First, I want to say thanks for making this wonderful work so accessible.
Second, a (long winded) question: In this instalment you used the term "cloistered nun," which I'm sure you also used in the previous instalments. I just didn't pick up on it until now. As cloistered nuns, it would have been particularly difficult to manage the lands owned by Barking. If we define management as achieving something through the efforts of others, senior staff at Barking would have had to rely on others (mostly, if not entirely, men) to not only perform the "outside work" but to report on its progress and success. Obviously, some delegation of decision making power from the nuns to the outside people would have been necessary, leading to potential for graft, corruption, and general abuse. While it could be argued that all monasteries would have had to deal with this problem, after all in male monasteries (I'm sure there is a specific term, I don't know it) the monks were often cloistered too with the "Brothers" tending to the fields, brothers and monks were all part of the same community. The brothers, for at least part of the year, lived in the monastery and were subject to the direct orders and supervision of the Abbot - not so for Barking. Has anyone studied this nun - secular world management dynamic? Management problems like this are an age old problem that often has nuanced solutions.
Third, a comment more relevant to this instalment: I'm very happy that you talked about the arts and their role in monastic life. Growing up in Toronto, my mother was a violin teacher with mostly school aged pupils. One of her students, though, was a nun from a large convent just north of Toronto. This nun (who was very nice) would show up once a week in traditional black and white habit to learn to play violin. My mother even played accompanying violin at a few mini recitals with her at the convent. (As her children, we went to a few of these recital. For a child who knew nothing of Catholicism, having been raised in a bizarre quasi-protestant sect (best leave that Pandora's box closed), it was very memorable.) Even at that young age, I couldn't understand how a person with no possessions and no income could afford violin lessons and a violin. Did the abbey/convent really care enough about these things to pay for them. Apparently, the answer was yes, and from this instalment, it was probably yes for many centuries. Thanks for putting this piece of the puzzle in place for me.
Hey Dan, thanks again for watching again and the comments/questions.
Yes, you are correct in that cloistering provided challenges to management. We know from surviving sources (entries below) that Barking's abbess was a leader who did occasionally leave the abbey to attend to convent business. But we also have entries showing she also paid others to do so at times. This was true at many other houses as well. Generally, these administrators were known as stewards. Lots of them, particularly in the later Middle Ages, were trained as lawyers:
"Itm paid for my ladyes expenses when she roode to Mr. Brokes wt rewardes geven at Mr. Stonardes – v s. viii d."
"Itm payed to Mr. Broke for shoeng of hys horses at dyvers tymes rydyng on my ladyes busyness – iii s. iiii d."
In other houses this was the same, i.e., that if anyone was going to get to leave to attend to monastery business, it was generally only the abbess or abbot. Other "managers" below the level of abbess, such as the cellaress I mentioned in a previous episode, did hire assistance as well, such as clerks and rent collectors, to perform tasks outside convent walls that they could not. Male institutions in theory were supposed to have the same types of "enclosed" lives for the monks, but in my research I found that enforcement of that was often more lax for males than for females. As the various types of Orders began to crop up in the Middle Ages, there tended to be more options for levels of enclosure for men, for instance the mendicant Orders such as Franciscans and Dominicans whose religious work and purpose was to be out among the populace preaching and begging. For women, cloistering was overwhelmingly the most common option (except in cases like the Beguines which was a lay religious movement that didn't always require enclosure). In either case, they were really, ideally, supposed to stay in the monastery attending to prayers and devotions primarily. Because those things had to be done at intervals throughout the day, it wasn't amenable to people being able to come and go at will all the time. And besides, coming and going negated the entire point of an enclosed life -- to shun the outside world and live a life dedicated to God.
Interesting, your comment about the nun who learned violin from your mother. While it's impossible to extrapolate what a nun in the 20th century was doing with activities of those 500 years earlier, I'd imagine the Church supporting such a thing because of the way the music could aid in or enhance devotions inside the convent. It would also be somewhat dependent on what type of house this nun belonged to, i.e., which Order, as they each had their own Rule by which their lives were governed.
