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  • Leadership in Medieval English Nunneries
  • Sharon K. Elkins
Leadership in Medieval English Nunneries. By Valerie G. Spear. [Studies in the History of Medieval Religion, Vol. 24.] (Rochester, New York: Boydell and Brewer. 2005. Pp. xix, 245. $90.00.)

Spear identifies more than two hundred abbesses and prioresses who oversaw the sixteen nunneries that she uses—without clearly explaining why—as the "core group" for her study of the period from 1280 to 1540. None of the women are household names, not even in the households of medievalists. Yet, as Spear rightly states, these religious superiors had an unusual degree of "independent authority" in "an era noted for its subjugation of females" (p. xiii). How much independence and what kind of authority is the focus of Spear's study.

Spear assembles and assesses with diligence, competence, and lucidity all the known surviving references to these women. She concludes that few were from aristocratic families: their authority came from their office, not their background. To evaluate their relations with their bishops, Spear primarily has to rely on documents dealing with exceptions, the crises that required special attention; she finds that some bishops gave financial aid, others adjudicated controversies, but most, even during their mandated episcopal visits, did not object to the women's "leadership." Similarly, though Spear identifies a few kings and popes who aided nunneries—and expected benefits in return—she concludes that the abbesses and prioresses typically acted independently from their overlords until the Dissolution, a period she treats with particular sensitivity.

The surviving records detail financial matters more often than spiritual ones. Still, finding very little criticism of the superiors' piety, Spear sensibly concludes that, for the most part, they capably offered spiritual guidance. Spear locates "only one confirmed case and one possible case of sexual immorality among more than two hundred nunnery superiors in the core group" (p. 153). Repeatedly Spear points out how her findings contrast with Eileen Power's [End Page 385] classic 1922 study of English nunneries during this same time period. Spear's book puts another nail in the coffin of that now dated picture of worldly and incompetent nuns.

Spear also considers literary references to religious superiors, contrasting in detail Chaucer's portrayal of the fictional Prioress Eglentyne and the eulogy in Wherwell Cartulary for its Abbess Euphemia (d. 1257). The eulogy, reprinted in full, praised Euphemia for increasing the number of nuns from forty to eighty, aiding their "sanctification and honour," adorning "the church with crosses, reliquaries, precious stones, vestments, and books," and being "zealous in works of charity." In addition to renovating the abbey manor courtyard, rebuilding the bell tower, and constructing a farmery, watercourse, mill, and chapel, Euphemia is said to have ordered the leveling of the presbytery of the church, which was in "imminent danger" of "complete collapse," specifying that "the damp soil" be "dug out to a depth of twelve feet till firm and dry ground was found" (pp. 217-218). Treating this eulogy as hagiography intent on describing a model abbess, not an actual one, Spear uses the ideal to challenge Chaucer's portrayal of his Canterbury pilgrim.

When a religious superior is named in an economic charter, it's often unclear whether she was the active negotiator or simply the official whose approval was mandated. For the most part, Spear assumes the former, repeatedly presenting the abbess as a "leader" and a "power broker." Spear is aware that she is anachronistically applying these modern terms to superiors following the Benedictine Rule—the rule used in almost all her core nunneries—who had to be both authoritative and humble, withdrawn from secular society and engaged with it, able to assume control, and willing to submit to correction. Spear's exploration of these inherent tensions in the notion of the nuns' "leadership" gives additional analytical depth to her study.

Sharon K. Elkins
Wellesley College
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