And thus it began....
How Galileo and an English monastery changed my life
20 years ago today, I sat in a conference room in the History department of Portland State University nervously preparing to defend my graduate work to a committee of scholars. The culmination of all the research, all the writing, all the editing, all the learning, all the stress came down to a couple of hours to determine my chops for being a professional historian. The success of that day was and remains the most challenging and rewarding accomplishment of my life. It set me on the path to becoming the person I am today.
Whether it was an act of chance or providence I will never know, but it all started with a simple gesture. A friend recommended a book to me, Galileo’s Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love by Dava Sobel. The story recounts how in 1613, Galileo Galilei, the famed Italian scholar and scientist, put his eldest daughter into convent life when she was just 13. This was not uncommon in the day; it was a decision many young women did not make for themselves but that they had to live with for the rest of their lives. This intrigued me. Why?
Because the life of a medieval nun was one of enclosure. This meant a one-way ticket out of the world. They no longer had a public life, but rather they lived in a closed community — a life of poverty (ideally), seclusion, and prayer — generally only connected to the outside world through letters and occasional visitors. I wondered what the psychological ramifications of spending an entire lifetime this way would be when it had not been a personal choice.
Maria Celeste was her chosen name in her “rebirth” into a life dedicated to Christ. “Celeste” a nod to her father’s life’s work as an astronomer. She was bright and articulate, and he favored her of his three children. They shared a years-long correspondence where it is clear she had become his closest friend and even advisor at times. He admired and trusted her.
Like any good historian Sobel investigated their letters — what we call primary sources in my business — and they became the basis for her book. What comes through in Maria Celeste’s beautifully written prose is a woman clearly struggling to reconcile the life to which she had been consigned with her longing for involvement with her family and the outside world. The book is an amazing exercise in contrast between Galileo’s superstar celebrity life full of achievement, intrigue, and excitement, and his daughter’s life of longing behind closed doors.
I found myself wanting to know what it felt like to be her.
How do you cope when you have to live a life based on someone else’s choices? Do you rebel? Do you adapt? Do you maybe even learn to accept and love it?
All of this pondering eventually led me to Barking Abbey….
I have always had a soft spot in my heart for England. And so there it was that I found Barking Abbey in Essex, a large convent or “nunnery” as it was referred to in the day. It would have been a similar place to that which Maria Celeste had been sent. It had a very long history — over 800 years. It went through a lot, including being sacked and destroyed by Vikings in the 870s which silenced it for about a century. Eventually refounded, its ultimate demise under the religious reforms of the powerful and infamous King Henry VIII (yes, that Henry who had six wives) was inescapable.
I decided to chart the life of the women in that institution to try and find all the Maria Celestes I could. Who were they? Where did they come from? What did they do every day? Did they enjoy their lives or just endure? What I found was a life that, in the end, held a sort of attraction for me.
Mind you, even though I was raised a Catholic and am fascinated by the history of the Church, it wasn’t the religious aspect that drew me in, but rather the life of quietness, contemplation, humility, and purpose. Surprisingly for this modern person, I came to realize that if one was to be a woman in the Middle Ages, a convent was likely the very best place to be for lots of reasons.
Reflecting on those women again after all these years makes me think I’d like to revisit their story. The world seems fragmented and frenetic and in need of a dose of quiet contemplation with purpose. Follow along with me in the next few posts and I will share with you what I found. The life of medieval nuns was not as boring as you might think.