cant (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977),
pp. 1–43 (pp. 8–10, 35–37); R. Barrie Dobson, ‘The Later Middle Ages, 1215–1500’, in ibid.,
pp. 44–110 (pp. 85–86); David E. O’Connor and Jeremy Haselock, ‘The Stained and Painted
Glass’, in ibid., pp. 313–94 (pp. 359, 381–82). St Blaise also was commemorated both in the
Minster and in the civic ritual of mayoral elections; see Sarah Rees Jones, ‘York’s Civic Ad-
ministration, 1354–1464’, in The Government of Medieval York: Essays in Commemoration of
the 1396 Royal Charter, ed. by Rees Jones (York: Borthwick Institute of Historical Research,
1997), pp. 121, 137–38. St Cuthbert, St Oswald, and St John of Beverley were all celebrated
in the Minster as early fathers of the northern church, and St Thomas a Becket of Canterbury
had two city parish fraternities dedicated to him as well as a chapel and hospital; see
Thomas W. French, The Great East Window (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 6,
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It is possible to go further, however, and to speculate that an even more particular

neighbourhood within the city of York is intended by the choice of saints honoured
in the Bolton Hours. The neighbourhood of Micklegate, to the west of the river Ouse
in the city, was particularly strongly associated with the Scrope family, whose mar-
tyred Archbishop is so visible in the book’s devotions. At the centre of Micklegate is
the parish church of St Martin, whose advowson was owned by the Scropes of
Masham — Archbishop Richard Scrope’s family — by 1407.105 The advowson was
probably acquired in c. 1317, at the same time that Geoffrey Scrope, founder of the
Masham dynasty, purchased the site for a large town house in a prominent position
between Micklegate and Feltergayl to the immediate south-east of the churchyard.106
His son, Henry, first Lord Scrope of Masham, let the property to tenants while he
was campaigning in France, and it is uncertain for how long the house continued to
8, 11, 139, 141; Victoria County History, City of York [VCHY], ed. by P. M. Tillott (London:
Oxford University Press, 1961). p. 422. St Anthony, St Catherine, St Nicholas, St Leonard, St
Mary Magdalene, and the Holy Trinity were also the patrons of large hospitals in the city,
while St Andrew, St Mary. and again, the Holy Trinity were the patrons of other monastic
houses in York; see VCHY, pp. 357–65, 420–23. St Dominic, St Peter martyr, and St Mary
Magdalene were all associated with the Dominican friary in York, which was founded on the
site of a chapel of St Mary Magdalene and kept a relic of her hand. (For this reason Cullum
and Goldberg have argued that the Bolton Hours may have been compiled in the Dominican
friary: see their ‘Margaret Blackburn’, pp. 219–20.) Saints Andrew, Anne, Cuthbert, Giles,
George, Gregory, James, John, Lawrence, Margaret, Martin, Mary, Michael, Nicholas, Peter,
and the Holy Trinity and Holy Cross would be recognized as the patrons of at least one (and in
some cases of two or more) parish churches and chapels in the city; see VCHY, pp. 365–404.
Many of these figures as well as Saints Catherine, Lucy, and even Sitha were the objects of
devotion of numerous city chantries and both city-wide and parochial fraternities; see
R. Barrie Dobson, ‘The Foundation of Perpetual Chantries by the Citizens of Medieval York’,
and ‘Citizens and Chantries in Medieval York’, both reprinted in Church and Society in the
Medieval North of England, ed. by Dobson (London: Hambledon Press, 1996), pp. 253–66,
267–84; Eileen White, The St Christopher and St George Guild of York, Borthwick Paper, 72
(York: University of York, 1987); Crouch, Piety, Fraternity and Power, pp. 118–59, 262–64.
Lastly, the imagery of the Corpus Christi, so strongly present throughout the volume, obvi-
ously reflected the devotions of the Corpus Christi fraternity and the processions and mystery
plays associated with this major feast in the city; see Hughes, Pastors and Visionaries, pp.
213–14, 234; King, ‘Corpus Christi Plays and the “Bolton Hours”’, pp. 46–62; Crouch, Piety,
Fraternity and Power, pp. 160–95, esp. pp. 165–66.
105
VCHY, pp. 388–89. St Martin is represented in a full-page miniature in the Bolton Hours.
106
The acquisition of the site for the York house was begun by Geoffrey Scrope, grand-
father to Archbishop Scrope, at about the same time that he was constructing Masham castle:
Calendar of Patent Rolls preserved in the Public Record Office, vol. III: Edward II (AD. 1307–
1327) at 1313–17, p. 166; Yorkshire Deeds, vol. VII, ed. by C. T. Clay, Yorkshire Archaeo-
logical Society Record Series, 83 (Leeds: Yorkshire Archaeological Society, 1932), p. 188.
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be used or owned by the family, although they retained strong links with the city.107
When Henry Scrope, third Lord of Masham, was executed in 1415 for his part in a
conspiracy against Henry V, his head was displayed above Micklegate Bar.108 He
was succeeded by his brother John, fourth Lord Scrope of Masham, and in 1416
John, his mother, Margery, and his younger brother Stephen, Archdeacon of Rich-
mond, joined the recently formed fraternity of Corpus Christi in York, which was
not, at that time, a common occurrence among the gentry, although it later attracted
many aristocratic members.109 John was certainly living in York by the time he
wrote his first will in 1441. Although John held high royal office and his children
were born in Masham, it seems that he lived in York almost permanently in his old
age.110 John also belonged to the city’s St Christopher fraternity and left bequests to
all the city churches, and many of its religious houses, hospitals, and anchorites, in-
cluding the community of Clementhorpe nunnery in the suburb where his uncle was
executed.111 In particular he remembered his patronage of St Martin’s church, and he
is believed to have been responsible for the substantial rebuilding of the chancel and
chancel aisles of St Martin’s church in the second quarter of the fifteenth century.112
Adjacent to the neighbourhood of the Scropes’ church in Micklegate, to the west
of the river Ouse, are the neighbourhoods of North Street, formerly including the
Dominican Friary to the north and Bishophill to the south.113 Beyond the walls is the
suburban neighbourhood of Clementhorpe, the site of Archbishop Scrope’s exe-
cution in 1405. By 1458 it seems that a chapel had been built on the site of his
martyrdom, perhaps around a reliquary containing his head and commemorating the
various miracles associated with his martyrdom there.114 Clementhorpe was also the
site of a Benedictine nunnery, founded by the Archbishops of York in the twelfth
107
Yorkshire Deeds, vol. VII, ed. by Clay, p. 188; Catto, ‘Religious Change under Henry V’,
pp. 100, 102. Henry Scrope’s books, which included Richard Rolle and the Revelations of St
Bridget, are listed in Testamenta Eboracensia, ed. by Raine, III, 33. Hughes, Pastors and
Visionaries, p. 92.
108
It is not known where Henry is buried, but his will requested burial near his uncle’s
tomb in York Minster: Wylie, Reign of Henry V, II, 533–36.
109
Hughes, Pastors and Visionaries, p. 314; Crouch, Piety, Fraternity and Power, p. 176.
110
See above, note 98.
111
