Digital resources in the Social Sciences and Humanities OpenEdition Our platforms OpenEdition Books OpenEdition Journals Hypotheses Calenda Libraries OpenEdition Freemium Follow us

Conventual buildings and the monastic ideal

Our common modern saying “A place for everything, and everything in its place” can be used to illustrate the monastic conception of space: each room, and within each room, each feature, was to serve a dedicated function. Today, let us take a look at conventual buildings, and how English nuns in exile managed their spaces in the seventeenth century, in sometimes trying circumstances.

The documents of early modern English nuns testified that many felt attracted to what they perceived as the strictest Order, which implied punctilious conformity with the Decrees of Trent and an uncompromising adherence to the all-important rules of monastic life, especially regarding austerity and regularity. Regulars followed the Rule (from the Latin, regula) of their founders, which regulated their every waking moment. In order to provide an environment which was conducive to a regulated life, time and space were carefully rationalised. Nicky Hallett and Caroline Bowden have dealt with the ordering of time,[1] and today, I would like to say a word about space which, like time, was attributed to specific functions. Here is an example from the Benedictines of Ghent:

Their inclosure must bee invironed with high Walls, which may contayne that parte of the Church, to witt the Quyre allotted to their proper use, together with the Cloyster, Dormitory, Refectory, and all the Offices and buildings, which are appertaining to the proper use of the professed Religious, together with the Gardens, Orchards, and such like, soe that none from abroade may enter into this Inclosure, by any Stayres, or Gates, but Onely by one dore or gate, if it may be any wise so contrived commodiously.[2]

It was crucial for the communities to function within a decent environment which would fit their contemplative and enclosed mode of life. In this post, I would like to explore some of the ways in which the buildings of the English convents in exile reflected their ideal for contemplative life, but also the pragmatic realities of their circumstances and, more generally, the impossibility of monastic separation from the world.

In order to plan for purpose-built convents which would reflect perfectly the monastic ideal of an ordered and secluded life, communities needed a suitable location and sufficient funds. Their building programmes could be ambitious, sometimes erecting anew or, more often than not, converting existing buildings into quarters which better met the needs of a monastery. In theory, 17th-century nuns observed a much stricter enclosure than their medieval ancestors. They should not leave the convent and outsiders were not allowed to enter the enclosure. [3] According to the decrees of the Council of Trent, relayed by the Instructions on ecclesiastical buildings published by Carlo Borromeo (1599), the architecture of female conventual buildings must be adapted to ensure complete separation from the world. It was first necessary to build very high walls around the houses and especially the gardens, and to ensure that windows facing the streets would neither allow the Sisters to see out, nor to be seen from the outside. Windows were sometimes tinted, and always fitted with bars. The visiting rooms or parlours – the only rooms designed to receive visitors – were also fitted with grids, which were lined with fabric so that visitors would not see the nuns, or vice versa. They were kept under the close scrutiny of the tourier.

Further to preserve the principle of clausura, a convent should not have more than two gates: one for voluminous deliveries and building work, the other for visits. The gates required two keys to be opened; one was kept by the portress, whilst the abbess had custody of the other. Small packages were delivered through “turns” or “wheels”, a type of revolving till through which objects could be passed without any contact between the deliverers or recipients.

Image borrowed from Rapatz, Vanessa L. “Abigail’s turn in The Jew of Malta.” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, vol. 56, no. 2, 2016, p. 247+. Gale Academic OneFile, Accessed 22 Sept. 2020.

 

The lay Sisters responsible for receiving deliveries were chosen with special care, since they were entrusted with the management of a major point of permeability in the enclosure. In Paris, Benedicta Pease’s mortuary notice paid tribute to her great discretion during her twenty years of service, noting that she was “very diligent & observant in the keeping al the times & Regularitys that belonged to her state”; as a trustworthy converse, she worked at the cellars and the turns and “did not in all that time, being above 20 year at the turnes, draw to herselfe particuler amitys, or seeke acquaintances, but always earned herself in a good & retired way.”[4]

In order for a convent to function properly, it must also create its own dedicated liturgical space (ie a church with its choir and its sacristy), and its living space (the nuns’ cells, a library, a refectory, a kitchen, a cellar, a chapter room, a work room, an infirmary, parlours, a novitiate and sometimes classrooms, a cloister, a courtyard and a garden.) Not all nuns could claim access to all areas. Whilst some parts of the building were open to converse and choir Sisters alike, some areas were more exclusive and reserved for the solemn-vowed choir Sisters. There, they enjoyed their own night quarters and their day room; they also occupied their own part of the choir, which they accessed through a hallway and a separate door, which opened onto their own enclosure and was not accessible to lay Sisters. A third distinct group was that of the novices, who also lived in their own quarters.[5]

From Anon., Chronicle of the First Monastery Founded at Brussels for English Benedictine Nuns, A.D. 1597, Saint Mary’s Abbey, Bergholt, 1898

Plan of the convent of the Augustinian Canonesses of Notre Dame of Sion, in Paris

 

While waiting for the construction of this perfect conventual space, most communities had to adapt to living conditions the reality of which was far removed from the prescriptions of the Council of Trent. Often, the buildings were not spacious enough to create so many dedicated and separate spaces. The Poor Clares who settled in Gravelines began building their monastery in 1611 and, from the start, their first preoccupation was to mark out clausura very clearly, even if it remained rudimentary:

They presently with all speed put up a little wooden grate in the place where they spoke, & then none enter’d any more into their house. Another grate they likewise put up in the side of a little chapel that joyn’d therto, where they heard Mass, for before that they were forced to go into that Chapell among the seculars.[6]

In their eagerness to hasten the work, the Sisters took to carrying stones, sand and water and helping to build the first enclosing wall. They got up at 3 a.m. to get work done before the builders arrived, also digging up the earth to build their first cellar. Despite their enthusiasm, construction had to be undertaken in spurts and stopped when resources ran out. As soon as possible, they also set up a garden, where they grew the herbs they needed. When their resources allowed, they acquired a little more land, and once more it was they who, in person, took to demolishing the small existing buildings to recover the tiles and stones, which they cleaned for reuse in the construction. [7] The process of building could take years; yet from the start they endeavoured to distinguish the spaces inside the unfinished building. In order to separate the choir Sisters from the converses and novices, the abbess erected a small grate (“a little raile of sticks”) separating them from each other according to their quality. Other convents went through similar processes: in 1630, six years after the start of its construction, the convent of the Benedictines of Cambrai still had very few dedicated spaces and had to deal with the proximity of immediate neighbours. Little by little, it would add buildings and thus allow the community to evolve in a rigorously allocated space, in accordance with the Constitutions of the Order. Plans for the Brussels monastery show that it gradually acquired a chapel, cloisters, a refectory, a dormitory, an apartment for the abbess, and a large garden. [8]

In Paris, for lack of funds, the Benedictine Sisters were long subjected to a somewhat itinerant life; they moved six times before they found the ideal location and the necessary resources for their permanent monastery. Finally, it was in the parish of St Hippolyte that built their monastery rue du champ de l’Alouette.

