Writing Habits : Historicism, Philosophy, and English Benedictine Convents, 1600-1800 [1 ed.] 9780817393724, 9780817321031

Citation preview

Writing Habits

Strode Studies in Early Modern Literature and Culture Michelle M. Dowd, series editor Editorial Advisory Board

Dennis Austin Britton Bradin Cormack Mario DiGangi Holly Dugan Barbara Fuchs Enrique García Santo-­Tomás Jessica Goethals Karen Raber Jyotsna G. Singh Wendy Wall

Writing Habits Historicism, Philosophy, and English Benedictine Convents, 1600–1800

JAIME GOODRICH

The University of Alabama Press Tuscaloosa

The University of Alabama Press Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487-­0380 uapress.ua.edu Copyright © 2021 by the University of Alabama Press All rights reserved. Inquiries about reproducing material from this work should be addressed to the University of Alabama Press. Typeface: Alegreya Cover image: A seventeenth-­century engraving of Gertrude More by Jacob Neefs, frontispiece to The Inner Life and Writings of Dame Gertrude More, edited by Dom Benedict Weld-­Blundell (London: R. T. Washburn, 1911) Cover design: Lori Lynch Cataloging-­in-­Publication data is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: 978-­0-­8173-­2103-­1 E-­ISBN: 978-­0-­8173-­9372-­4

Contents

List of Tables

vii

Acknowledgments

ix

Note on Names, Quotations, and Terminology Introduction Buber and the Benedictines

xiii 1

Chapter 1

Cloistered Gemeinschaft: Administrative Writing and Communal Formation

23

Chapter 2

Religious Communion: Spiritual Texts and Liturgical Rites

56

Chapter 3

Monastic Imagined Communities: Histories, Life Writing, and the Divine Call

87

Chapter 4

From the Convent to the Counterpublic: Controversial Works and Rival Spiritual Communities

124

Afterword

Thinking with the Dead: Notes toward a Feminist Philosophical Turn

161

Appendix: Provisional Bibliography of English Benedictine Writings

167

Notes

177

Bibliography

203

Index

215

Tables

1. Comparison of opening chapters in Benedictine statutes

37

2. Extant chapter speeches

42

3. Extant death notices

97

Acknowledgments

T

his book was made possible by generous research support from the US-­UK Fulbright Commission (a Fulbright Scholar Award at the University of Sheffield); Wayne State University (a Career Development Chair, a Graduate Research Assistant Award, a Research Enhancement Program grant, a sabbatical leave); and the Wayne State Humanities Center (a Marilyn Williamson Fellowship, a Faculty Fellowship). In completing the research for this project, I relied heavily on the kindness of archivists and librarians at many different repositories across the world: the Archives of the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, the Archdiocesan Archives of Mechelen-­Brussels, the Archives Départementales du Nord, the Archives Départementales du Val d’Oise, the Beinecke Library, the Bodleian Library, the British Library, Durham University Library, the National Archives in Kew, the Newberry Library, the Rijksarchief in Ghent, the Vatican Library, and the Westminster Diocesan Archives. I am particularly indebted to the Benedictine nuns and monks who welcomed me into their communities and freely shared their archival holdings: at Colwich Abbey, Prioress Davina Sharp and Dame Benedict Rowell; at Douai Abbey, Abbot Geoffrey Scott; at Downside Abbey, Abbot Aidan Bellenger, Dom David Foster, Dom Philip Jebb, and Simon Johnson; at Oulton Abbey, Abbess Benedicta Scott and Dame Peter Smith; and at Stanbrook Abbey, Abbess Andrea Savage and Dame Scholastica Jacob. Exemplifying the Benedictine virtue of hospitality, many of these monasteries fed and housed me while I worked with their papers. My conversations with modern Benedictines and my experiences in their chapels deepened my understanding of cloistered life in countless ways. My work on Benedictine nuns has also benefited from the support of historians and literary scholars working on early modern English nuns, a few of whom deserve special thanks. Like everyone else in this field, I am much beholden to Caroline Bowden, whose pioneering research has opened so many doors for the rest of us. Caroline cheerfully shared images of manuscripts, gave shrewd advice, and helped arrange visits to monasteries. Meanwhile, the late J. T. Rhodes shared her top-­notch bibliographical research and helped me gain entrance to several monastic archives. I enjoyed a very profitable

x Acknowledgments

week in Mechelen with Laurence Lux-­Sterritt, benefiting greatly from both her excellent company and her deep knowledge of early modern Benedictine life. Similarly, Bobby Anderson and I spent a memorable few days working together at Downside Abbey, which were enlivened by her camaraderie and enriched by her familiarity with the Haslemere materials. Last but certainly not least, Nicky Hallett invited me to apply for a Fulbright grant so that we could collaborate at the University of Sheffield, which allowed me the dedicated time to complete the research for this project. Frankly speaking, this book simply would not exist without the Fulbright award. While I was in England, Nicky and her partner, Rosie Valerio, made sure that everything went smoothly for me and my spouse in terms of both logistics and scholarship. I am grateful for their friendship and kindness, past and present. I am also extremely appreciative of the support that I have received for this project from the academic community at Wayne State. When Arthur Marotti and Ken Jackson served on the Appointments Committee that hired me back in 2008, none of us anticipated that I would write a book engaging so deeply with their work on the “turn to religion.” I am very grateful for their advice over the years on my career, research, and the profession. Arthur in particular deserves special thanks for reading early drafts of this project and helping me to avoid missteps. Simone Chess and I were part of a cluster hire, and I have come to appreciate and rely on her wisdom in both personal and professional matters. May our multiplier effect continue for many years! Meanwhile, Julie Klein and Lissy Sklar have been key sources of friendly encouragement, and their help with logistics during the term of the Fulbright grant was invaluable and much appreciated. I also have a deep appreciation for the camaraderie and support of a number of other colleagues: Caroline Maun (particularly in her role as department chair), Michael Scrivener, Lisa Maruca, renée hoogland, Chera Kee, Michael Giordano, and Ellen Barton. A series of research assistants helped me catalog archival material for this book: Ruth Haller, Bosik Kim, Kimberly Majeske, and Ginny Owens. Meanwhile, my conversations with former students about the project have helped me find clarity in expressing my ideas: Matthew Jewell, Connor Newton, and Ginny Owens. Over the years, I have received much advice and encouragement from the larger scholarly community. I presented early versions of several chapters at the New Orleans meeting of the Renaissance Society of America and in talks at Seton Hall University, University of Arkansas, University College London, and University of Sheffield. In addition, three scholars in particular have served as sources of ongoing inspiration and support: Pat Phillippy, Paula McQuade, and Micheline White. It has been a true pleasure to work with the University of Alabama Press.

