Medieval manuscripts blog

Many of the manuscripts on display in our exhibition Medieval Women: In Their Own Words portray medieval nuns as holy creatures, devoting themselves to prayer, contemplation and good works. Ancrene Wisse, a 13th-century guide for female anchoresses sets out rigorous expectations for those women who chose lives of permanent enclosure and isolation in cells attached to churches. Notably, anchoresses must ‘never [be] idle’, ‘think about God all the time’, commit to a vegetarian diet, and ‘be as little fond of your windows as possible’, avoiding distraction from the outside world. The fact that the author of Ancrene Wisse felt obliged to write out these strict guidelines suggests that religious women did not always act in ways befitting their holy houses. It raises the question: where are the badly behaved nuns in the Middle Ages?

Anchoresses are warned not to keep any animal ‘bute cat ane’ (except one cat): Cotton MS Cleopatra C VI, f. 193r

We find plenty of them in the art and literature of the period. Then, as now, the ‘naughty nun’ seems to have been a popular trope. In William Langland’s Piers Plowman, ‘Wrath’ speaks about the behaviour of the nuns at his aunt’s abbey:

And dame Pernele a preestes fyle,
Prioresse worth she nevere,
For she hadde child in chirie-tyme,
Al our chapitre it wiste.

Dame Parnel, a priest’s mistress
she'll never be a prioress
For she had a child in cherry-time:
all our chapter knows it!

In the 15th-century satirical poem ‘Why I Can’t Be a Nun’ (Cotton Vespasian MS D IX), a would-be bride of Christ is aghast to discover that many convents are ‘not well governed’, but are instead populated by figures like ‘Dame Disobedient’, ‘Dame Hypocrite’, ‘Dame Lust’ and ‘Dame Wanton’. And who can forget the infamous image of a penis-harvesting nun from a 14th-century copy of the Roman de la Rose, illuminated by the Parisian artist Jeanne de Montbaston (active c. 1325–1353)?

A penis-harvesting nun from a 14th-century copy of the Roman de la Rose: Bibliotheque nationale de France, ms fr. 25526, f.106v

While these examples owe more to lewd fantasy than to historical reality, other evidence suggests that their portraits of convents in chaos  contain a grain of truth. Medieval bishops regularly surveyed monasteries and nunneries in their dioceses, and many kept detailed records of their visitations. Eudes Rigaud, archbishop of Rouen, visited several convents between 1249 and 1265, and was not pleased with what he found. He wrote up nuns for faults ranging from ‘singing the hours with too much haste’, wearing costly pelisses of ‘the furs of rabbits, hares and foxes’, to drunkenness and sex with priests and chaplains.

A dancing nun in the margin of the Maastricht Hours: Stowe MS 17, f. 38r

English visitation records give examples of whole convents in disarray. At Cannington in 1351, in addition to poor leadership from a cash-hungry prioress and a lazy, Matins-shirking sub-prioress, a nun called Joan Trimelet was found pregnant—‘but not indeed by the Holy Ghost’, as the bishop’s commissioners wryly remarked. Joan Trimelet’s pregnancy was not unique. The convent of Amesbury was dissolved in 1189, following reports that the abbess had given birth three times, and that many of the sisters were living in ‘infamy’.

The misbehaviour of individual nuns could put a strain on their entire community. Bishop Alnwick’s 1442 report of Catesby Priory gives an insight into the disorder that could arise in a poorly governed convent. Through Alnwick’s documentation of the nuns’ voices, we find hints of a quarrel between the prioress Margaret Wavere and sister Isabel Benet, who accused each other of sexual misconduct with local knights. While other nuns commented on Benet and Wavere’s impropriety—one accuses Benet of having ‘passed the night with the Austin Friars at Northampton... dancing and playing the lute with them... until midnight’—they seem more upset by the prioress’s poor management of convent finances, and her tendency to ‘sow discord among the sisters’. Under such conditions, it is understandable that some nuns could not keep to the high standards of behaviour set out in their monastic rules. Most medieval convents were small and poor in comparison to equivalent men’s houses. It is no wonder that underfed, underfunded nuns living together in close quarters didn’t always abide in holy harmony.

 A flirtatious nun with a male companion from the margins of the Maastricht Hours: Stowe MS 17, f.226r

Is it a surprise that some nuns wanted to call it quits entirely? Medieval ecclesiastical records give several examples of nuns on the run, attempting to leave their orders for reasons ranging from trying to reclaim an inheritance, running away with a lover, to simply having had enough of convent life. Sometimes convents would see flights of multiple nuns at once: in 1300, Isabella Clouvil, Matilda de Thychemers and Ermentrude de Newark all fled Delapré Abbey in Northampton, much to their bishop’s disappointment.

Church authorities often exerted considerable force to haul such nuns back to their houses. In the 14th century, Agnes de Flixthorpe, a nun of St Michael’s in Stamford, ran away from her Order at least three times, once dressed in a man’s gilt embroidered robe. She claimed that she had never been legitimately professed as a nun and was legally married to a man she refused to name. Bishop Dalderby of Lincoln responded by branding Agnes an apostate, sending secular authorities to imprison her, and eventually excommunicating her. The last reference to her case is in 1314, when Agnes was still at liberty, and we don’t know whether Dalderby’s forces managed to catch her again.

The greatest escape artist of all was surely Joan of Leeds, a nun of St Clement’s by York. In 1318, Joan slipped the convent’s net by ‘simulating a bodily illness’ and then faking her own death. She made a dummy ‘in likeness of her body’, which was buried in ‘sacred space’, leaving Joan free to ‘wander at large to the notorious peril to her soul and to the scandal of all her order’, as Archbishop Melton of York put it. Exactly what motivated her to leave is unclear. In 2020, researchers at the University of York discovered another 1318 letter from Melton, in which he reports that Joan had come to another priest, ‘Brother John’, ‘with great sorrow in her heart’. She apparently described how ‘as a girl and being under the age of personal discretion she was forced to enter the Order... by her father and mother... she both never consented to this and continually protested and also never uttered any vow of profession’.

A specific mention of ‘Johana de Ledes’ in Melton’s Register. Archbishop of York’s register, 9A f. 326v, entry 2

Joan’s story is not just one of ingenuity and bravery, but also reflects a harsh reality of medieval monastic life. Many nuns were professed at a young age, compelled to the religious life not by a legitimate calling, but by their parents’ desire to keep them out of trouble, be rid of an inconvenient second or third daughter, or even deprive them of an inheritance. Convent life was a rich tapestry, in which nuns of various levels of commitment lived and worked together: as the author of ‘Why I Can’t Be a Nun’ writes, ‘some are devout, holy and obliging’, while ‘some are feeble, lewd and forward’.

The procession of nuns to the mass: Yates Thompson MS 11, f. 6v

For more stories of complicated, daring medieval women, visit our exhibition Medieval Women: In Their Own Words, which runs until 2 March 2025. Tickets are available to order now.

This exhibition is made possible with support from Joanna and Graham Barker, Unwin Charitable Trust, and Cockayne – Grants for the Arts: a donor advised fund held at the London Community Foundation.

Rowan Wilson

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