CHAPTER XIII. THE NUN IN MEDIEVAL LITERATURE

Value of literary evidence 499

Autobiographies and biographies of nuns 500

Popular poetry (_chansons de nonnes_) 502

Popular stories (_fabliaux_, _exempla_) 515

Didactic works addressed to nuns 523

Satires and moral treatises 533

Secular literature in general 555

APPENDICES

I. ADDITIONAL NOTES TO THE TEXT: A. The daily fare of Barking Abbey 563 B. School children in nunneries 568 C. Nunnery disputes 581 D. Gay clothes 585 E. Convent pets in literature 588 F. The moral state of Littlemore Priory in the sixteenth century 595 G. The moral state of the Yorkshire nunneries in the first half of the fourteenth century 597 H. The disappearance or suppression of eight nunneries prior to 1535 602 I. _Chansons de Nonnes_ 604 J. The theme of the nun in love in medieval popular literature 622 K. Nuns in the _Dialogus Miraculorum_ of Caesarius of Heisterbach 627

II. VISITATIONS OF NUNNERIES IN THE DIOCESE OF ROUEN BY ARCHBISHOP EUDES RIGAUD (1248-1269) 634

III. FIFTEENTH CENTURY SAXON VISITATIONS BY JOHANN BUSCH 670

IV. LIST OF ENGLISH NUNNERIES, C. 1275-1535 685

BIBLIOGRAPHY 693

INDEX 704

LIST OF PLATES

PLATE

I Page from _La Sainte Abbaye_ FRONTISPIECE (Brit. Mus. MS. Add. 39843. Folio 6vº.)

TO FACE PAGE

II Abbess receiving the pastoral staff from a bishop 44 (From _The Metz Pontifical_, 82(b)vº and 90vº, in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.)

III Page from _La Sainte Abbaye_ 144 (Folio 29.)

IV Brass of Ela Buttry, the stingy Prioress of Campsey ([dagger] 1546), in St Stephen's Church, Norwich 168 (From _Norfolk Archaeology_, Vol. VI; Norf. and Norwich Archaeol. Soc. 1864.)

V Page from _La Sainte Abbaye_ 260 (Folio 1vº.)

VI Dominican nuns in quire 286 (From Brit. Mus. Cott. MSS. Dom. A XII f.)

VII The nun who loved the world 388 (From _Queen Mary's Psalter_, Brit. Mus. Royal MS. 2 B. VII.)

VIII Plan of Lacock Abbey 403 (From _Archaeologia_, LVII, by permission of the Society of Antiquaries and Mr Harold Brakspear.)

MAP

Map showing the English Nunneries in the later middle ages AT END

MEDIEVAL ENGLISH NUNNERIES