Acknowledgments

xi

I am especially grateful to Michelle Dowd, Hudson Strode Professor of English and series editor of Strode Studies in Early Modern Literature and Culture, and Dan Waterman, editor in chief at the press, for believing in this project from the start and providing sage advice as I navigated the editorial and peer review processes. My parents, Lee and Christine Goodrich, and my brother, Jared, have supported this project in numerous ways, particularly during the term of my Fulbright grant. Jared deserves special thanks for taking in our elderly dachshund, Eli, for ten months. My daughter Marian has good-­naturedly jockeyed with the English Benedictine nuns for my attention, especially during the COVID-­19 pandemic. My son Nathaniel was born after the submission of the finalized manuscript, and he happily kept me company as I reviewed the copy­edited version. Meanwhile, this book would never have been completed without the wholehearted assistance and support of Katherine Goodrich, who accompanied me during the Fulbright grant, joined me in numerous archives, photographed thousands of manuscript pages, and listened patiently over the years as I developed the core ideas of this project. My gratitude for her many personal and professional sacrifices is unending. When I was in elementary school, my maternal grandmother, Jean Myer, gave me my first Bible, and a decade later I received my first King James Bible from her daughter, Janice Myer. These gifts ultimately influenced the course of my scholarly career by laying the groundwork for my ongoing interest in the ways that religious texts can serve as conduits of female community, kinship, and spirituality. This book is for them.

Note on Names, Quotations, and Terminology

W

hen discussing English Benedictine nuns, I use their name in religion and provide their birth name in parentheses at the first mention. In citing early modern manuscripts or printed texts, I have maintained original punctuation, capitalization, and emphasis. In keeping with Chicago style, I have converted all underlining to italics and italicized all non-­ English words. I have modernized usage of i/j, u/v, and the long  s, while otherwise preserving original spelling. I have silently expanded all abbreviations and contractions. All translations from French and Latin are my own, with one exception: I cite the Douai-­Rheims translation of the Bible throughout (http://drbo.org). Martin Buber’s Ich-­Du paradigm is generally translated into English as I-­Thou. In order to avoid confusion, I follow Walter Kaufmann, the most recent translator of Buber’s Ich und Du, in using I-­You instead of I-­Thou.

Writing Habits

Introduction

Buber and the Benedictines I’m not a woman I’m not a man I am something that you’ll never understand —P rince , “I W ould D ie 4 U” (1984) I finde myselfe most drawen and moved to that prayer which tends to an unitie with out adhearing to any particuler image or crature, but seeking only for that one thing which our saviour said to be necessary, and which containes all things itselfe, according to that saying. Unum sit mihi totum, id est, omnia in omnibus . . . Lett one thinge bee thee sole thinge which I seeke after, and all in all. —C atherine G ascoigne , defense of her prayer ( c . 1632)

T

he late, great artist Prince may seem to have little in common with Catherine Gascoigne (professed 1625, d. 1676), a Benedictine abbess and staunch defender of contemplative mysticism. However, the two express a similar attitude toward God: that the divine is incomprehensible, beyond “woman” or “man,” “image” or “crature.” Read together, the epigraphs to this chapter illustrate an essential crux within the Judeo-­Christian tradition: the inscrutability of God, who is unknowable and thus the ultimate Other. As Pope Francis has recently observed of this tradition in his apostolic constitution on contemplative women, “Seeking the face of God has always been part of our human history.”1 Although Gascoigne is little known today in comparison with Prince, I open with this potentially startling juxtaposition to suggest that the writings of early modern Benedictine nuns hold great relevance for our understanding of how believers, whether past or present, seek to access God. This claim may be all the more provocative given the apparently marginal status of these women in their own time. Seventeenth-­and eighteenth-­ century English Benedictines opted to withdraw from mainstream society and join convents on the Continent, where they could pursue a cloistered life that was unavailable to them in their native country. Nevertheless, a growing body of interdisciplinary scholarship has established the cultural, historical,