1713 Paris map (by Hubert Jaillot) showing the buildings of the English Benedictines on the Champ de l’Alouette at the periphery of the city.

Thanks to a generous French patron who wanted to help oppressed Catholics in England, they acquired a house where they settled in April 1664. Their friend provided them with a notary, an architect and a team of masons, to consider transforming the house into a convent. With them, they decided which rooms would be the church, the choir, the refectory, and so for all the traditional conventual spaces. In time, they then bought the adjoining house, with its large garden. The end result was a very typical monastery of the time, as can be seen in the description given by the revolutionaries charged with emptying the premises and taking down its inventory in 1792. There was a cloister, a refectory, a kitchen, three visiting rooms and a garden on the ground floor. The chapel was on the first floor, “divided into two parts separated by a grid; one of these parts is intended for the public and the other forms the religious choir”. There were also a small sacristy and various paintings and engravings of devotion. Still on the first floor, under the chapter, were the community hall and two rooms decorated with devotional paintings and furnished with tables and straw chairs. The three rooms serving as the infirmary contained six beds and all that was needed for treatment. This floor housed eleven cells, each containing a bed, a cupboard, a small table and a chair. On the second floor were ten cells similar to those on the first, the robée, containing a cupboard and three linen chests, and a cell serving as a library, containing a cupboard of about a thousand volumes.

As well as choir Sisters, lay Sisters, novices and schoolgirls and boarders, some premises housed an extra category of people: seculars. Those were often rich widows who saw the convent as a place of retreat or retirement from the world. They sometimes entered with their maids, and exceptionally, even with their children. For these residents, quarters should be set up, if the buildings allowed it, to provide them with apartments which befitted their social status, but without endangering the enclosure and the spiritual austerity of the convent. These ladies did not have access to the inner sanctum of the enclosure, and went to the chapel through specific passages, to occupy a space in the church which was reserved for them. With all these different kinds of residents and these complex spaces, the convents became microcosms of the city, mirroring its social classes and its age groups; they harboured clearly-outlined groups, each enjoying varying degrees of privilege and prestige, which mirrored the city’s distinctions between privileged and poorer neighbourhoods.

From Anon., Chronicle of the First Monastery Founded at Brussels for English Benedictine Nuns, A.D. 1597, Saint Mary’s Abbey, Bergholt, 1898.

In exile on the Continent, English Catholic architecture adopted the features of a Roman Catholic architecture which claimed to be universal. Like local convents, the English communities implemented an acquisition policy in real estate, annexing adjacent properties until some of them grew to resemble little fortified citadels.[9] In the public eye, conventual estates became larger and larger and sometimes were adorned with finery which testified to a certain affluence (high spires, aerial windows, surrounding walls crowned with white stone, quality stained glass windows, a choir decorated with beautiful statues, etc.).

 

However, unlike many of their Continental counterparts, the English convents did not quite find their place within elite town planning in the city centre or in noble residential areas. With some notable exceptions, such as the Brussels Benedictine convent, which had benefitted from very strong local support with the nobility and the clergy, they were most often relegated to the outskirts, inside the city walls but far from the centre (see the peripheral location of the Benedictines on the Paris map above, for instance).

1649 map of Brussels by Johannes Blaeu, showing the rather exceptionally central location of the English Benedictines. My thanks to hawk-eyed Daniel Haynes @bibliohead who spotted the convent for me.

 

Some chronicles tell success stories, as was the case for the Benedictine convent of Dunkirk, whose the foundation began in 1662 thanks to donations from the Caryll family. Work continued for almost 16 years, reaching an ideal configuration in 1684. The church and other buildings formed three sides of a quadrangle, the fourth side opening onto a large garden. Inside the church were two choirs, that of the converse in front, at ground level, and that of the choir Sisters at the rear, raised by a step. They accessed the choir through their own door, opening onto the corridors of their own enclosure. The nuns were separated from the public by a grid, hung with fabric, which meant that church-goers could hear their music and singing but could never see them. They were, in the words of Craig Monson “disembodied voices”.[10] In fact, the choir was the only place in which nuns, as a group, were allowed to be heard outside their convent on a regular basis. Through their music and singing, their spirituality spilled out into the city, as it were. The Benedictines of Brussels, for instance, attracted growing crowds to their office at their church as the beauty of their singing gained an excellent reputation in the city.[11] Others used the grates of their visiting rooms to edify their visitors their pious discourses on matters of religion, sometimes even effecting conversions.[12]

1649 map by Johannes Blaeu, showing the location of the Sepulchrine convent in Liège, near the fortified city walls.