BIHR, PR 2, fols 321–24r, printed in Testamenta Eboracensia, ed. by Raine, II, 184–93.
112
Royal Commission of Historical Monuments, The City of York, An Inventory of the
Historical Monuments of the City of York [RCHMY], 5 vols (London: HMSO, 1962–81), III
(1972), 21; VCHY, pp. 388–89. He was buried with great ceremony in the family chapel near
Archbishop Scrope’s tomb in York Minster in 1455.
113
RCHMY, II (1972), 87.
114
See note 99 above. BIHR, PR 2, fol. 413; Hughes, Pastors and Visionaries, pp. 306–07.
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century, which became associated with the Scrope cult after 1405.115 Holy Trinity
priory in Micklegate was also home to the shrine of Corpus Christi, until its removal
to the civic chapel of St William further down Micklegate in 1431, and it was the
starting point for the annual Corpus Christi processions.116 Indeed, the patron of
every single religious house, hospital, and parish church in this quarter of the city, on
York’s west bank, is commemorated in the illuminations of the Bolton Hours, unlike
other parts of the city of which the ‘coverage’ in this hours is less complete.117 This
raises the possibility that the Bolton Hours, with its strong Scrope focus and interests
in both northern and lay saints, was a vehicle for the sensibilities of a devout York
audience with a particular interest in this one quarter of the city: a quarter which
might be described as a ‘holy neighbourhood’, built around a combination of new
devotions to Scrope, to the Corpus Christi, and to newly popular female saints such
as Bridget, Anne, and Sitha. As we shall see, the Micklegate neighbourhood became
the home in the fifteenth century to a number of prominent mercantile and gentry
families who were well connected not just with other parts of Yorkshire but also
with royal government and the royal household. Both local and national readings of
the saints’ cults represented in the Bolton Hours were perfectly compatible in such
an elite circle.
Locating the devotions of the Bolton Hours in the Scrope neighbourhood of Mickle-
gate provides a revealing social context for the book. Micklegate was an important
street. It carried the main road from London and was the start of the processional route
through the city used for royal entries as well as for the Corpus Christi processions.
Nevertheless, the parishes of Micklegate, and still more those of North Street,
Bishophill, and Clementhorpe, were not as prosperous as more central city parishes
115
By 1464 the convent was celebrating its patronal feast on 8 June, the anniversary of
Scrope’s execution, but also the feast of St William of York (the standard feast of St Clement,
pope and martyr, usually fell in November). By 1500 the convent church also included images
of some of the more unusual saints found in the Bolton Hours, such as St Bridget, St Zita, and
St William with Mary, and like many such houses it attracted a community of vowesses and
anchorites; R. Barrie Dobson and Sara Donaghey, The History of Clementhorpe Nunnery,
Archaeology of York, 2.1 (London: Council for British Archaeology, 1984), pp. 15, 22–25.
116
Crouch, Piety, Fraternity and Power, p. 161.
117
York’s west bank included parish churches dedicated to St Nicholas, St Gregory, St
Martin, St John the Evangelist, All Saints, St Mary (2), and St Clement. There were also
hospitals dedicated to St Thomas of Canterbury and St Katherine, and a chapel of St James
outside the walls. The civic chapel of St William was built on Ousebridge at the end of
Micklegate. On the far side of the bridge was the church of St Michael. The parish church of
St Martin included chantries dedicated to St John the Baptist, St Katherine, St Mary, and St
Nicholas — the last being especially popular in the early fifteenth century and situated in the
north choir aisle rebuilt, perhaps, by Scrope. Three monasteries: the Dominican house of friars
built on the site of a chapel of Mary Magdalene, the priory of Holy Trinity and the convent of
St Clement completed the religious topography of this quarter of York.
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to the east of the river Ouse.118 Indeed, in most respects Micklegate lay outside the
main centres of commercial power in the city, which were all in the central quarter
on the opposite bank of the Ouse.119 This began to change, however, in the later four-
teenth and, especially, the early fifteenth centuries as an increasing number of mayoral
families and Yorkshire gentry began to establish their main residences in this quarter
rather than in the market parishes of the city centre where such families had tradi-
tionally been based. The rising status of this neighbourhood may simply have reflected
York’s expanding population in a period when it was at the peak of its prosperity
and offered many new opportunities of employment to lawyers as well as merchants.
Certainly the streets behind Micklegate to both north and south were relatively
sparsely populated and offered good opportunities for wealthy immigrants to buy up
large sites for the construction of impressive town houses. We must now wonder
also, however, whether the popularity of the area was not in some way associated in
the early fifteenth century with a desire to be close to the centre of Scrope devotions.
Sociability and Publicness: The Formation of the Elite
Among the first mayors to live in this part of the city were Nicholas Foukes (mayor
in 1342), who founded a chantry at the altar of St Mary in St Martin’s church in
1367, and Richard Wateby (mayor 1365), whose family chantry may have been in St
John’s church.120 Wateby’s executors included two other Micklegate mayors who
ended up on opposing sides in the local conflicts associated with the Peasants’
Revolt in York: John Gisburn and Simon Quixlay.121 Gisburn (mayor 1371–73, and
1379–81) was the more controversial of the two. His entire career in city politics was
attended by pronounced conflict with other members of the civic elite, culminating
in the riots in York in 1380–81 in which he was expelled from the city and violently
sought to re-enter it.122 He was buried in c. 1392 in the church of St Martin in Mic-
klegate, where he and his wife Ellen (d. 1408) were commemorated in chantries at
the altars of Sts Nicholas, Katherine, and Mary.123 After Gisburn’s time the number
of mayoral households in the neighbourhood increased in the early fifteenth century.
118
York Memorandum Book, A/Y, part 2, ed. by Sellers, pp. 130–34.
119
By the fifteenth century the central section of the city between the rivers Ouse and Foss
on the east bank of the Ouse contained the town hall, the various guild halls, and the Minster,
and it was in these central parishes that the wealthiest and most powerful members of York’s
civic elite tended to live.
120
RCHMY, III, 21; VCHY, pp. 384–85.
121
Jenny Kermode, Medieval Merchants: York, Beverley and Hull in the Later Middle
Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 342.
122
Kermode, Medieval Merchants, p. 338, and see further references there.
123
BIHR, PR 1, fols 15v–16, PR 3, fol. 283. Calendar of Patent Rolls 1391–6, p. 145.
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Nicholas Blakburn (mayor 1412), a wealthy immigrant from Richmondshire and an