2 Introduction

and literary importance of these seemingly peripheral institutions.2 James Kelly and Claire Walker have sketched the history of the English convents abroad, respectively emphasizing the nuns’ internationalism and gender politics.3 Other scholars have focused on recovering lived experience within these spaces. While Nicky Hallett has considered the role of the senses in Carmelite houses, Laurence Lux-­Sterritt has analyzed the interplay between emotions and spirituality in Benedictine convents.4 Literary critics, meanwhile, have explored the cloister as a site of textual circulation and production. Nancy Bradley Warren’s work on the reception of medieval spirituality among English Benedictines has been followed in recent years by Jenna Lay’s study of nuns’ relationships to the literary canon and Victoria Van Hyning’s scholarship on autobiography and Augustinian convents.5 This subfield is likely to become even more dynamic thanks to a surge in editions of monastic texts, as well as the online publication of the prosopographical database Who Were the Nuns?, overseen by Caroline Bowden.6 The present book participates in this lively critical conversation by using the lenses of historicism and philosophy to analyze textual production in six Benedictine communities between 1600 and 1800. All too often, previous scholarship has overlooked the nuns’ spiritual lives or interpreted monastic piety as an expression of gender or politics. This study redresses such tendencies by turning to the works of Martin Buber, a twentieth-­century Jewish philosopher, in order to understand God’s role at the heart of these cloistered communities. Buber theorized that human community forms a circle, with each member acting as a radius leading toward the common center of God. By virtue of its focus on God, the monastery is an excellent site for exploring the implications of Buberian philosophy, and the English Benedictine convents abroad offer especially fruitful examples of God-­centered communities. A Buberian analysis of Benedictine life can shed light on monasticism in general, since the Rule of St. Benedict supplied a template for many subsequent religious orders in Europe. More particularly, the religious houses founded abroad by English exiles in the seventeenth century were highly invested in communal formation because the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII had eradicated centuries of monastic identity and tradition. Among these institutions, the Benedictines stand out for two reasons: not only did they found more convents than any other order, but they also produced a multitude of writings, more than one thousand of which are extant in manuscript or print. While a historicist analysis of this corpus allows for a reconstruction of the various ways that English Benedictine nuns sought to access and interact with God, philosophical inquiry permits an evaluation of the larger existential implications of these communal strategies. Identifying the monastery as a space of profound alterity, this book attends to the



Buber and the Benedictines

3

textual traces of collective religious experience in order to recover how English Benedictine nuns created God-­centered communities and thus fulfilled the essential purpose of cloistered life itself: to enter into communion with a divine being beyond all human comprehension.

By combining rigorous archival research with philosophical inquiry, this study pursues a larger aim: to respond to and intervene in the current debate among early modern scholars over the relative merits of historicism and presentism. I do not mean to create an overly simplistic distinction between these two modes, especially since historicist methods may be shaped by presentist concerns. As Margaret Ezell has influentially observed, for example, the first decade of scholarship on early modern women writers was dominated by a critical search for proto-­feminist foremothers.7 Nevertheless, there is a stark divide between those who seek to approach the past on its own terms (however imperfectly they may be able to do so) and those who approach the past through contemporary lenses (however much those lenses may owe to early modern practices). One of the most obvious examples of this rift is a debate among scholars of early modern sexuality over temporality and teleology that has played out during the last decade in the pages of PMLA.8 The much-­heralded “turn to religion” in early modern literary studies offers another excellent illustration of the scholarly binary that has arisen from the clash of historicism and presentism. Although religion was of central importance to the culture, literature, and politics of early modern England, the dominance of modes such as New Historicism and cultural studies led scholars to downplay the topic during the 1980s and 1990s. As an increasing body of scholarship on religion emerged around the turn of the millennium, Ken Jackson and Arthur F. Marotti published an influential article that called for a “turn to religion.”9 Rejecting New Historicist readings of devotion, Jackson and Marotti argue that scholars must recognize the otherness of early modern religion rather than collapsing religious discourse into familiar paradigms, such as politics or feminism. In doing so, Jackson and Marotti offer not one way forward, but two. The first half of their article surveys scholarship rooted in various historicist and materialist methodologies, recommending an approach to the subject that is based on the “actualities of lived experience.”10 The second part turns to Continental philosophy, most notably Emmanuel Levinas’s views on alterity, in order to contend that the New Historicist obsession with otherness is informed by the ethical encounter between the ego and the other (most notably the absolute Other of the divine). From the moment the term “turn to religion” was coined, then, the field that it designated was bifurcated.

4 Introduction

Since 2004, the “turn to religion” has continued to develop along these two parallel tracks of historicism and philosophy. In their 2011 collection Shakespeare and Religion, Jackson and Marotti supply a valuable thumbnail sketch of how these divergent approaches had progressed up to that point, while explaining their decision to divide their volume into two parts: We have chosen to arrange the essays in this collection not by the rough chronological order of the Shakespeare canon but rather in two sections corresponding to their emphases—the first on historical analyses of the religious material in the plays, the second on postmodern theological, ethical, and philosophical interpretation of the dramas. Those scholars who attempt to situate Shakespeare’s plays within their immediate historical contexts usually attempt to use the religious and philosophical vocabularies of the time, even as they bring modern critical methods to bear in their interpretations. Those who use modern philosophy and postmodern theology to interpret Shakespeare attempt to use Shakespearean texts to think through issues that have contemporary urgency, thus, in a sense, assuming that it is possible to see Shakespeare as addressing perennial theological and philosophical problems that unite his time with ours.11

Although Jackson and Marotti quickly emphasize that both camps often come to similar conclusions about Shakespeare, their differences are all the more striking outside of the common ground of Shakespeare studies.12 As exemplified by Marotti’s 2005 study, Religious Ideology and Cultural Fantasy: Catholic and Anti-­Catholic Discourses in Early Modern England, scholars who employ historicist, materialist methodologies often turn to nondramatic and noncanonical texts, such as devotional treatises, martyrologies, polemics, or translations.13 The ReFormations series at the University of Notre Dame Press has supplied a much-­needed home for work of this kind. Meanwhile, early modern drama has proved fertile ground for scholars interested in philosophy, phenomenology, and political theology, as illustrated most notably by Jackson’s 2015 study, Shakespeare and Abraham, and the work of Julia Reinhard Lupton.14 A cursory survey of recent scholarship on early modern women’s religious writings offers further evidence of this critical disconnect.15 Historicist and materialist methodologies dominate this subfield, while philosophical approaches have yet to make any discernible mark. Despite their shared interest in the topic of early modern religion, these two schools of criticism are rarely in conversation with one another. Writing Habits bridges this scholarly gap in the “turn to religion” by analyzing the textual production of early modern English Benedictine cloisters on the Continent from both a historicist and a philosophical perspective. In