Thanks to its connections, the Dunkirk convent enjoyed a large cloister which displayed the coat of arms of the main families of the convent. The work room (also called the workshop) was spacious, and received daylight through six large stained-glass windows also decorated with the coats of arms of the greatest patrons. The refectory was adorned with portraits of all the abbesses and of some of the most remarkable Sisters. The chronicle noted the continental influence on the architecture of this particular room, as it was paved with bricks in the middle, “like most foreign homes”; the term “foreign” illustrates the state of mind of the nuns who, despite their exile, continued to feel English and to consider Continental styles and customs as alien. Around this brick floor was a parquet floor, raised by one step, and it was on this parquet that the tables were placed. The stairwell, commissioned by the Caryll family, was made especially in England, using oak wood cut from the Caryll estate. We know, moreover, that Lord Caryll supplied the oak necessary for almost all the wooden constructions for the monastery of Dunkirk. The complex also included a school and a boarding house.[13]

However, for many English convents, life in exile was not a life of plenty; neighbouring populations naturally supported the local convents which had been established there for generations, first and foremost. English patrons were subject to severe economic sanctions in England. The 1640s and 1650s were particularly hard, with the impact of the Civil Wars and the Republic; the account books of convents show the quasi-interruption of most of their income and a steep drop in recruitment. The Ghent Benedictines nearly went bankrupt after the Civil War cost them the 100,000 florins they had invested in England. In 1650, Abbess Mary Roper was unable to allow the profession of four of her novices, whose parents could not pay their dowries. As a consequence, these women chose to leave, although others in similar circumstances opted to stay on, prolonging their novitiate for up to seven years in the hope that their family’s situation would improve sufficiently to provide for them.[14] Some communities were reduced to begging for sustenance. At Brussels, nuns were unable to obtain the payment of the interest on their dowries, which they had placed in England; they had no choice but to ask for the authorisation to beg for alms so as not to become destitute.

Faced with these limited resources, some convents are forced to make decisions that sometimes turned out to be counterproductive. In Gravelines, the Poor Clares decided to spare some money by not erecting a spire on their steeple. The bell was simply on the end of the steeple and fastened with stones. That expression of poverty and humility befitted the order of St. Clare but, exposed to the elements, the bell rope rotted away rapidly; the steeple itself began to leak and was gradually eaten away by damp, requiring new work. Moreover, their cellar also collapsed, after only a few months, because it lacked proper arches.[15] A few years later (May 28, 1654), the convent suffered from the explosion of 800 barrels of gunpowder at the nearby depot. The tragedy claimed 400 lives and devastated part of the city, including its castle and parish church. The explosion was so violent that the nuns were thrown to the ground, objects crashing down all around them. The windows were blown out, the doors smashed in, the gate of the enclosure completely torn off. The walls suffered huge cracks and some became unstable, while the roof crumbled down in placed. Yet the nuns emerged unscathed from their heap of stone and dust, which they did not fail to interpret as a miracle.[16]

At Ghent, the original buildings of the Benedictines turned out to be so humid that in 1629 several Sisters died of consumption, pneumonia and other respiratory ailments. The community was decimated.[17] The Superior therefore decided to borrow 35,000 florins from an emigré of Irish origin, a certain O’Brook, naturalized Hoobrock. However, the generous advance only came in very small and very belated sums. Work was considerably delayed and the Ghent community, after suffering from insalubrious conditions, then contracted a crippling debt as well.

From Anon., Annals of the English Benedictines of Ghent, now at St Mary’s Abbey, Oulton Oulton, 1894.

Difficulties with the locations of their houses plagued the lives of other English nuns: the Benedictine convent of Pontoise, for instance, also suffered from its proximity to a watercourse: in ten years, the garden endured four floods, overturning the walls of the enclosure, partially destroying several of their buildings and decimating their vegetable garden and their orchard. Each time, the nuns were deprived of the expected harvest. To the loss of resources was compounded by the cost of repairs and the disturbance to the quiet of monastic life caused by the presence of the builders.

Despite their high walls, enclosed convents were not impervious to harm coming from outside. In 1635 Louvain, the Augustinian Canonesses were terrified by the sounds of canon fire and armed battles when the Prince of Orange besieged the city. The presence of mercenaries worried them so much that, to protect their orchard, they employed two Irish soldiers as guards. But they were powerless when it came to stopping the twenty-kilogramme cannonball which fell on one of the cells and partially destroyed the lay quarters. [18] Symbolically, this incident showed that outside events affected monastic life very tangibly. War had consequences on nuns who had never seen a battlefield. Some communities were subjected to months of anxiety when wars raged in their cities. In 1622, the Augustinian Canonesses of Louvain were terrified by the wars raging on their doorstep between the French and the Hollanders on one side, and the Spanish on the other; half the nuns decided to seek refuge in the safer city of Bruges for a time. The others took refuge in a few secure rooms, reorganising all their distribution of sacred and secular spaces, after a cannonball destroyed part of the convent. There, they heard the terrifying sounds of war and gunfire, bullets flying all around and above their buildings. Their orchard wall was partially destroyed and their enclosure very unsafe; the nuns decided to enroll two Irish soldiers in their orchard to protect themselves from thieves amongst the men in the garrison.[19] Brussels was threatened too. Gravelines was also the theatre of several battles between the French and the Spanish in 1644, 1652 and again in 1658, when the city was besieged for a month.[20] In 1658, the Poor Clares of Dunkirk were forced to flee for Ghent after the French lost the city to the Spanish, who surrendered it to the English. The Franciscan nuns initially settled in Nieuport had to resettle in Bruges, since their original location endangered their very future “by reason of its bad Aire and subjectness to warres, in both which our Monestary was ready to disolve, noe members dareing to Come unto us”.[21]

As a rule, the intrusion of external elements into the convent could only be negative. Events such as explosions or canon fire were very rare, but even during times of peace, outside elements could threaten the harmony of the convent. Sometimes, disorder and discord came from unlikely quarters, even from the person who should promote monastic serenity: the nuns’ confessor. At Brussels, confessor Francis Ward was the subject of repeated complaints from some of the Benedictine Sisters. In January 1623, Mary Roper wrote to the Archbishop that Ward was “in perpetual conversation with his penitents”, even at undue hours; she denounced what she called, in the veiled language of allusions, “indiscreet familiarities”.[22] Her Sister, Scholastica Smith, corroborated her statements; according to her, Ward spent far too much time in the sacristy, where he received his penitents against all the rules of the convent.[23] Smith complained that his penitents “[did] not speak of anything other than their spiritual father”, and were besotted with him. Lucy Knatchbull reported that Ward habitually took their pulse through the grid. One day, when he seemed to feel unwell, one of his penitents brought him candles to warm himself up, as well as wine and sugar, which she passed through the grate of the sacristy window. Others took his hands in theirs through the bars, and kissed them. When he injured his foot, one of them managed to bandage it, stroke it and kiss it languorously. [24] The rumour continued to swell until the young and attractive priest was sent elsewhere. When the enclosure was broken to allow real physical contact with the outside, the integrity of monastic life was in danger.