exceptionally powerful member of the city’s elite, lived in the relatively poor parish
of All Saints which was considerably enhanced by his patronage.124 Blakburn’s
daughter married John Bolton junior (mayor 1431), and it is their deaths that are re-
corded in the Bolton Hours. They lived in Skeldergate, around the corner from St
Martin’s church, but in the parish of St John Evangelist.125 Gisburn’s family friend,
John Moreton (mayor 1418), also lived in Micklegate. Their properties virtually
backed onto the Dominican Friary.126 Moreton was buried in 1434 in St Nicholas’s
choir in the church of St Martin next to his wife, Margaret.127 Finally, John Aldstane-
mor (mayor 1427) also lived in Micklegate, in the parish of St John Evangelist.128
This was a dynamic group of mayors. They played a central role in refashioning
the constitution of later medieval York and rode out the national political crises of
the decades 1390–1410. But they also took the lead in developing new forms of civic
religion, such as the major city fraternities, and the civic regulation of public ritual in
the city, including, most notably, the increasing civic control of the York mystery
plays.129 Their wills reveal many cross-currents of friendship but it was, above all,
the alliances of marriage between them that shaped and sustained the elite, in a soci-
ety where few families produced more than one (or at most two) generations of men
who aspired to hold civic office.130 Marriage, rather than inheritance in the male line,
was the chief means by which the consolidation of this ruling elite was achieved and
new members assimilated.131 William Holbek was one such new member, who rose
to hold the office of mayor no less than five times between 1449 and 1472, after he
had moved into and taken over the family home of his wife, the mayor’s daughter.132
124
Kermode, Medieval Merchants, pp. 335, 346; Cullum and Goldberg, ‘Margaret
Blackburn’, pp. 223–24, 230.
125
BIHR, PR 2, fol. 417.
126
York Memorandum Book, B/Y, ed. by Joyce W. Percy, Publications for the Surtees Soci-
ety, 86 (Durham, 1973) pp. 72–73; York Memorandum Book A/Y, part 2, ed. by Sellers, p. 65.
127
RCHMY, III, 21; BIHR, PR 3, fols 400v–401v.
128
See note 145 below.
129
For a suggestion that control of the profits from the staging of the plays was initially
controlled by a small group, including Gisburn, Wyman, and above all, Moreton, and later
widened, see David J. F. Crouch, ‘Paying to See the Play: The Stationholders on the Route of
the York Corpus Christi Play in the Fifteenth Century’, Medieval English Theatre, 13 for 1991
(1993), 64–111.
130
Kermode, Medieval Merchants, pp. 78–85.
131
Charlotte Carpenter, ‘The Formation of Urban Elites: Civic Officials in Late Medieval
York 1476–1525’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, Medieval Studies, University of York, 2000),
pp. 135–54.
132
See notes 145, 146 below. York City Chamberlains’ Account Rolls 1396–1500, ed. by
R. Barrie Dobson, Publications for the Surtees Society, 192 (London, 1979), pp. 210–11.
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The family in the Bolton Hours is, we recall, not represented as a genealogy but as a
prayer group. It is, moreover, the earliest surviving representation of a bourgeois
nuclear family, that social formation which is remade through marriage in each
generation. And marriage, of course, places the bride, as the carrier of social status
and transmitter of civic morals, in centre stage. It was, above all, the women in these
families who provided much more lasting social connections between different male
elites than mere business or political alliances could have achieved. Yet, in the con-
text of a society where marriage (rather than patrilineal inheritance) played such an
important role in the reproduction of elites, we might well understand that the
chastity of the daughter and mother safeguarded not only the reproduction of a single
family in the male line, but also the reproduction of virtue in civic society at large.
The central role of marriage becomes even more apparent when we look at the
other elites moving into the Micklegate area in the early fifteenth century. They
included two generations of the Nevilles of Thornton Bridge (a cadet branch of the
noble Nevilles of Raby) who lived and died in a house in Skeldergate, and members
of the Plumpton, Gascoigne, Vavasour, Stapleton,133 and Thwaites families, who all
retained houses in the Bishophill area, as well as the gentry families of Roos, the
Mowbrays of Easby in Cleveland, Walkingham, Whitchurch, and Ughtred who all
owned property in the area, but did not necessarily maintain a residence there.134 The
full family connections between these ‘gentry’ families and those of the mercantile
civic elite are still to be established. What we know so far is that intermarriage
between the two groups was common, and that it virtually always involved a
daughter from one of the mercantile families marrying a gentleman’s son.135 Thus, to
give some key examples, Alice, daughter of John and Ellen Gisburn, married Sir
William Plumpton, and her sister Isabella married William Frost, who was of gentry
origin but acted as mayor or royal keeper of the city on no less than ten occasions
between 1396 and 1406. Gisburn’s friend, John Moreton, married Margaret,
daughter of John Barden (mayor 1377–78), and her sister Agnes married Henry
Wyman, a German immigrant and mayor.136 The Wymans’ daughter, Joan, married
Sir William Gascoigne of Gawthorpe, and of the Gascoignes’ children, Henry
married Margaret Bolton, daughter of mayor John Bolton and Alice, and Joan
married Sir Henry Vavasour of Haslewood. Henry Vavasour was the nephew of
133
Brian Stapleton who brought back the relic of the Magdalene’s hand from France to the
Domnican Friary in York.
134
PRO C 143/229/20, E 210/6446; Chatsworth House, Hardwick MS 20, fols 107–09,
113r–v; Yorkshire Deeds, vol. II, ed. by Brown, p. 217; Testamenta Eboracensia, ed. by Raine,
II, 207–09; York Memorandum Book, A/Y, part 2, ed. by Sellers, pp. 66–67, 84, 129–31; York
Memorandum Book, B/Y, ed. by Percy, pp. 3, 8–9, 37–38, 72–73, 84.
135
For the following marriages, see Kermode, Medieval Merchants, pp. 82–83, 332–47.
136
John Moreton and Henry Wyman were appointed executors to the will of Ellen, widow
of John Gisburn; BIHR, PR 3, fol. 283.
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Elizabeth Sewerby, whose house in Bishophill, with its chapel and its holy books,
we have already described.137
Intimate, Social, and Public: The Book of Hours and the Bourgeois Public Sphere
Another, less immediately visible, connection between these families seems to be