Buber and the Benedictines

5

doing so, it embraces a “strategic presentism,” a methodology originating in Victorian studies that foregrounds a conscious recognition of the links between the past and present: “Strategic presentism requires that we think of the past as something other than an object of knowledge that is sealed off, separated from the present by the onrush of sequential time.”16 Taking a stance that is self-­consciously grounded in strategic presentism, this study demonstrates the benefit of approaching nondramatic and noncanonical material through philosophy, a methodological lens that has yet to be applied to the religious works of women writers. At the same time, it counterbalances the previous scholarly emphasis on Levinas within the philosophical component of the “turn to religion” by drawing on the work of Martin Buber, a key influence on Levinas.17 As Lupton has argued, “the ‘religious turn’ in Renaissance studies represents the chance for a return to theory,” yet the philosophical “turn to religion” has been markedly Derridean and Levinasian.18 The following chapters offer a new paradigm by exploring the communal nature of monastic life through the lens of Buber’s theory of the I-­Thou relationship (or I-­You, as the phrase is rendered by Buber’s most recent translator), which is discussed at length in his important book I and Thou (1923).19 In drawing on Buber rather than Levinas, Writing Habits advances a philosophical model of community that complements the previous focus on ethics in the “turn to religion.” For Levinas, an ethics based on alterity precedes both ontology and epistemology: “The strangeness of the Other, his irreducibility to the I, to my thoughts and my possessions, is precisely accomplished as a calling into question of my spontaneity, as ethics.”20 In other words, our perception of ourselves as beings endowed with existence and knowledge depends upon an initial recognition of the difference of the Other. Levinas argues that we can access the transcendental Other through face-­to-­face encounters with other humans: “The dimension of the divine opens forth from the human face. A relation with the Transcendent free from all captivation by the Transcendent is a social relation. It is here that the Transcendent, infinitely other, solicits us and appeals to us. The proximity of the Other, the proximity of the neighbor, is in being an ineluctable moment of the revelation of an absolute presence (that is, disengaged from every relation), which expresses itself. His very epiphany consists in soliciting us by his destitution in the face of the Stranger, the widow, and the orphan.”21 Demanding an ethical response (or, in Levinasian terms, a recognition of alterity), the Other calls to us from “the human face” of our “neighbor” or “the Stranger, the widow, and the orphan.” Indeed, such destitution is key to the operation of Levinasian alterity, which requires generosity on the part of the person addressed by the Other: “To recognize the Other is to give. But it is to give to the master, to the lord, to him whom one approaches as ‘You’ in a dimension

6 Introduction

of height.”22 While Levinas views “the Transcendent” as “a social relation,” his theorization of the face-­to-­face encounter privileges one-­to-­one relationships among human beings. The early modern era is known for its preoccupation with selfhood, and the individual basis of Levinasian ethics thus provides a useful model for analyzing religious experience in this period.23 Yet by focusing on Levinas and the ethics of alterity, the “turn to religion” has overlooked the communitarian nature of much religious experience, both past and present. In its attention to communal dynamics, the Buberian model can extend the “turn to religion” even as it furthers scholarly understandings of early modern religious communities more generally. Social relations are central to Buber’s paradigm, although he, like Levinas, theorizes that we can reach transcendence only through interactions with others. Buber contends that when we take an I-­It (or I-­He or I-­She) perspective toward a particular being or object, we focus primarily on utilitarian experience. As a result, we naturally view both people and things as objects that are of service to us. The I-­You perspective, however, is based on “the world of relation” rather than experience.24 An I-­You dynamic requires a moment of encounter in which the individual recognizes the fundamental otherness of something or someone else, viewing the other on a purely subjective level rather than an objective one. As Buber puts it, “When I confront a human being as my You and speak the basic word I-­You to him, then he is no thing among things nor does he consist of things. He is no longer He or She, limited by other Hes and Shes, a dot in the world grid of space and time, nor a condition that can be experienced and described, a loose bundle of named qualities. Neighborless and seamless, he is You and fills the firmament.”25 While these glimpses of the other as a You are necessarily fleeting because every You must inevitably become an It at some point, such transitory moments allow access to the divine: “through everything that becomes present to us, we gaze toward the train of the eternal You; in each we perceive a breath of it; in every You we address the eternal You.”26 For Buber, then, the existential nature of life is bound up in dialogic relations between human beings that point toward God. This understanding of interpersonal relations serves as the foundation for Buber’s views of community, which in turn offer philosophical insight into the nature of monastic life. For Buber, community and collectivity must be distinguished from one another. As he explains, “Collectivity is not a binding but a bundling together: individuals packed together, armed and equipped in common, with only as much life from man to man as will inflame the marching step. But community, growing community . . . is the being no longer side by side but with one another of a multitude of persons. And this multitude, though it also moves towards one goal, yet experiences