Such examples were symptomatic of a community in the midst of discord, where the safety of the enclosure was repeatedly compromised. The Benedictines of Brussels spent almost thirty years tearing each other apart. It was clear that some of its nuns wished to venture beyond the grates. In fact, novice Frances Evers – who was in conflict with Abbess Percy – managed to escape from the convent through the kitchen turn. [25] She claimed that the idea came to her when she saw how her Superior used the turn to bring the children of her family into the convent, thus ignoring the rule of the enclosure herself. [26] Such episodes highlighted the possible flaws in a conventual structure where everything was done so that the outside world never disturbed the contemplation and serenity of the cloistered interior. Yet such an ideal of perfect separation from the world could never be fully implemented. This was clearly exploited in anti-Catholic publications such as Thomas Robinson’s The Anatomy of the English Nunnery at Lisbon, in which the author – who had lived for some time with the monks – purported to report on the egregious sexual scandals he claimed to have witnessed between the nuns and their confessor.[27] The illustration facing the title page showed the grate as a decoy, a mere pretence at separation and enclosure, and one which could easily be used by both nuns and clergy to dupe the unsuspecting public into thinking they lives holy lives behind their walls.

Later, Aphra Behn’s Convent of Pleasure (1668) would also highlight the fact that enclosure, intended as a protection from the distractions of the outside world, could be perceived as a licence for all manner of abuses to be perpetrated in secrecy. Separation from the world was not only impossible to implement fully, it was also a double-edged sword: it could promote holiness as much as it could arouse suspicion.

[1] Caroline Bowden, ‘“A distribution of tyme”: Reading and Writing Practices in the English Convents in Exile’, Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature 31:1/2 (2012), pp. 99-116 ; Nicky Hallett, ” ‘So short a space of time’: Early Modern Convent Chronology and Carmelite Spirituality,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 42.3: (2012), pp. 539-66.

[2] Statutes Compyled for the Better Observation of the Holy Rule of the Most Glorious Father and Patriarch S. Benedict (Gand, 1623), First parte, p. 19. Italics mine.

[3] Archives Départementales du Nord, Ms 20H-1, ‘Constitutions compiled for the better observation of the holie Rule of our most glorious Fa: and Patriarch S. Bennet Confirmed by the Regiment of the English Benedictine Congregation, and by it Delivered to the English Religious Dames of the Same Order and Congregation, living in Cambray, and to all their Successors’, Chapitre 2, pp. 15-17.

[4] Reverend Mother Prioress of Colwich and J. S. Hansom (eds.), ‘The English Benedictines of the convent of our Blessed Lady of Good Hope in Paris, now St. Benedict’s Priory, Colwich, Staffordshire’, Catholic Record Society, Misc. VII, Vol. 9 (1911), pp. 371-72.

[5] Caroline Bowden, ‘Community Space and Cultural Transmission: Formation and Schooling in English Enclosed Convents in the Seventeenth Century’, History of Education, 34.4 (2005): 365-86.’, p. 372.

[6] Archives of the Much Birch convent, Gravelines Chronicles MS, f. 15.

[7] Caroline Bowden (ed.) English Convents in Exile, 6 vols. (Londres : Pickering and Chatto, 2012-2013), vol. 3, Life Writing (édité par Nicky Hallett), pp. 338-43.

[8] Caroline Bowden, ‘Community Space and Cultural Transmission’, p. 373.

[9] Helen Hills, ‘Enamelled with the Blood of a Noble Lineage’ : Tracing Noble Blood and Female Holiness in Early Modern Neapolitan Convents and their Architecture’, Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture, 73.1 (2004), pp. 1-40, p. 33.

[10] Craig Monson, Disembodied Voices. Music and Culture in an Early Modern Italian Convent. Beverley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1995.

[11] Andrew Cichy, ‘Parlour, court and cloister: musical culture in English convents during the seventeenth century’, in Caroline Bowden and James Kelly (eds), The English Convents in Exile, 1600-1800 (Farham: Ashgate, 2014), pp175-90.

[12] Liesbeth Corens, ‘Catholic nuns and English identities: English Protestant travellers on the English convents in the Low Countries, 1660–1730’, Recusant History 30 (2011), 441-59.

[13] See also Linda Lierheimer, ‘Redefining Convent Space : Ideals of Female Community among Seventeenth-Century Ursuline Nuns’, Proceedings of the Western Society for French History 24 (1997), pp. 211-20. Roberta Gilchrist, Gender and Material Culture: The Archaeology of Religious Women. (London: Routledge, 1994).

[14] M. J. Rumsey, M. J. (ed.), ‘Abbess Neville’s Annals of Five Communities of English Benedictine Nuns in Flanders 1598–1687’, Catholic Record Society, Misc. V, vol. 6 (1909), pp. 1–72, p. 33.

[15] Caroline Bowden (ed.) English Convents in Exile, 6 vols. (Londres : Pickering and Chatto, 2012-2013), vol. 3, Life Writing (édité par Nicky Hallett), pp. 341.

[16] Nicky Hallet (ed.), Life Writing, pp. 31431.

[17] M. J. Rumsey (ed.), ‘Abbess Neville’s Annals of Five Communities of English Benedictine Nuns in Flanders 1598–1687’, Catholic Record Society, Misc. V, Vol. 6 (1909), pp. 1–72; p. 25.

[18] Caroline Bowden, ‘Community Space and Cultural Transmission’, p. 378.

[19] Hamilton, Adam (ed.), The Chronicle of the English Augustinian Canonesses Regular of the Lateran at St. Monica’s in Louvain. Now at St. Augustine’s Priory, Newton Abbot, Devon, 2 vols., Edinburgh and London : Sands & Co., 1904-1906;  v2, 124-133.

[20] Raymond De Bertrand, Histoire du couvent des pauvres Clarisses anglaises de Gravelines, Dunkirk, 1957, pp. 59 and 73.