their shared veneration of, or connection with, Archbishop Richard Scrope. Sir
William Plumpton was a nephew of Scrope and was executed with him for his part
in the rebellion on 8 June 1405.138 Yet Sir William’s wife was sister to the wife of
the very man, William Frost, whom Henry IV put in charge of the city in the
aftermath of the revolt, when York was taken into the King’s hands. Sir William
Gascoigne, son-in-law to mayor Henry Wyman, was the eldest son of the royal judge
who presided over Scrope’s trial but refused to condemn him to death. Wyman
apparently cherished a wooden cup which Scrope had blessed and which Wyman’s
wife bequeathed in 1413 to the Corpus Christi fraternity.139 Both William Gascoigne,
senior, and Alexander Neville of Thornton Bridge, living in Skeldergate, were
friends of the Dawtry family, who lived in the parish of St Michael on Ousebridge at
the east end of Micklegate. Thomas Dawtry, a city clerk who died in 1437, owned a
‘small book called Scrope’ which he left to his son, who later described it as the
book which Archbishop Scrope had held beneath his cloak and next to his heart at
the time of his execution.140 John left the book to the rector of his parish church. His
will contains several references to his great devotion to ‘Beatissimo dilecto meo
Sancte Ricardo Scrop’ (my beloved most blessed Saint Richard Scrope) and a long
list of books, images, and plate which he left to his five sons and two daughters.
Finally, there is the family of Nicholas Blakburn, who was engaged by the Crown
immediately after the rebellion in 1405 to raise supplies for the further suppression
of the revolt in the northern marches.141 It has been suggested that the Bolton Hours
137
Another common denominator between members of this group is that many of the
gentlemen were lawyers and maintained connections with local as well as royal legal circles.
Thus William Gascoigne, the chief justice, left a legal volume, Magistrum Registrum, to the
family of John Dawtry, a senior city clerk (or notary), who in turn left it to his brother-in-law,
the gentleman lawyer Guy Fairfax of Steeton, who later became a chief justice himself; see
note 99 above. Several of the Thwaites were also employed as legal counsel by the city, on the
way to developing more national legal careers; see York City Chamberlains’ Account Rolls,
ed. by Dobson, pp. 12–125 passim.
138
William and Alice Plumpton’s son, George, is named by Clement Maidstone as one of
his eyewitness sources for his early account of Scrope’s martyrdom: Wright, ‘Provenance and
Manuscript Tradition’, p. 100.
139
Hughes, Pastors and Visionaries, p. 313.
140
See note 99 above.
141
Calendar of Patent Rolls 1405–8, p. 30.
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may originally have been commissioned for the use of his wife, Margaret.142 In fact,
it seems to us that such a book of hours could have belonged to almost any family in
this neighbourhood, many of whom were directly involved in the horrific events of
1405 and their aftermath. It could have come to the owner who recorded the obits
after 1472 by a variety of routes. What matters more than who, precisely, owned it is
how such a book would have functioned in such a social context.
We have already represented the neighbourhood around St Martin’s church as the
centre of the powerful community of inter-related mayoral and gentry families.
Many of them had a familial interest in the Scrope cult, or were associated with the
regime of Henry V under which the Scrope cult was partially legitimized. We have
not so far drawn attention, though, to the fact that, once the initial residential pattern
had been set by Gisburn and Blakburn, it was above all the choices made by and for
the female members of the families which maintained the geographical cohesion of
this group. For example, the Gisburn sisters divided their parents’ residence between
them in 1392.143 Margaret Blakburn’s daughter, Alice Bolton, chose to live in her
mother’s neighbourhood after her marriage, rather than moving across the city into
the central parish of St Saviour where the family of her husband, John Bolton, lived
and where John still chose to be buried in 1445.144 Similarly, Agnes (daughter of
mayor John Aldstanemor) continued to live in the Aldstanemor’s family home in
Micklegate after her marriage to William Holbek and after her father’s death in
1435.145 There she cared for her grandmother, Margaret Aldstanemor, in addition to
her own family.146 In a later generation, when Alice Bolton’s daughter married into
142
Cullum and Goldberg, ‘Margaret Blackburn’, passim.
143
William Frost and Isabel had the ‘front’ half of the property facing Micklegate, which
contained four shops, half of the garden and presumably the main house. Sir William
Plumpton and Alice had the other half of the garden, together with a room at the North Street
(Tanner Row) end of the property and a new gate which had been constructed to provide
access to the rear street. This unequal division presumably reflected the more permanent use
that the Frosts would make of their new house. York Memorandum Book, B/Y, ed. by Percy,
pp. 72–73.
144
During her marriage Margaret Blakburn lived in North Street, close to the boundaries of
the neighbouring parishes of All Saints and St John Evangelist, which both maintained
chantries for the family. At the end of her life Margaret Blakburn lived with her daughter,
Alice, and Alice’s husband, John Bolton, in their house in Skeldergate, where they cared for
her ‘night and day’. She requested burial with her husband in York Minster: BIHR, PR 2, fol.
107v; PR 3, fol. 417.
145
The house was in the parish of St John Evangelist at the bottom of Micklegate: BIHR,
PR 3, fols 406–08.
146
Margaret Aldstanemor died in 1438 and was buried in the church of St John Evangelist.
She left numerous bequests to Agnes and William Holbek and their household servants: BIHR,
PR 3, fol. 554. It is possible that Agnes’s mother-in-law, Christiana, also lived in this house-
hold since both John Aldstanemor and his mother made bequests to her in 1435 and 1438.
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the Gascoigne family, their town house was in Skeldergate, the same street as Alice
Bolton’s own home.147
It seems to have been choices dictated by friendships between women that led to
the construction of such a powerful network in a particular neighbourhood at a par-
ticular time. They chose to live not only close to one another, but also close to the
site of the ‘martyrdom’ of some of their family members and within easy reach of
those churches where the ‘cults’ of these martyrs were memorialized in family tombs
and chantries, and so became associated with more regular saints’ cults and
images.148 These women seem to have been bound together in a reverence for their
families’ histories — and these, we should recall, were families which we previously
identified as history-less, the products of strategic marriages made by ambitious men
and women with no pasts.
Just as in the Bolton Hours it is the chastity of women which defines the nuclear
family, so in this more social arena it is the choice of residence among women which
extends familial relationships throughout the neighbourhood. We shall argue that
reconciliation among different factions begins at home. Home is where interiorized
private identities are brought into being, where those ideas of mutuality, to which
John Lyllyng appealed, are made a matter of conscience. The religion of the heart,
with its intense emotionality, compels the private values of the good life into the
public realm of justice, so that love becomes a civic virtue as well as a religious one.
Lyllyng appeals to ‘haly charite’, which implies a much more complex, individu-
alized, and spiritual mode of relationship in Middle English than modern ‘charity’
does.149 The construction of public charity did not depend solely on public institu-
