The Chronicles of Nazareth (The English Convent), Bruges, 1629–1793 ed. by Caroline Bowden (review)

Between the years 2008 and 2011, the “Who Were the Nuns?” project unearthed an unprecedented wealth of material documenting the lives of English nuns exiled on the European continent in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The project’s findings, its database, and its associated publications opened up a rich field of research; scholars of religion, history, literature, music, or visual arts are now able to bring some balance to a historiography which, for too long, had ignored the importance of early modern English convents.

In 2007, Nicky Hallett published two volumes documenting the lives of the English Carmelites; in 2012 and 2013, Caroline Bowden acted as general editor to six volumes throwing light upon all aspects of conventual life in exile, from history writing to life writing, spirituality, convent management and various aspects of the interaction between convents and the outside world. With The Chronicles of Nazareth, Bowden provides scholars with the latest of recent editions of conventual primary sources. Nearly concurrently, K. S. B. Keats-Rolan (ed.) has published her English Catholic Nuns in Exile, 1600–1800: A Biographical Register, testifying to the current liveliness of the field.

This volume presents the chronicles of the Augustinian Canonesses and their convent of Nazareth, in Bruges. Caroline Bowden has transcribed and annotated two out of the three original manuscript volumes. The first volume covers the first century, from the foundation of the house in 1629 to 1729; the second volume runs from 1729 until the troubles that forced the nuns to leave in 1793. A third volume, which is not edited here, covers the years 1794 to 1818.

As noted in the introduction, authorship is difficult to establish. Volume One was copied ca. 1738 from earlier original documents that have not survived; the volume is in the hand of Sub-Prioress Anne Weston, but there is no way of knowing who had written the original documents she used as her sources. Weston indicates they were compiled by each prioress in turn, although Victoria Van Hyning has argued that this may not have been the case for the first decade of the house’s history and that the practice started in 1639, when Augustina Bedingfield arrived from Louvain. The first ten years of the Chronicle do indeed read more like a retrospective summary than a continuous account updated by contemporaneous authors. From 1647, however, the style changes suggest that the Chronicles were written regularly to serve as a document of memory of the house. Things are more straightforward for the second volume, which exists in its original form in three different hands believed to be those of Prioresses Herbert, Darrell, and More.

The Chronicles give details of recruitment, membership, accounts, alms, building works, management, as well as spiritual practice, links with the outside world and, of course, obituary notices. They were intended to be read by the members of the house, to maintain a feeling of belonging and a sense of continuity with the endeavours of their predecessors. Communal readings were to be done at the refectory at mealtime, alongside the Vitae of saints and other texts of a spiritual nature. The text is comparable to most chronicles in that it follows a formula, often starting with an account of new recruits and professions, followed by the obituaries of deceased sisters (these can vary greatly in length), details of the house’s financial situation, and other pragmatic aspects of convent management. It also ends with a summary of the alms received that year, with a mention of the names of the benefactors to be thanked.

The text, however, is quite unusual in one respect: where most chronicles gloss over internal disputes and events that indicate disunity or disorder, the Chronicles of Nazareth record a more nuanced picture of communal living and vocations. For instance, romantic love features much more prominently than in most texts of the same nature, and readers learn that...