Buber and the Benedictines

7

everywhere a turning to, a dynamic facing of, the other, a flowing from I to Thou.”27 Through this allusion to the I-­You dynamic, Buber suggests that community can only happen when people are brought into relation with one another through their connection with God: “True community does not come into being because people have feelings for each other . . . but rather on two accounts: all of them have to stand in a living, reciprocal relationship to a single living center, and they have to stand in a living reciprocal relationship to one another . . . A community is built upon a living, reciprocal relationship, but the builder is the living, active center.”28 This view of God as the “builder” of community entails one final aspect of Buberian community, that the communal is derived primarily from each person’s relation with God rather than their relation with others: “men’s relations to their true You, being radii that lead from all I-­points to the center, create a circle. Not the periphery, not the community comes first, but the radii, the common relation to the center.”29 Thus, for Buber, community is essentially a religious phenomenon, as it must always start from the individual’s personal relationship with God. Buberian ideas of community translate easily to the monastery, which is by its very nature a space centered on God. While Buber’s writings may be grounded in a fundamentally Jewish perspective, striking parallels can be found in Christian theories of community, particularly Gabriel Marcel’s exploration of the I-­You perspective from a Christian existentialist viewpoint and Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Christocentric theology.30 More recently, Pope Francis has defined faith as “our response to a word which engages us personally, to a ‘Thou’ who calls us by name,” further observing that “God’s own love . . . is not only a relationship between the Father and the Son, between an ‘I’ and a ‘Thou,’ but is also, in the Spirit, a ‘We,’ a communion of persons.”31 Speaking more particularly about the “communion” found in the cloister, Francis has noted that contemplative monastic institutions are characterized by their orientation toward God: “They are so centred on Christ that they can say with the Apostle: ‘For to me, to live is Christ!’ (Ph 1:21). In this way, they express the all-­encompassing character at the heart of a vocation to the contemplative life.”32 Such formulations of God-­centered community may be said to go back to Christ’s own pronouncement in Matthew 18:20: “For where there are two or three gathered together in my name, there I am in the midst of them.” Buber himself identifies Christian monasticism as one example of genuine community: “The early Christians were not satisfied with the communes that were next to or above the world, and they went into the desert so as to have no community except that with God and no more disturbing world. But it was shown to them that God does not will that man be alone with him, and above the holy impotence of solitude grew the brotherly

8 Introduction

order. Finally, overstepping the realm of Benedict, Francis established the bond with the creatures.”33 As representatives of “the realm of Benedict,” early modern English Benedictine nuns offer a thought-­provoking case study for identifying how Buberian ideas play out within the actual, lived experiences of religious communities. Writings within the Benedictine tradition—ranging from St. Benedict’s Rule to the works of modern English Benedictines—represent the monastery as a God-­centered space where human relations facilitate divine communion. As the English Benedictine Congregation explains in its recent publication To Prefer Nothing to Christ (2015), “In its essence, monastic life is an encounter with Jesus Christ.”34 This encounter is initiated when God invites a person to take up a monastic vocation, as described in the prologue to the Benedictine Rule: “let us with astonished eares heare what the divine voice daily cryeing out, admonisheth us sayeing. This day if you shall heare his voyce, harden not your harts. And againe: He that hath eares let him heare what the spirit saith to the Churches: and what saith it? Come children, heare mee; I will teach you the feare of our Lord.”35 In its explication of this prologue, the English Benedictine Congregation observes that God’s call may occur through the voice of another: “The voice in which the divine call is initially heard by a monk or a nun may be that of anyone who has mediated to us a sense of Jesus’s summons to life.”36 As in the Buberian paradigm, the Rule indicates that the monk or nun encounters God through a profound interaction with another person, and this first contact leads to their entry into a human community predicated on the individual’s relationship with God. Indeed, the prologue to the Rule only calls for the establishment of the monastery once this voice has been heeded: “Wee are therefore now to institute a schoole of the service of God.”37 As the English Benedictine Congregation comments, “The Rule implies that Jesus’s call is personal; it arises through a person’s contact with a community, and the life of the community becomes the place where we search for God.”38 The creation of monastic community privileges the individual’s connection to God over interpersonal relations. Francis thus observes of contemplative life in general, “the contemplative is a person centred in God and for whom God is the unum necessarium [one necessary thing] (cf. Lk 10:42).”39 The Rule also emphasizes this personal focus on God, twice stating that Benedictines should “preferre nothing before the love of Christ.”40 Within Benedictinism, as in monasticism more generally, monks and nuns are joined together into community by their shared orientation toward God rather than toward each other. This key formulation of Benedictine life is also evident in the English Benedictine Congregation’s comment that “a monastic spirituality is a spirituality of communion. Jesus is himself the source of this unity and communion.”41 Buber’s writings thus



Buber and the Benedictines

9

furnish a philosophically grounded way of understanding the operation of communal dynamics within Benedictinism and monastic settings at large. At the same time, a Buberian analysis of convents, which are by nature female-­oriented spaces, can further ongoing conversations among feminist philosophers, theologians, and thinkers about the relevance of the I-­You paradigm to female experience. As Hagar Lahav has pointed out, not only does Buber “overlook the patriarchal nature of language” but also his “use of language essentially identifies humanity with men, rendering males the human standard and allocating virtually no space to women’s particular position(s) and experience(s).”42 Even so, some scholars have identified significant parallels between Buberian philosophy and feminist work in a number of disciplines, particularly ethics.43 Nel Noddings, for example, draws on Buberian relationality to develop a feminist ethics of care that has been both influential and controversial.44 For Noddings, the one-­caring must experience engrossment (or a profound attention) in relation to the cared-­for, which occurs when the two enter into the I-­You relation as theorized by Buber: “In those moments the cared-­for is not an object. In Buber’s words: ‘He is no longer He or She . . . he is Thou and fills the firmament.’”45 Yet by focusing primarily on the interpersonal implications of the I-­You dynamic, Noddings and other feminists have largely ignored the communitarian aspects of Buberian philosophy. Recently, however, Deirdre Butler has broken new ground by recognizing the significance of Buberian community for Jewish feminists in particular: “Buber’s extension of his description of interpersonal relationships to his understanding of community as the site for ethical relationship holds a particular promising resonance for Jewish feminism even as it raises concerns and questions.”46 Following Butler’s lead, this study will offer a fresh point of departure for feminist thinkers by situating the I-­You relation within a Buberian understanding of female religious communities as exemplified by the English Benedictine convents on the Continent. Indeed, since membership in these institutions was exclusively reserved for women, Writing Habits will demonstrate that philosophical analysis of such female-­oriented spaces can rewrite the Buberian model itself by generating fresh insights into the nature of God-­centered communities.