tions of city, church, and guild, but on the role of women (both real and symbolic) in
the affective heart of the home.
Public, Social, and Intimate: The Holy Nation and the Holy Family
One of the remarkable aspects of the Scrope cult is the rapidity with which such a
potentially subversive phenomenon was accommodated and eventually patronized
by the Crown, with Scrope’s treason being reinterpreted as martyrdom. Usually this
transformation has been understood from a royal perspective, in terms of the needs
of Henry IV and then his son Henry V to make public their atonement for the
147
York Memorandum Book, B/Y, ed. by Percy, p. 84.
148
The arms of the Gascoigne and Vavasour families, in addition to those of Scrope and
the chantries of the mercantile families already mentioned, were displayed in the parish
church of St Martin in Micklegate; see RCHMY, III, 21–22.
149
MED, ‘charite’ n. 1a. (a) defines it as ‘The supreme virtue of Love or Charity according
to Christian doctrine, comprising affection, devotion, benevolence, kindness, mercy, gratitude
as between God and man or man and man’.
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execution of a leading prelate.150 The cult of Scrope as martyr was rapidly associated
with that of Thomas a Becket, the martyred Archbishop of Canterbury, as it is also in
the Bolton Hours where a prayer to ‘St’ Richard Scrope links his martyrdom with
Becket’s.151 At the same time, as a ‘saintly’ Archbishop of York, Scrope was linked
(again, as in the Bolton Hours) with St William, another Archbishop of York, and
other northern saints such as John of Beverley, whose devotions may have achieved
more national prominence as a result.152 Henry IV undertook to build three religious
houses in order to expiate Scrope’s death; he died before achieving this aim, leaving
it to Henry V to build the Carthusian and Bridgettine foundations at Sheen and Syon.
Many of the devotions in the Bolton Hours — from St George to St John of
Beverley, from St Bridget to the Holy Name — certainly point to such a national
context, and specifically to those saints and devotions particularly adopted by the
early Lancastrian kings. Syon, indeed, maintained a strong association with the
Scrope cult, and it was almost certainly there that Clement Maidstone, a former
Trinitarian friar from Hounslow, wrote the earliest account of the Archbishop’s
martyrdom, to which we have already referred.153
It is certainly tempting, therefore, to locate the Bolton Hours within a national
public arena. From such a perspective, it constructs a harmony of interest between,
for example, devotees of the national patron, St George, on the one hand, and the
potentially partisan northern followers of the martyred Archbishop of York on the
other. In order to achieve this, the local and national are conflated with the secular
and the eternal through the imagery of another great contemporary issue: the perma-
nently strained relations between Church and state, here so eloquently symbolized in
the martyrdom of an archbishop who had dared to criticize royal government.154
Unusually for an English book of hours, the Bolton Hours contains a set of full-page
miniatures of the Apostles, together with a large number of other martyred prelates
from St James the Less (‘brother of our Lord’ and ‘bishop of Jerusalem’) to Thomas
a Becket.155 All this seems to reaffirm the divine grace of the office of the Church’s
appointed leaders in Christ, and the essential, eternal unity of purpose of Church and
state, eclipsing and transcending tragic moments in time such as the events of 1405.
Yet from a York perspective there were different but equally urgent wounds need-
ing to be healed. In the public life of the city, the Scrope cult also provided an oppor-
tunity to reconcile institutional conflicts between competing centres of government
150
Walker, ‘Political Saints’.
151
Bolton Hours, fol. 101v.
152
Scrope was executed on the feast of St William: coincidence or propaganda?
153
For Maidstone, see Wright, ‘Provenance and Manuscript Tradition’, pp. 92–102.
154
Scrope’s ‘manifesto’, one version of which also prefaced Maidstone’s life, criticizes royal
government for its abuse of the Church and excessively heavy taxation of merchant wealth.
E. F. Jacob, The Fifteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961), pp. 59–60.
155
See note 17 above.
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in York, such as the Minster and the civic corporation, which had often resulted in
violence in the past. Already by the 1390s, however, more inclusive expressions of
citizenship were emerging, which embraced both sexes and all estates and were
partially built around the imagery of shared saints such as Blaise, Christopher,
Cuthbert, and William, as well as the rituals of Corpus Christi, which are all so
prominent in the Bolton Hours.156 To these the imagery of Scrope could now be
added. The account of Scrope’s rebellion depicted him appealing to merchants as well
as clerics, and support for his cult was found among clergy of the Minster as well as
wealthy citizens. Nevertheless, although the figure of Scrope might bring together
clerics and laypeople, within York’s elite and the households of which it was com-
posed, the Scrope rebellion and its aftermath had created potential divisions. This is
most potently symbolized, perhaps, by the apparently opposing sides on which the
two Gisburn sisters found themselves, through their marriages to Plumpton and
Frost, in late 1405–06. For these York families, and perhaps particularly for the
women, reconciliation must have been an urgent matter. It is in this context — in the
private and not in the public sphere — that we should look for the start of the
processes by which the death of Scrope was given new meanings. Instead of repre-
senting factional dissent, he is depoliticized. He is removed from the secular world
and associated with family values which are also religious values, and with the ‘city
of saints’ in which this group achieved so much: his cult is able to unify rather than
divide them.
The cult of the family at the heart of civic reconciliation in the aftermath of 1405
would also have provided a fertile context for the cult of St Bridget (who died in
1373). Her cult in England was initially closely related to that of Scrope, and she
may also have had a specifically York following, even before the foundation of Syon
in 1415. The canonization of Bridget in 1391 by Boniface IX during the Great
Schism was controversial, largely because she was an unlearned laywoman whose
visionary status was therefore suspect in some quarters.157 Her writings seem to have
been known in York in the opening decades of the century: a sermon by an unidenti-
fied cleric, possibly delivered in the Dominican friary or the hospital dedicated to
Mary Magdalene, shows a close familiarity with her Revelations.158 Another early
156
Rees Jones, ‘York’s Civic Administration’, pp. 120–21 and 136–38.
157
There is a succinct account of the controversies surrounding St Bridget’s canonization
in Bridget Morris, St Birgitta of Sweden (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1999), pp. 152–59. Morris
argues at p. 154 that ‘the question of Birgitta’s gender appears to have been a central criticism
of many objectors’. Her writings came under consideration at the Council of Constance
(1414–17), at which the leading opponent of the confirmation of her canonization was Jean
Gerson, the Chancellor of the University of Paris, who was not convinced that her visions
were genuine. The canonization was reconfirmed in 1419.
158
See Veronica O’Mara, ‘The “Hallowing of þe Tabernakyll of Owre Sawle” According
to the Preacher of the Middle English Sermons in BL MS Harley 2268’, in Models of Holiness
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fifteenth-century York book of hours contains a prayer of St Bridget, with a refer-