[21] Richard Trappes-Lomax (ed.), Trappes-Lomax, Richard (ed.), ‘The English Franciscan Nuns, 1619-1821, and the Friars Minor of the same province, 1618-1761’, Catholic Record Society, Franciscana vol. 24 (1922), p. 35.

[22] Archdiocesan Archives of Mechelen (AAM), boite12/1, 20 janvier 1623, Mary Roper à l’archevêque de Malines.

[23] AAM, boite 12/2, Scholastica Smith, document sans date.

[24] Ibid., Lucy Knatchbull, document sans date.

[25] AAM, boite 12/2, 29 avril 1629, Mary Percy à l’archevêque de Malines

[26] AAM, boite12/2, Scholastica Smith, document sans date.

[27] Thomas Robinson, The Anatomy of the English Nunnery at Lisbon in Portugall: Dissected and Laid Open by One that was Sometime a Yonger Brother of the Convent, London, 1622.

The English Canonesses of the Holy Sepulchre at Liege, or cuckoos in the Coquins’ nest?

The beginnings of the English Sepulchrine convent at Liege were rather tumultuous. Initially, the town was chosen because there was an English College of the Society of Jesus there, to whom the nuns could resort both for material help and spiritual comfort.

The very early steps of the foundation were actually carried out in near-secrecy, to avoid opposition to their design. Opposition from whom is not clearly stated, but likely from the local authorities. Four founding members were put up at a widow’s house, where they rented three rooms for about six weeks. They then found other rented accommodation and remained in that temporary state for roughly two years until, in 1644, they settled on the Hill of Pierreuse at the house that was originally used by Mary Ward’s English Ladies. There, the community grew and, by 1649, there were twenty-two religious; this was a healthy rate of recruitment, especially considering the difficulties that beset the Catholic community at home in the 1640s. However, in 1652, the city undertook some extensive works to build a citadel, which encroached upon their garden so badly that their house was rendered unsuitable for an enclosed religious community, which could not be in such close proximity with a garrison of soldiers.

They petitioned the Prince to find them replacement lodgings and were given a house which had been known as St Christopher’s hospital since the 13th century. It was run by a community of so-called Coquins in the early modern sense of the word, meaning poor, or beggarly, rather than the modern naughty or mischievous. The vocation of the Brothers who lived there was to provide food and care for poor pilgrims; over the centuries, St Christopher’s lost much of its lustre to simply become known as the Coquins, a place of poor relief. There were only nine Brothers there, but despite this low number and some allegations of loose living, they enjoyed a solid foundation and strong local support. When the Pope dissolved the house and gave its buildings and revenue to the English Sepulchrines, both the monks and their supporters were incensed. The Coquins refused to leave the premises and the nuns met with opposition from what the narrative describes as ‘a considerable part of the chiefest men of the town and country, who were very unwilling that Strangers shou’d possess a foundation so many years enjoyed by those of the town.’ The monks’ rebellion took such proportions that the Pope actually excommunicated them for disobedience and the Prince sent armed forces. In the dead of night, between one and two in the morning of 1 April 1655, soldiers surrounded the house and removed the monks by force, to take them to the local prison. The English Sepulchrines were then free to move into their new house, but the atmosphere surrounding their settlement was far from positive.

As a placating gesture, they were ordered to pay half of their revenue to be divided amongst the nine Coquins; but the monks were not satisfied and petitioned to see their pensions increased. The final agreement came to the annual sum of 23 pounds, paid in quarterly instalments. This anecdote shows that, although nuns from various Orders sometimes were able to use their status as exiles who had fled the persecutions of their Protestant countries to their advantage —to emphasize their suffering and therefore, the holiness of their vocation and the necessity of their foundation — there was also a flip side to their foreignness. When it came to conflict between English female religious with few connexions and a long-established local house, even somewhat dissolute, local patrons often favoured their own. To gain support, being English could be both an advantage and drawback.

Source: Records of the English Canonesses of the Holy Sepulchre at Liège, now at New Hall, Essex, 1652-1793, CRS 17 (1915), pp. 102-105.

The great lockdown of 2020

So, we are all pretty much in lockdown. After an initial phase of anxiety and numbness, simply trying to digest the extend of what is currently happening to the world as we know it, we have had to face up to some difficult decisions. It has become obvious that, in the interest of everyone’s safety, travel is to be avoided and will remain limited for the foreseeable future. As a consequence, the fourth biennial conference on Early Modern British and Irish Catholicism, which was to be held at Durham 14-16 July 2020, has been postponed, hopefully to the summer 2021. Its three-day programme on Popery, Politics and Prayer sounded utterly amazing, and I am sure everyone is deeply sorry to have to miss such a fine event this summer.  Let us hope everything can be carried over as smoothly as possible to July 2021, for a safer and more serene conference.  For further details on the announcement, click here.

In these worrying times, many of us try to turn to small comforts for solace. Alongside delicious gourmet meals, which I suddenly had time to cook, I have been relishing the opportunity to read two very recently published #nuntastic monographs. I will be reviewing Victoria Van Hyning’s Convent Autobiography. Early Modern English Nuns in Exile (published for the British Academy by Oxford University Press, 2019) and James Kelly’s English Convents in Catholic Europe, c. 1600-1800 (Cambridge University Press, 2020). Keep an eye out for the reviews, respectively in the Journal of Religious History and in British Catholic History soon.

Delving into conventual archives as a PhD candidate

Claire Schiano (PhD candidate at Aix-Marseille Université) shares her experience in the conventual archives of the Much Birch community of Poor Clare religious.

Planning my research trip

Before starting my primary sources research project, I spent the first months of my doctoral studies reading secondary sources. Once I had become familiar enough with the English Poor Clares’ spiritual doctrine and their involvement in the English Mission, I started to read and analyzed printed and digitized primary material. Thus, I worked on different volumes of the English Convents in Exile: 1600-1800[1] compiling the Rouen Chronicles, or more devotional material such as The Circumcision or The Disposition for a Happy Death[2]. I have also worked on the diverse editions of the Rule of Saint Clare (available on EEBO) printed in English especially for Post-Reformation convents in exile; and the French Histoire des pauvres filles clarisses de Gravelines.