As always, thanks for the hyper-informative response. I truly appreciate them all.
I’m starting to understand that your work as an historian requires a good measure of patience and acceptance. The information available leads to deeper questions for which we will never have complete answers. At some point it’s educated guesses. For example what could the Abbess do to keep the aforementioned Stewards and Mr. Broke honest in their dealings on behalf of Barking? I think I’m just emitting the mental equivalent of noise pollution now, so I’ll stop. The “how” and “why” questions always fire me up, but thanks again!
Regarding my mom’s violin pupil, my curiosity is sparked. It’s been a while since I called my mom. I’ll ask her if she remembers the nun’s order and any other details.
I'm not Catholic, but I always try to show respect.
That said, I've never understood the vows of chastity. While I can (that word again) respect those who take such a vow, I feel no need to understand it, in fact I think it will distort perception, all that built up...stress?
Hi Ed, thanks for the comment. I was raised Catholic, but have not been a practitioner for many years. I agree with you that the challenges of chastity would be, well, challenging. The whole monastic lifestyle would be challenging in many ways, and for those people that was really the entire point. Medieval Catholicism preached that the world was corrupted and/or corruptible, and that people should try to transcend the natural world with all its base urges. To be "worldly" as in of this world and all that it represents was not cool; to be godly was, so striving to overcome those aspects of ourselves that remind us how utterly human we are (hunger, lust, desire of any kind, jealousy, etc.) was something many people tried to live on a daily basis. For those who had taken vows, the mandate was even more clear. Denial of self was a means to overcome sin and become closer to God.
For instance, their relationship to food. It's unrelated to chastity but the drive was the same nonetheless, particularly for late-medieval women. There was an important book written in the 1980s titled "Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women," and in it the author Caroline Walker Bynum described in great detail what those religious women put themselves through in the name of piety, essentially binging and/or starving themselves, acts that we would almost certainly diagnose as eating disorders such as bulimia or anorexia in our modern day. But for them the practice (and the acceptance of it by others in the community) singled them out as exemplars devoted to their faith. The same was true for denial of sexual desire.
First, I want to say thanks for making this wonderful work so accessible.
Second, a (long winded) question: In this instalment you used the term "cloistered nun," which I'm sure you also used in the previous instalments. I just didn't pick up on it until now. As cloistered nuns, it would have been particularly difficult to manage the lands owned by Barking. If we define management as achieving something through the efforts of others, senior staff at Barking would have had to rely on others (mostly, if not entirely, men) to not only perform the "outside work" but to report on its progress and success. Obviously, some delegation of decision making power from the nuns to the outside people would have been necessary, leading to potential for graft, corruption, and general abuse. While it could be argued that all monasteries would have had to deal with this problem, after all in male monasteries (I'm sure there is a specific term, I don't know it) the monks were often cloistered too with the "Brothers" tending to the fields, brothers and monks were all part of the same community. The brothers, for at least part of the year, lived in the monastery and were subject to the direct orders and supervision of the Abbot - not so for Barking. Has anyone studied this nun - secular world management dynamic? Management problems like this are an age old problem that often has nuanced solutions.
Third, a comment more relevant to this instalment: I'm very happy that you talked about the arts and their role in monastic life. Growing up in Toronto, my mother was a violin teacher with mostly school aged pupils. One of her students, though, was a nun from a large convent just north of Toronto. This nun (who was very nice) would show up once a week in traditional black and white habit to learn to play violin. My mother even played accompanying violin at a few mini recitals with her at the convent. (As her children, we went to a few of these recital. For a child who knew nothing of Catholicism, having been raised in a bizarre quasi-protestant sect (best leave that Pandora's box closed), it was very memorable.) Even at that young age, I couldn't understand how a person with no possessions and no income could afford violin lessons and a violin. Did the abbey/convent really care enough about these things to pay for them. Apparently, the answer was yes, and from this instalment, it was probably yes for many centuries. Thanks for putting this piece of the puzzle in place for me.
Hey Dan, thanks again for watching again and the comments/questions.