While a Buberian perspective is helpful on an abstract level, any careful examination of how religious community occurs must be based on the specific history of particular monastic institutions. Archival material documenting the history of religious houses is therefore essential for tracing the operation of Buberian philosophy in practice. The writings produced by and for early modern English Benedictine convents on the Continent are especially rich

10 Introduction

sources for this sort of investigation. Englishwomen established six Benedictine convents on the Continent, in what would become modern Belgium and France.47 All of these institutions descended in some way from the first Continental convent founded specifically for Englishwomen: a Benedictine monastery begun in Brussels during 1598. This cloister relied strongly on Jesuit confessors and successfully exported an Ignatian form of monastic spirituality to a 1624 filiation at Ghent, which in turn established offshoots at Boulogne in 1652, at Dunkirk in 1662, and at Ypres in 1665. In this book, I will refer to the Boulogne house as Pontoise since it relocated to that city in 1658 and remained there until its dissolution in 1786. The Ypres convent will not factor into this study because it became an Irish house in 1682 after failing to attract enough English postulants. Within the Ignatian-­inflected environments of Brussels, Ghent, Pontoise, and Dunkirk, the nuns had frequent recourse to Jesuit priests, who served as extraordinary confessors and offered the Spiritual Exercises. A separate tradition of English Benedictine spirituality developed at houses founded in Cambrai and Paris. Three Brussels nuns helped begin the Cambrai convent in 1623, but the house became known for its adherence to the teachings of Augustine (David) Baker who encouraged the nuns to use individualized forms of prayer to reach a state of passive contemplation. In 1651, Cambrai founded an offshoot at Paris, which also practiced Baker’s methods. By the 1780s, then, two distinctive communal spiritual identities had emerged within the six Benedictine convents located in France and Flanders. Today more than one thousand manuscripts and rare books from these convents are extant in American and European archives, constituting a fertile corpus that has yet to receive sustained literary examination. It must be stressed, however, that none of these houses’ archives or libraries survives intact, due to the historical trauma of the French Revolution. The four houses in France were unprepared for the French authorities’ decision to dissolve foreign religious institutions in 1793, and they consequently lost most of their libraries. When the Dunkirk nuns were sent to prison that October, they had just a few hours to gather their belongings.48 The majority of extant Dunkirk manuscripts are personal papers, perhaps in part because a Frenchman confiscated “convent papers” from Abbess Mary Magdalen (Anne) Prujean (professed 1750, d. 1812) as she left the house.49 Most members of the Pontoise convent had transferred to Dunkirk in 1786, and Placida (Mary) Messenger (professed 1772, d. 1828) shrewdly preserved a number of important institutional papers from her previous house. The Dunkirk nuns managed to keep these manuscripts, but the rest of the Dunkirk and Pontoise papers remain in state archives. As a result, the Pontoise corpus largely consists of administrative and historical documents. In October 1793, the



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Paris nuns found themselves imprisoned in their convent, with their papers placed under seal by French soldiers. After being removed to another prison in July 1794, the nuns were eventually allowed to return to their convent and reclaim some of their possessions. The Paris house’s spiritual descendants, who have now moved to Stanbrook Abbey, consequently possess an unusually wide range of pre-­1800 manuscripts and rare books, in genres ranging from administrative and historical texts to spiritual treatises and miscellanies. These convents received comparatively humane treatment in comparison with Cambrai, where the nuns were given just seven or eight minutes to gather a small bundle of their things.50 Some of the monastery’s extensive library ended up in state archives, but J. T. Rhodes has speculated that French soldiers used the house’s numerous manuscripts as wadding in their cannons.51 Today Stanbrook Abbey, the modern successor of the Cambrai convent, possesses very few pre-­1800 works as a result. The two cloisters in Flanders fared better. Not only did they have advance warning of the French army’s arrival, but these houses were also cognizant of how the soldiers had treated their sister institutions. The Ghent convent departed for England in 1794, sending ahead “a few of the records and papers.”52 A number of their manuscripts and rare books, including obituaries and spiritual treatises, are extant today in material once held at Oulton Abbey, where the community eventually settled. Similarly, the Brussels house shipped over some of its belongings, and a contemporary account by Mary Philippa (Anne) Eccles (professed 1753, d. 1811) notes that “each Religious was allowed to carry away as much as she could put into a bag.”53 However, so few of their early manuscripts survived that the Victorian nuns who compiled the house’s annals and obituaries turned to other English Benedictine convents for accounts of the convent’s first years. As a result of these losses, any attempt to map the textual production of these houses will necessarily be fragmentary. The books and manuscripts that survived the vagaries of the French Revolution and the nuns’ later peregrinations suggest that these houses provided a corporate and institutional context that distinctively shaped monastic writing, much as domestic settings supplied a framework for secular women writers. Each of the Benedictine houses followed both the Benedictine Rule and statutes or constitutions that supplemented the Rule (for more on these guidelines, see chapter 1). These documents influenced textual production by prescribing a structured day with several potential opportunities for writing. The daily routine revolved around the Divine Office, a series of communal devotions occurring at set times. The schedule at Brussels, for example, was as follows: matins (3 a.m.), prime (7 a.m.), terce (9 a.m.), sext (just before 10:30 a.m.), none (12 p.m.), vespers (3 p.m.), and compline (6:30 p.m.). At several points in the day, the Brussels Statutes mandated silent time that could