These readings narrowed the focus of my research and paved the way for new lines of thinking. I first decided to focus on English Poor Clares because I was certain that enough primary material existed. Thanks to the help of Dr. Liam Temple, I was able to establish a non-exhaustive list of potential interesting material. I defined a chronological period and decided to focus on documents from 1600 to 1750. I included some earlier documents related to the dissolution of the monasteries in England or the departure of the English nuns to foreign convents before the creation of English religious communities.

Thus, I decided to plan my first research trip to Much Birch (Hereford) archives in May 2019. Since this is a private archive – as well as a religious one—I had to ask the community’s consent to consult their documents. Sister Mary Bede, the convent archivist, provided me with much precious information about the primary material and kindly allowed me to stay in the guest wing of the convent. Sister Mary Bede generously allowed me to use my digital camera and my laptop.

 Primary Sources

Much Birch archives gather various kinds of primary sources from a large period of time (1530-2019). It held precious primary material that belonged to the Early Modern English Poor Clares of Gravelines, Dunkirk, Ayre and Rouen.

During the French revolution, the English nuns who had fled to France returned to England, where the Toleration Act permitted the practice of Catholicism for the first time since the beginning of the Reformation. They took much of their archives with them, which thus found their way back to England. The four communities scattered in different religious places in England with their documents, but due to their declining number, finally joined Much Birch Convent in 2007.

Most parts of the archives have been donated to Durham University while the other parts still remain within the Poor Clares Community in Much Birch. The numerous changes of locations sometimes blurred the traceability of certain sources and made it complicated to understand to which community belonged certain documents. For instance, some primary sources from Gravelines were mixed with some French Ursulines documents as a result of their cohabitation around 1814.

As the material I discovered is of a very diverse nature, I have decided to classify it in three different categories.

Spiritual, Historical and Communal Material

I have found a lot of prayer books and spiritual manuals in the “BW Collection” that is exclusively composed of handwritten books. These books were used to guide the nuns in their daily individual and communal spiritual journey. This collection contains books such as Stations of Good Friday or Elevation to Jesus Christ when Holy Sacrement is Exposed. The “BP Collection” contains printed Rules and Status of the communities that can be found online on EEBO.

Some other documents like Rules of the Lay Sisters when in Refectorian or the Ceremonies and Observances for the use of the Mistress of the Novices were dedicated to nun’s duties during the day and were meant to clearly define and establish the different roles of each nun within the community. Those types of books provide very detailed instructions about certain tasks, duties and ceremonies that constitute a fascinating insight in the nuns’ religious life.

I was also allowed to photograph obituaries and chronicles that were not available on Who Were The Nuns. It included a typed version of the Graveline Chronicles that is different from the Registers of the English Poor Clares at Gravelines, including those who founded filiations at Aire, Dunkirk and Rouen, 1608-1837[3] edited and published by the Catholic Record Society. This unique document recounts the History of the English Poor Clare from the nuns’ departure from England to the Netherland, to their life in Antwerp then Saint-Omer, the building of the first Poor Clare convent exclusively dedicated to English women and later the creation of other foundations. I also completed my list of primary sources with the Death Register of the Rouen Poor Clares 1647 – 1779[4] , that were edited and published some time before by Dr. Caroline Bowden on Queen Mary University website.

Artistic and Graphic Material

Among the large number of handwritten and printed books I also discovered a very interesting type of primary sources material: a graphic and artistic one. With the help of the archivist, I digitized plans from the Ayre convent that were drawn on a large paper roll. Plans of other convents were to be found in a modernized printed version in secondary sources material. This material is priceless because it allowed me to have a clear idea of the convent’s architecture and the distribution of space. I also found a fascinating 17th century plan of burials belonging to the Rouen community; this document is of an inestimable value because it shows two things: that the nuns kept a meticulous record of the burial locations of their sisters of benefactors; and that the different spaces within the cloister are provided with different symbolic and emotional values and would explain the choice of certain locations for certain types of religious or benefactors.

I also came across very unexpected and surprising material such as a book of straw works made by the Rouen community. This fine art was the speciality of this community and consisted in collages made of pieces of coloured straw, organized to create a picture and was meant to be sent to benefactors.

Similarly, they did what is called « quilling » or « paper filigree ». In this meticulous work of art, the nuns rolled different stripes of paper and glued them on the edge in order to ornament a painting or engraving.

           

That kind of work reveals a real savoir-faire on the part of the English religious and refute the idea of the cloister defined as a fruitless space cut off from the rest of the world. Another astonishing element was the presence of a great number of big painted wooden crosses stored in a jute bag.

                 

Sister Mary Bede explained that these crosses were part of the nuns’ morning and evening rituals and were to be put on the bed during the day, and hung on the wall at the bottom of their bed during the night.

Archival Enquiries and Secondary Sources

During this research trip, I have been amazed by the great work of compiling of primary and secondary sources made by the next generations of Poor Clares. In order to create a more complete narrative of their own communal history, the nuns have accomplished an admirable work of collecting, copying original documents and cross-referencing data. Thus, the archives contain many files gathering information (letters, selected excerpts of chronicles or obituaries, portraits) about a certain abbess, benefactor or person of notes. Much Birch archives are testament of a great will on the part of the religious to preserve and enrich their history by exchanging new material with other religious houses and archiving properly their documents.

Some secondary sources such as Hidden Wheat: The Story of an Enclosed Franciscan Community, 1621-1971 have proved to be a very useful overview of the history of the English Poor Clare from the creation of their first convent to their coming back in England during the French Revolution.

Outcome of this Research Trip

This research trip enabled me to photograph a large amount of primary material of different natures and times. In collaboration with Sister Mary Bede, was able to collect very unique and precious manuscripts and graphic materials. I have dedicated the past four months to the transcription and analysis of these manuscripts. Becoming more familiar with these documents has helped me to refine my analysis and discern some outstanding details in the English nuns’ daily life, such as the creation and repartition of the conventual space, or the role of the senses in female piety.

 

[1] See the three volumes of Caroline Bowden (gen. ed.), English Convents in Exile, 1600-1800, Pickering & Chatto, London, 2012.

[2] Spirituality, vol. 2, in English Convents in Exile, 1600-1800, Londres: Pickering & Chatto, 2012.