Yes, you are correct in that cloistering provided challenges to management. We know from surviving sources (entries below) that Barking's abbess was a leader who did occasionally leave the abbey to attend to convent business. But we also have entries showing she also paid others to do so at times. This was true at many other houses as well. Generally, these administrators were known as stewards. Lots of them, particularly in the later Middle Ages, were trained as lawyers:
"Itm paid for my ladyes expenses when she roode to Mr. Brokes wt rewardes geven at Mr. Stonardes – v s. viii d."
"Itm payed to Mr. Broke for shoeng of hys horses at dyvers tymes rydyng on my ladyes busyness – iii s. iiii d."
In other houses this was the same, i.e., that if anyone was going to get to leave to attend to monastery business, it was generally only the abbess or abbot. Other "managers" below the level of abbess, such as the cellaress I mentioned in a previous episode, did hire assistance as well, such as clerks and rent collectors, to perform tasks outside convent walls that they could not. Male institutions in theory were supposed to have the same types of "enclosed" lives for the monks, but in my research I found that enforcement of that was often more lax for males than for females. As the various types of Orders began to crop up in the Middle Ages, there tended to be more options for levels of enclosure for men, for instance the mendicant Orders such as Franciscans and Dominicans whose religious work and purpose was to be out among the populace preaching and begging. For women, cloistering was overwhelmingly the most common option (except in cases like the Beguines which was a lay religious movement that didn't always require enclosure). In either case, they were really, ideally, supposed to stay in the monastery attending to prayers and devotions primarily. Because those things had to be done at intervals throughout the day, it wasn't amenable to people being able to come and go at will all the time. And besides, coming and going negated the entire point of an enclosed life -- to shun the outside world and live a life dedicated to God.
Interesting, your comment about the nun who learned violin from your mother. While it's impossible to extrapolate what a nun in the 20th century was doing with activities of those 500 years earlier, I'd imagine the Church supporting such a thing because of the way the music could aid in or enhance devotions inside the convent. It would also be somewhat dependent on what type of house this nun belonged to, i.e., which Order, as they each had their own Rule by which their lives were governed.
As always, thanks for the hyper-informative response. I truly appreciate them all.
I’m starting to understand that your work as an historian requires a good measure of patience and acceptance. The information available leads to deeper questions for which we will never have complete answers. At some point it’s educated guesses. For example what could the Abbess do to keep the aforementioned Stewards and Mr. Broke honest in their dealings on behalf of Barking? I think I’m just emitting the mental equivalent of noise pollution now, so I’ll stop. The “how” and “why” questions always fire me up, but thanks again!
Regarding my mom’s violin pupil, my curiosity is sparked. It’s been a while since I called my mom. I’ll ask her if she remembers the nun’s order and any other details.
I'm not Catholic, but I always try to show respect.
That said, I've never understood the vows of chastity. While I can (that word again) respect those who take such a vow, I feel no need to understand it, in fact I think it will distort perception, all that built up...stress?
Hi Ed, thanks for the comment. I was raised Catholic, but have not been a practitioner for many years. I agree with you that the challenges of chastity would be, well, challenging. The whole monastic lifestyle would be challenging in many ways, and for those people that was really the entire point. Medieval Catholicism preached that the world was corrupted and/or corruptible, and that people should try to transcend the natural world with all its base urges. To be "worldly" as in of this world and all that it represents was not cool; to be godly was, so striving to overcome those aspects of ourselves that remind us how utterly human we are (hunger, lust, desire of any kind, jealousy, etc.) was something many people tried to live on a daily basis. For those who had taken vows, the mandate was even more clear. Denial of self was a means to overcome sin and become closer to God.
For instance, their relationship to food. It's unrelated to chastity but the drive was the same nonetheless, particularly for late-medieval women. There was an important book written in the 1980s titled "Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women," and in it the author Caroline Walker Bynum described in great detail what those religious women put themselves through in the name of piety, essentially binging and/or starving themselves, acts that we would almost certainly diagnose as eating disorders such as bulimia or anorexia in our modern day. But for them the practice (and the acceptance of it by others in the community) singled them out as exemplars devoted to their faith. The same was true for denial of sexual desire.