12 Introduction

have been used for writing: between matins and prime, during an hour of silence in their cells at 1 p.m., and between vespers and supper at 4:30 p.m.54 Today Cambrai and Paris are better known for their literary activities than the other Benedictine houses, yet their constitutions did not offer more structured free time. The most obvious opportunities for writing at Cambrai included the periods from matins (12:30 a.m.) until prime (6:30 a.m.), from vespers (3 p.m.) until 4 p.m., and between compline (6:30 p.m.) and bed (8 p.m.). Paris maintained a similar schedule with two additional half-­hours of unprogrammed silence, resulting in the following openings for writing: from matins (4 a.m.) to prime (6:30 a.m.), from 10:30 a.m. to 11 a.m., from vespers (3 p.m.) to 4:30 p.m., and after compline (7 p.m.) to bed (8:30 p.m.). Of course, other blocks of time devoted to prayer and recollection might also have been used for writing. Yet as the obituary of Prioress Mary Clare Joseph of Jesus (Mary) Bond (professed 1762, d.  1789) of Paris indicates, the busy nature of the monastic day meant that chances for sustained writing could be few and far between: “Mother Mary Clare Bond was ordered [by her confessor] the year before her Death or thereabouts, to commit to writing the state of her interior which she did, but as she had no opportunity of writing such private things but by stealth, she took the time in which she could be most spared, and alone, which was generally at Night. The Weather being extremely cold as she stood at her Window, she was overtaken with the sciatic Gout in her thigh which became contracted, so as to cause her violent anguish which encreased on her till her Decease.”55 Given Paris’s schedule, Bond was probably writing in the period between compline (7  p.m.) and matins (4 a.m.), sacrificing her sleep to find time for writing unrelated to her duties as prioress. Benedictine nuns who did not pray, read, or do something else in these free moments composed a wide variety of texts. As the implied distinction in Bond’s obituary between “private things” and other writing suggests, most of the extant works from the convents can be divided into two major categories: individual and institutional writing. Individual texts may be defined as writing done for a nun’s own personal spiritual advancement rather than for the convent more generally. Composed with little thought about any audience beyond the immediate author or her confessor, many of these works could only be considered complete at the time of the writer’s death, when her “loose papers” were found in her cell and assembled by someone else. These loose papers took a variety of forms, ranging from spiritual commonplace books to original reflections, prayers, and poetry. In contrast to the personal stakes of these texts, institutional writing served a larger purpose related to the house. Such writing tended to be collaborative or composite in nature, as nuns wrote together or one nun built on a predecessor’s work.56



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Recordkeeping was an essential form of institutional writing, mandated by the statutes and constitutions that regulated convent life. Officeholders also produced administrative texts outlining the principles of governance, such as chapter speeches and monastic conduct books. Annals and obituaries, often composed by the abbess or prioress, documented the history of the house itself. Some forms of institutional writing informed or preserved a convent’s spiritual identity, such as posthumous transcriptions of loose papers or translations of contemporary spiritual works. Finally, nuns wrote letters and, during controversies, polemics that served as representatives of the house to outsiders. Whether institutional or individual in nature, the writings of early modern English Benedictine nuns collectively addressed a major dilemma experienced by every English convent on the Continent. How could English nuns cultivate a cloistered identity when the Protestant Reformation had swept away nearly all vestiges of English monasticism? Because English Benedictine nuns were creating monastic identity from scratch, their writings offer special insight into the nature of communal formation as theorized by Buber. Each surviving book or manuscript is a material artifact that must be understood as a product of and contribution to a localized project to create a specific community. At the same time, each text is also a data point within a broader corpus now located within monastic institutions, research libraries, and state archives throughout Belgium, England, France, Italy, and the United States (see appendix). Based on extensive archival research at these repositories, this study employs a meticulous, data-­driven approach to analyze the intersection between communal identity and writing in early modern English Benedictine convents. The chapters that follow center on four major kinds of cloistered writing (administrative, spiritual, historical, and polemical), drawing on a wide range of extant manuscripts in order to provide a comprehensive analysis of Buberian communal dynamics within these institutions.

In its melding of historicist, materialist, and philosophical approaches, Writing Habits exploits the friction that occurs when historicism and presentism are juxtaposed. On the one hand, literary scholars will find much in this study that is familiar. By analyzing monastic writing and its circulation through lenses such as historicism and textual scholarship, I aim to sketch the distinctive writing habits that arose within the environment of the Benedictine cloister. Each chapter is based on an enumerative bibliography of a particular genre that resulted from substantial archival research (see appendix). Situating representative works from these bibliographies

14 Introduction

within their historical contexts and considering their material features (e.g., reader’s marks, physical format), I seek to understand how textual production and circulation responded to specific aspects of monastic piety. On the other hand, these traditional scholarly modes supply the raw materials for the book’s presentist analysis of communal formation. Paradigms from the fields of philosophy, political science, and sociology offer an anachronistic, but sophisticated, terminology that can facilitate a more precise understanding of the creation and daily operation of early modern English Benedictine communities. Meanwhile, the Buberian archetype of God-­centered community provides a crucial means of modeling the relational nature of convent life, illuminating the nuns’ ties with God and with one another. By using this philosophical lens to think imaginatively and sympathetically about the cloister’s ontology, I explore how this space fosters communion between humanity and God. The nuns’ writings, in turn, offer an opportunity for thinking about Buberian philosophy itself, leading to fresh insights into the spiritual and structural ramifications of God-­centered community. Perhaps somewhat ironically, from a monastic perspective this book’s use of Buber is less objectionable than its focus on texts as objects. Benedictine writings exhibit many parallels to Buberian ideas of community, as already demonstrated, yet emphasizing the material text risks privileging the means of cloistered spirituality (the written artifact) over its end (divine union). Writing Habits thus cultivates a Janus-­like gaze, looking both backward and forward in order to foment productive tensions: between the past and the present, between notions of cultural contingency and transhistorical essentialism, and between the viewpoints of the early modern monastic author and the modern secular scholar.57 These competing perspectives dismantle the binary in the “turn to religion” and, in turn, unsettle previous assumptions about how best to approach early modern religious writing. The instability of this critical orientation is akin to the model of in-­betweenness proposed by Robert Orsi, a leading scholar of religious studies, as a remedy for his field’s tendency to view religions outside of mainstream Protestantism as other: There is another alternative to the liberal paradigm that guards more assiduously against the moralistic impulse to construct figures of otherness. This alternative—which I think of as a third way, between confessional or theological scholarship, on the one hand, and radically secular scholarship on the other—is characterized by a disciplined suspension of the impulse to locate the other (with all her or his discrepant moralities, ways of knowing, and religious impulses) securely in relation to one’s own cosmos. It has no need to fortify the self in relation to the other; indeed, it is willing to