ence to the book and chapter of the Revelations from which it comes.159 As we have
seen, leading local families owned copies of her Revelations, and the nunnery at
Clementhorpe contained an image of St Bridget by 1500. Most significantly, it was
two northern lords, Henry Scrope, nephew of the Archbishop, and his cousin Henry,
Lord FitzHugh, who visited Vadstena, the mother-house of the Bridgettine order, in
1406 as royal chamberlains and friends of the King. They apparently introduced the
devotion to Bridget first to Henry IV and then to Henry V, and proposed the founda-
tion of a Bridgettine house in England, with the first chosen site being the dilapi-
dated hospital of St Nicholas in the suburbs of York.160 The sisters of this hospital
also attracted a number of legacies from members of the Micklegate elite, including
Ellen Gisburn, mother-in-law of the ‘martyred’ William Plumpton, in 1408.161
The Bolton Hours includes what is possibly the earliest image of St Bridget in an
English book of hours. Although she was never a nun, she is represented here in a
nun’s habit, with a pen in her hand and a scroll saying ‘Ecce sponsa Dei’ (Behold the
bride of God), which was how Bridget had identified herself from her very first
vision.162 Just as the Bolton Hours represents the chaste, intensely devout, married or
marriageable woman as the cornerstone of the prayerful family, and the family as the
foundation upon which a strong civic society is built, so all this is reinscribed, in
specifically religious terms, in the figure of Bridget — wife, mother, saint, and
founder of a monastic order that includes both men and women.163
The combination of the devotion to Scrope with the devotion to Bridget seems to
locate the Bolton Hours in a powerful local context in which public religion was be-
ing remodelled, with a particular emphasis on the public value of intense, personal,
lay, domestic devotion. It is not just a women’s book, but one in which feminized
values are reconceptualized in both a domestic and a local setting for a devout local
in Medieval Sermons, ed. by Beverley Mayne Kienzle and others (Louvain-la-Neuve:

Fédération Internationale des Instituts d’Etudes Médiévales, 1996), pp. 229–42 (p. 235–36).
159
YML, MS XVI.K.6, fol. 75v.
160
Cullum and Goldberg, ‘Margaret Blackburn’, p. 235.
161
BIHR, PR 3, fol. 283v.
162
Bridget was a widow of aristocratic birth and the mother of two surviving children
when she embarked on the visionary career that took her to Rome for the last twenty-four
years of her life. She founded the Bridgettine order. Her nun’s habit may represent her as the
founder of the order whose first English house was intended to be located in York.
163
Syon was also a centre for devotional works in the vernacular, often critical of estab-
lished monasticism and advocating a higher spiritual calling for the devout laywoman at home
— to the extent that such domestic values could even seem preferable to those of the religious,
enclosed in allegedly decadent convents and monasteries. See, for example, the mid-fifteenth-
century poem ‘Why I Can’t be a Nun’, in Six Ecclesiastical Satires, ed. by James Dean
(Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1991), pp. 231–42.
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audience of both sexes. The spirituality it advocates may be indulgent of the secular
world with its colour and clamour, and it may endorse the elite status of its owners,
but the book of hours also provides a disciplined medium through which the inter-
nalized tensions and anxieties of the reader can be harnessed, controlled, and brought
into harmony with the multiple demands of the home, family, city, and nation. All of
these are located on a continuum that begins with the interior life of the heart, but the
heart also provides a place of escape from the pressures of the world. The effect is
very much like that of Utopia where the domestic household of even-Christians is
placed at the heart of a system which disciplines the anxious and imperfect self,
rendering it serviceable to the public demands of the state.164
Conclusion
Let us return, finally, to the image we have already mentioned, in which a young
woman is depicted kneeling before Archbishop Richard Scrope, with a petitionary
scroll which reads ‘Saint Richard Scrope, pray for us’.165 She is elegantly dressed,
and her long, flowing hair and the garland she wears in it signify her virginity. As
Kim Phillips has pointed out, young women in late medieval England often wore
their hair bound or covered, but in representations of maidenhood it is regularly
depicted as loose.166 So we are not looking at a realistic portrait here, but rather at a
symbolic conjunction of girl and saint. The image brings together sacred and secular,
public and private, masculine and feminine, high and low, age and youth — all in an
elite mode which implies that these conjunctions are easily made and tension-free.
The two figures seem to be united above all by their shared virginity: in fact, we
might see the presence of the girl in the picture as a way of locating the meanings
attaching to the death of Scrope in the zone of holy martyrdom and bourgeois
devotion, rather than in the politics of dangerous times. Emphasis on Scrope’s
virginity and his devotion to the Five Wounds were early features of his cult.167 The
164
For a discussion of the possible influence of later medieval English civic rhetoric on
Utopia, see Sarah Rees Jones, ‘Thomas More’s Utopia and Medieval London’, in Pragmatic
Utopias, ed. by Horrox and Jones, pp. 117–35.
165
Bolton Hours, fol. 100v: ‘Sancte ricarde scrope ora pro nobis’.
166
See Phillips, ‘Maidenhood’, p. 10.
167
Clement Maidstone’s early account of the martyrdom of Scrope records that Scrope
asked his executioner to give him five wounds on his neck, in memory of the Five Wounds of
Christ. Maidstone also reports that Scrope ‘died a perfect celibate’; see ‘Miscellanea Relating
to the Martyrdom of Archbishop Scrope’, ed. by James Raine, Historians of the Church of
York, RS, 71 (London, 1886), II, 304–11. An antiphon to Richard Scrope in YML, MS
XVI.K.6, an early fifteenth-century book of hours, reads ‘Plagas quinque gladii moriens
subisti’ (Dying, you suffered five strokes of the sword), while another antiphon in Cambridge,
St John’s College Library, MS 129 has: ‘Presul eras veritatis Et exemplum castitatis’ (You
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girl’s virginity is of the temporary kind, which lasts until marriage and makes her
marriageable.168 She is also a York girl, though, praying to a York saint, so urban
identity is bound up in all this as well. The prayer to Scrope that follows this image
in the Bolton Hours calls him ‘Imitator paupertatis / Spernens mundi gaudia’ (Model
of poverty, despising the joys of the world), and it also asks him ‘Confer nobis
relauamen / Mentis tolle nunc grauamen’ (Bring relief to us, Take away our mental
burden’).169 Scrope seems an appropriate signifier for approved mercantile religious
values: chaste, unostentatious, wary of the world’s burdens. We need only think of
the merchant in Chaucer’s Shipman’s Tale, pursuing his ‘curious [worrisome]
bisynesse’ in his ‘countour-hous’, to understand the mental vexations of those who
engage in long-distance trade.170 When John Lyllyng told his fellow-mercers that
‘the charge is to me full hevy and grevous for to ber that is put vnto me’, by ‘charge’
he meant ‘burden’ (including financial loss) as well as ‘accusation’.171 So perhaps
the merchant’s daughter kneeling to the saint, carrying no heavier burden than a
garland of flowers, also represents a Utopian selfhood: a fantasy of purity, of
lightness of being, of release from calculations of profit and loss.
were the leader of truth and the model of chastity); see Horae Eboracenses, ed. by
Wordsworth, pp. 181–82.
168
For a fuller discussion of pre-marital virginity, see Felicity Riddy, ‘Temporary Virginity
and the Everyday Body: Le Bone Florence of Rome and Bourgeois Self-Making’, in Pulp
Fictions of Medieval England: Essays in Popular Romance, ed. by Nicola McDonald
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, forthcoming).
169
Bolton Hours, fol. 101r.
170
Geoffrey Chaucer, The Riverside Chaucer, ed. by Larry D. Benson and others (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1988), The Canterbury Tales, fragment VII, p. 225.
171
See MED, ‘charge’ n. 1(b), 8 (a) and 9.
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Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts
All volumes in this series are evaluated by an Editorial Board, strictly on academic
grounds, based on reports prepared by referees who have been commissioned by vir-
tue of their specialism in the appropriate field. The Board ensures that the screening
is done independently and without conflicts of interest. The definitive texts supplied
by authors are also subject to review by the Board before being approved for publi-
cation. Further, the volumes are copyedited to conform to the publisher’s stylebook
and to the best international academic standards in the field.
Titles in series
Jutta and Hildegard: The Biographical Sources, ed. by Anna Silvas (1998)
New Trends in Feminine Spirituality: The Holy Women of Liège and their Impact,
ed. by Juliette Dor, Lesley Johnson and Jocelyn Wogan-Browne (1999)
Medieval Women – Texts and Contexts in Late Medieval Britain: Essays for Felicity
Riddy, ed. by Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, Rosalynn Voaden, Arlyn Diamond, Ann
Hutchinson, Carol Meale, and Lesley Johnson (2000)
The Knowing of Woman’s Kind in Childing: A Middle English Version of Material
Derived from the Trotula and other Sources, ed. by Alexandra Barratt (2001)
Send Me God: The Lives of Ida the Compassionate of Nivelles, Nun of La Ramée,
Arnulf, Lay Brother of Villers, and Abundus, Monk of Villers, by Goswin of
Bossut, trans. by and with an introduction by Martinus Cawley OCSO and with a
preface by Barbara Newman (2003)
St Katherine of Alexandria: Texts and Contexts in Western Medieval Europe, ed. by
Jacqueline Jenkins and Katherine J. Lewis (2003)
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Seeing and Knowing: Women and Learning in Medieval Europe 1200–1550, ed. by
Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker (2004)
Writing the Wilton Women: Goscelin’s ‘Legend of Edith’ and ‘Liber confortatorius’,
ed. by Stephanie Hollis with W. R. Barnes, Rebecca Hayward, Kathleen Loncar,
and Michael Wright (2004)
Household, Women, and Christianities in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, ed. by
Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker and Jocelyn Wogan-Browne (2005)
The Writings of Julian of Norwich: ‘A Vision Showed to a Devout Woman’ and ‘A
Revelation of Love’, ed. by Nicholas Watson and Jacqueline Jenkins (forth-
coming, 2006)
Carolyn P. Collette, Performing Polity: Women and Agency in the Anglo-French
Tradition, 1385–1620 (forthcoming, 2006)
Les Cantiques Salemon: The Song of Songs in MS Paris BNF fr. 14966, ed. by Tony
Hunt (forthcoming, 2006)
Page 272

