Women and Monasticism in Medieval Europe: Sisters and Patrons of the Cistercian Reform (review)

By assembling and translating from Latin or old French the sixty-six documents in this volume, Berman has performed a valuable service for teachers of medieval studies who wish to engage students in the analysis of economic and administrative charters, those fundamental texts of the disciple. As Berman rightly says, such documents can be "excessively boring" (p. 3). The ones she has selected are not. A medievalist might even consider them lively: Queen Blanche of Castile's foundation charter for a house of Cistercian nuns at Maubuisson, the settlement of a tithe dispute between the nuns of Port-Royal and a parish priest over lands the nuns hold in his parish, a charter listing donations—including rents from a cemetery garden and milling services and half the lay-lordship of a church—that a husband and wife gave the abbey of Coyroux/Obazine when they and their sons entered as "devotees."

Given Berman's well-established expertise, the emphasis on Cistercian nuns is not surprising and is most welcome. Several documents confirm the argument she has made in scholarly monographs: yes, indeed, there were Cistercian nuns in the twelfth century. Berman presents the charters in two sections: first, the larger group, thirteenth-century documents for houses clearly of Cistercian nuns, primarily Rifreddo (near Turin), Saint-Antoine des Champs (near Paris), and Port-Royal; then, twelfth-century documents, a third of the examples, which are "more problematic": Coyroux/Obazine, Le Tart, Molesme, and Jully. Berman is wise to proceed in reverse chronological order: students will better appreciate why the twelfth-century charters are problematic after studying those from the thirteenth. In addition to charters, Berman includes a few extracts from rent and account rolls (in a section on "Statistical Sources") and four "Narrative and Normative" sources of utmost importance for the history of Cistercian nuns, such as the visit of Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln (1209–1235), to Nun Coton.

Berman's succinct introduction sets up clearly the long-standing scholarly debate about the status of the nuns so that students can enter it and related ones, such as whether a community of nuns that included priests and lay brothers should be considered a single-sex monastery.

The assemblage will be useful as a way of introducing students to a rich medieval resource, the charter. Students interested in religious and women's history should especially appreciate the collection. Berman has so adeptly assembled the documents for this teaching aid that even scholars can profit from it.