[3] Registers of the English Poor Clares at Gravelines, including those who founded filiations at Aire, Dunkirk and Rouen, 1608-1837, Catholic Record Society, Misc. IX, Vol. 14, 1914.

[4] Death Register of the Rouen Poor Clares 1647 – 1779, ed. Caroline Bowden.

Liesbeth Corens and Emilie Murphy in Aix-en-Provence

 

On Monday 8 April 2019, the early modern seminar of the LERMA (Aix-Marseille Université) held a session on ‘The Lived Religion of English Catholics’. Our guests were Liesbeth Corens and Emilie Murphy, who spoke to faculty and postgraduate and doctoral students about the various ways of living one’s Catholic religion in the context of early modern England.

Liesbeth Corens (Queen Mary University of London), ‘Confessional Mobility and English Catholics in Counter-Reformation Europe.’

Emilie Murphy (University of York), ‘Making Memories in Post-Reformation English Catholic Musical Miscellanies’.

Discussant: Laurence Lux-Sterritt

Caroline Bowden’s recent editions of MSS

Caroline Bowden, pioneer of the study of early modern English convents in Exile, has always been most productive. You will find here an article posted in the news of Queen Mary University of London on 11 October 2017; it contains a few words on her edition of the manuscripts of the Nazareth convent in Bruges, and two interesting vignettes about individual nuns, which bring the early modern cloister to life before our eyes.   This could whet your appetite for the impressive edition of The Chronicles of Nazareth (The English Convent). Bruges, 1629-1773 (Catholic Record Society, 2017)

More recently, on 7 May 2019, Caroline has made her edition of the Death Register of the Rouen Poor Clares available online. This brand new, original version of the register, taken from the manuscripts delivers this fantastic primary material in open access for the first time.

Topcliffe, his horse, and Wiseman’s holy water miracle

A story from # nuntastic archives, and a hilarious miracle

From the notice on Mother Mary Wiseman’s parentage, we learn that her mother, Jane Wiseman (née Vaughan), had been active in relieving priests, and was taken into custody by the dreaded Richard Topcliffe in 1598. Since she refused to plead and would not be tried by a jury, she was therefore sentenced to death by the peine forte et dure, or, being pressed to death. This was the same sentence that was passed upon Margaret Clitherow in York in 1586. She was to be laid down on the ground, a sharp wedge placed beneath her back, and her arms in the shape of a cross. A great door would then be placed on top of her body and great weights put upon her, one by one, breaking her ribs and crushing her to death slowly. Jane Wiseman was apparently not frightened at the prospect of such a slow and painful death, but is reported to have ‘exulted with joy’ and exclaimed: ‘Now, blessed be God, that I shall die with my arms a cross as my Lord Jesus’.

However, her son and friends did manage to obtain Elizabeth I’s grace, and the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment and the forfeiture of all her estates. During her long months in prison, Topcliffe repeatedly found ways to harass her. For a while, she was to share a cell with an old witch, and the chronicler notes that the necromancer never managed to practise her ‘art of magic ‘ in the presence of Jane Wiseman, but had to take herself to another place in order to perform her rituals (it appears her services were in great demand even inside the jail). But Jane Wiseman was soon to be called a witch herself, and by none other than Topcliffe.

Here is a lovely tale of ‘a miraculous thing … a wonderful thing to see’: one day, as Jane Wiseman saw the infamous torturer riding his horse just under her window on his way to the Queen, she thought ‘it would not be amiss to wash him with holy water’. She therefore grabbed her personal bottle and threw its content upon him and his horse as he passed. The next passage is delicious: ‘no sooner had the holy water touched the horse, but presently it seems he could not endure his rider’. Oddly enough, upon being drenched in water without any warning, the horse began to kick and rear until his rider was flung to the ground. Looking up, Richard Topcliffe spotted Wiseman at her window, and called her an old witch, who had charmed his horse into dismounting him. Wiseman simply laughed ‘to see that holy water had given him so fine a fall’. Miracles come in all sorts of guises.

From Hamilton, Adam (ed.), The Chronicle of the English Augustinian Canonesses Regular of the Lateran at St. Monica’s in Louvain. Now at St. Augustine’s Priory, Newton Abbot, Devon, 1548 to 1625, 2 vols., Edinburgh and London: Sands & Co., 1904. Vol. 1, pp. 82-84.

The monstrance, the thief and the Dominican nuns of Brussels

 


Stories from the archives of the English convents in exile

The English Dominican nuns of the second Order were founded by Cardinal Philip Howard at Vilvorde (near Brussel) in 1661; in 1669, they settled in what was to be their long-term house, locally known as the Spellikens, in Brussels. On 7 April 1705, the nuns were horrified to find that their monstrance, containing the Blessed Sacrament, had been stolen. For six weeks altogether, they prayed continually and sang the Great Litanies and the Litanies of Our Blessed Lady. Nine Masses were said in honour of St Joseph, and prayers addressed to St Antony of Padua, know to help recover lost objects. This is a poignant testimony of their profound belief in the effectiveness of prayer as a mode of action. The Bishop even ordered three prayer days throughout the entire town of Brussels, with an exposition of the Blessed Sacrament. At the convent church, which was dressed in mourning purple from Easter to the Ascension, the Blessed Sacrament was exposed for six days. Moreover, the nuns fasted on bread and water for two Fridays, and sat on the ground, regardless of age and infirmity, during the time normally dedicated to meals. This was done so ‘that God would be pleased to manifest to us the sacriledgous thiefe’.

On 16 May 1705, John Jacobs, Master and Deacon of his trade as a mason, was ceased and imprisoned in Steenport. The nuns were all the more put out because they had employed him, and his father before him, for thirty-six years as a mason; he even served their Mass, and they ‘confided in him like a Domestick.’ After three days in the gaol, he confessed to the theft. He indicated he had broken the monstrance, melted the silver and gold and sold a large part to various goldsmiths. What remained, he had buried in his garden; he was promptly taken out of prison in order to show the Amtpman and the judges the exact locations of these caches, which contained the rest of the monstrance and its foot.  The search revealed he had planted trees over the holes, for better concealment. The scandal was such that ‘a multitude of people’ came to view the garden, and ‘the streets were covered with men, women & children, from four o clocke in the morning till nine at night’, looking through the hedges or even trespassing into the garden, so that soldiers had to keep guard against intruders. Some tried to bribe the soldiers to let them in, and this public curiosity lasted for ten days altogether – lapsing only with the thief’s execution. Yet John Jacobs did not confess to what he had done with the Blessed Sacrament, despite being racked for that information.