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14. Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker, Jocelyn Wogan-Browne - Household, Women, And Christianities. in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages(Medieval Women Texts and Contexts, Book 14) [Retail]

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in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages

MEDIEVAL WOMEN: TEXTS AND CONTEXTS

Editorial Board under the auspices of the

Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski (University of Pittsburgh)

in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Household, women, and Christianities in late antiquity and

© 2005, Brepols Publishers n.v., Turnhout, Belgium

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

Printed in the E.U. on acid-free paper.

Introduction Part I: Household, Women, and Lived Christianity 1

The Household and the Desert: Monastic and Biological Communities 11

‘Oikos-Ecclesiology’ and ‘Church Order’ in Eastern Christianity 37

The Icon Corner in Medieval Byzantium 71

Household and Empire: The Materfamilias 91

Faith, Family, and Fortune: 109

Introduction Part II: Medieval Households 125

‘Our Steward, St Jerome’: Theology and the Anglo-Norman Household 133

The Monastery as a Household within the Universal Household 167

The Household as a Site of Civic and Religious Instruction: 191

EETS Early English Text Society

ANNEKE B. MULDER-BAKKER AND JOCELYN WOGAN-BROWNE

The House of God and Women’s Churches

2 ANNEKE B. MULDER-BAKKER AND JOCELYN WOGAN-BROWNE

4 ANNEKE B. MULDER-BAKKER AND JOCELYN WOGAN-BROWNE

the impossibility of a single definition of household and of adequate accounts of the

6 ANNEKE B. MULDER-BAKKER AND JOCELYN WOGAN-BROWNE

The Present Volume

8 ANNEKE B. MULDER-BAKKER AND JOCELYN WOGAN-BROWNE

Conversion to Christianity is often largely represented through the documentation

Propositions and Conclusions

In the light of these explorations we hypothesize the following:

10 ANNEKE B. MULDER-BAKKER AND JOCELYN WOGAN-BROWNE

The Household and the Desert:

The Household and the Desert 13

The Life and its Author

The Household and the Desert 15

The Ascetic Household

The Household and the Desert 17

Models of Ascetic Authority

be reunited with her family. The third-century Pseudo-Clementine Romance explores

The Model of the Solitary

The Household and the Desert 19

The Model of the Founder

By contrast Antony’s slightly younger contemporary, Abba Pachomius, was remem-

The Household and the Desert 21

The Household and the Desert 23

The Household and the Desert 25

The Household and the Desert 27

Melania the Younger and the Problem of the Ascetic Founder

The Household and the Desert 29

The Household and the Desert 31

The Household and the Desert 33

The Household and the Desert 35

‘Oikos-Ecclesiology’ and ‘Church Order’

ethnologists it is commonplace that early ‘constitutional law’ depends closely on

‘Oikos-Ecclesiology’ and ‘Church Order’ 39

The Historical Setting for the Development of Early Christian Oikos-

‘Oikos-Ecclesiology’ and ‘Church Order’ 41

Oikos-ideology is highly significant for the hierarchical development of the ‘house

‘Oikos-Ecclesiology’ and ‘Church Order’ 43

Jewish Roots of Oikos-Ecclesiology and its Transfer to Church Order

The Principal Consequences in Canon Law of the Shaping of the