On 26 May 1705, John Jacobs was found guilty of sacrilege and sentenced to death. On that day, he wrote a letter (in Flemish) to the Dominican community and another to their confessor, Ambrose Grymes, then Provincial of England, begging their forgiveness. On 27 May 1705, the day after his sentence, John Jacobs was taken to the place of his execution in a cart. He was bareheaded and accompanied by a Jesuit, under the protection of armed soldiers who surrounded them on horseback. In front of the convent church which he had robbed, he climbed down from the cart, was stripped to his waist, tied to a post and whipped with three rods. Then he was placed in a pitch coat and put back in the cart, down to the market square where the scaffold had been erected. He asked the crowd’s forgiveness for his crime, and finally confessed to what he had done with the Blessed Sacrament, declaring: ‘Look or search no more for the holy Host which I stole, for I tooke it in my sinful mouth, for which I am sorry.’ At that point, his right hand was cut off, in punishment of the crime of theft; he was then strangled before being put to the fire. His burnt body was recovered from the ashes and taken to the Three Towers in the city, there ‘to be exposed to the view of all the world.’

John Jacobs’s sacrilegious theft and subsequent execution brought much public attention to the English Dominican nuns. Soon, benefactors abounded to help with the fashioning of a new monstrance; once complete, this was carried to the great church of St Gudule where it received the Blessed Sacrament. From there, ‘all the Orders met together’ and in a great procession of religious men and women, it was carried back to the Dominican nuns’ church. Throughout the entire procession, the nuns sang the Te Deum, the Cannons sang Tantum Ergo, and music was played with drums and trumpets and ‘Commers (wich resound as loud as Cannons). The church bell rang freely to welcome the return of the Blessed Sacrament. For such an exceptional occasion, convent and city were brought together in a common celebration; the great procession was the first of its kind in that street, which ‘was hung with Tapestrie & devout Picturs from the street’ all the way to the church doors; the church itself was ‘richly adorn’d, and severall new things made for the Alter express for this Solemnity.’ Later, the Pope granted a plenary indulgence for all the faithful who would come to the church on Easter Monday, where the Sacrament would be exposed all day. Those indulgences were to be renewed for seven years, thereby ensuring great public affluence on those days for the little English convent of Dominican nuns in exile.


For more details on the English Dominican nuns of the second Order at Brussels, see The Prioress and community of Carisbrooke, Isle of Wight (ed.), ‘Records of the Dominican nuns of the second order’, Catholic Record Society, Dominicana, vol. 25 (1925), pp.176–241.  

BBC 3 Free Thinking with Caroline Bowden

 

Listen to this fabulous programme on Religious Divisions, Puppet Shows and Politics, featuring Lucy Underwood, Caroline Bowden and Alison Shell on early modern English Catholicism. 
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0000xvn 
The section starts at 15’14. Thank you to these wonderful academics for getting this scholarship out to the wider public. (And Caroline has the perfect voice for the radio; such warmth and depth!)

The Biographical Register of English Nuns in Exile

The Who Were the Nuns? database has now been complemented by a fabulous volume: English Catholic Nuns in Exile, 1600– 1800. A Biographical Register, edited by K. S. B. Keats-Rohan, Prosopographia & Genealogica Occasional Publications volume 15, 2017. This includes 93 pages of introductory material, before providing a detailed biographical registry of all the nuns accounted for (included Mary Ward’s followers), adding extra material drawn from the painstaking study of wills and inter-family relations. The volume comes with a DVD which will reveal the vast amounts of research undertaken for that publication, and throwing light on the genealogy and prosopography of English nuns in exile.

Emilie Murphy on nuns, language, authorship and formal complaints

 

 

 

Emilie Murphy wrote several splendid pieces for the RECIRC, using the Benedictine convent at Brussels as an enlightening case study to examine issues of authority in English convent in exile. 

In a log dated 19 February 2016, Emilie Murphy discussed ‘How to be understood in an English convent abroad’. The case study is based in her work in the Archive of the Archdiocese of Mechelen. In this piece, she studies a letter written by Ursula Hewicke to Archbishop Jacobus Boonen on 7 April 1623, at the very beginning of the Brussels troubles (and she shares with us a few pictures of Hewicke’s lovely handwriting). For the onset, this letter testifies to the nuns’ difficulties with foreign languages and with the procuring of the correct interpreter to plead their cause. Click here to read.

In a related blog dated 19 April 2016, Emilie explored ‘How to wield authority in an English convent abroad”; here, she studied the tactics involved in the wielding of authority in a fractious and divided community, and particularly in the dispute which opposed Abbesse Mary Percy to the convent’s confessor, Robert Chambers. The piece highlights to importance of the roles played by translators, without whom many of the dissenting nuns would have been doomed to silence, for lack of the necessary linguistic skills to formulate their complaints. Click here to view the blog. 

Emilie went on to retrace the etiquette of conventual complaining in the seventeenth-century Benedictine convent of Brussels in “‘How to complain in an English convent abroad’, dated 15 June 2016. When a convent was in turmoil, when some nuns were in conflict with others, and even questioned the authority of their Abbess, were they within their right to complain to clerical authorities? How should one proceed, according to protocol, for an appeal to be perceived as legitimate? Read Emilie Murphy’s piece on complaining here.

Her last post, dated 12 August 2016, discussed ‘English Catholic nuns: neglected female authors and their reception and circulation’. In this piece, E. Murphy shared her thoughts on the project she carried out in the archives of nine out of twenty-two English convents in exile. She showed how female religious writers have been left out of the literary canon, if not entirely silenced. As she began work, she was aware of roughly forty convent authors; her research has enabled her to discover another 150 women writers, most of whom were religious. This raises the question of individual and collective authorship, and of the circulation of those writings. See this piece here