Buber and the Benedictines

15

make one’s own self-­conceptions vulnerable to the radically destabilizing possibilities of a genuine encounter with an unfamiliar way of life. This is an in-­between orientation, located at the intersection of self and other, at the boundary between one’s own moral universe and the moral world of the other. And it entails disciplining one’s mind and heart to stay in this in-­between place, in a posture of disciplined attentiveness, especially to difference.58

It would be easy to characterize the nuns as figures of otherness, particularly since narratives of literary history have traditionally been yoked to the historical ascendancy of Protestantism. In the early stages of my archival research, I was dismayed to find that the Benedictine nuns’ writings did not conform to the Whiggish principles of that canon. As I encountered “an unfamiliar way of life” and the equally foreign texts that it generated, the material itself forced me to employ Orsi’s “in-­between orientation,” to seek a “genuine encounter” with this world, and to suspend the “ways of knowing” that informed my understanding of literature and women writers. The texts of early modern nuns challenge us, as scholars, to welcome this epistemological ambiguity and to listen attentively to the differences between what we seek to find and what actually confronts us. If this disoriented attitude is uncomfortable and difficult to maintain, that is because it asks us to abandon the unspoken certainties about literature and life that we instinctively seek to preserve at all costs.59 By recognizing the uncompromising alterity of monastic texts, Writing Habits proposes new ways of thinking about the intersection of community, literature, and religion.

A brief analysis of Catherine Gascoigne’s description of her prayer will illustrate how this critical approach can be used to recover the communal dynamics of early modern monastic institutions. In addition to being the second abbess of the Cambrai Benedictines, Gascoigne was an early and fervent adherent of the contemplative mysticism espoused by Augustine Baker. Gascoigne’s preference for negative theology (the idea that we cannot know God) is evident in this lengthier excerpt from her comments on prayer: I finde myselfe most drawen and moved to that prayer which tends to an unitie with out adhearing to any particuler image or crature, but seeking only for that one thing which our saviour said to be necessary, and which containes all things itselfe, according to that saying. Unum sit mihi totum, id est, omnia in omnibus. Hoc unum quaero, hoc unum desidero. Propter unum omnia, & ex hoc uno omnia, hoc unum habuero, contentus ero: & nisi potitus fuero,

16 Introduction

semper fluctuo quia multa me implere non possunt. Quid hoc unum. Nescio dicere desiderare me sentio, quo nihil melius nec maius est sed nec cogitari potest. Non enim hoc unum inter omnia, Sed unum super omnia est. Deus meus est; cui adhaerere & inhaerere, bonum mihi est. Lett one thinge bee thee sole thinge which I seeke after, and all in all. This one thinge I wish for, this one thinge I desire. For this one all, and from this one All. When I shall once obtaine this one, my Heart will bee at rest; untill I doe enjoye itt I am alwaies waveringe and not settled; for Multeplicitie can never content & satisfie my affectione. What this one thing is? I cannot expresse, yet I know there is nothinge which either is or can bee imagined better and more perfect. For it is not One thing amongst All thinges; but indeed one thing above All things. It is my God, whome to serve & to Love is my only fellicitie and happinese.60

Read through the philosophical lens of the Buberian community, this passage illustrates the primacy of the individual’s relationship with God. Rejecting any anthropomorphization of God (“particuler image or crature”), Gascoigne eschews human relations in favor of an exclusive focus on “one thing” that she presents as inherently other: God. Significantly, for Gascoigne this “one thing” is not equivalent with other things (“One thing amongst All thinges”) but rather “above All things,” much as in Buber’s philosophy the divine exists in a space beyond the It-­world. Throughout the passage, the repetitive use of the Latin adjective unus and its English translation “one” indicates that her orientation is solely toward God, the center of the monastic community, rather than toward the Cambrai cloister. It is only when Gascoigne turns in the direction of this divine Other and avoids the “Multeplicitie” of the It-­world that she can find spiritual rest. Despite Gascoigne’s rejection of “crature[s],” her comments form an intertextual web that reveals how her access to God is grounded in the collective spirituality of the Cambrai convent. As in the prologue to the Benedictine Rule or in Buber’s philosophy, Gascoigne hears the voice of God speaking to her through the You of various mediators. Baker, as Gascoigne’s spiritual advisor, served as a primary vehicle for God’s call. Her initial sentence in Latin echoes 1 Corinthians 15:28 (omnia in omnibus), but it was very likely coined by Baker. Gertrude (Helen) More (professed 1625, d. 1633) of Cambrai states that this phrase was given to the house by an unnamed person, a probable reference to Baker since he was known for his aphoristic verses: “Unum sit mihi totum, id est, omnia in omnibus. Let one be al to me, that is, Al in Al. This was a Poesy bestowed on me and my Parteners by another.”61 As Gascoigne acknowledges, Baker himself was responding to Luke 10:41–42, a passage that has long served as a touchstone for monastic life. When Martha complains to Jesus that Mary is not helping her with the housework occasioned by his



Buber and the Benedictines

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visit, Jesus responds: “Martha, Martha, thou art careful, and art troubled about many things: But one thing [unum] is necessary. Mary hath chosen the best part, which shall not be taken away from her.” Since Mary’s focus on Christ has often been read as an analog to monastic life, this simultaneous allusion to Baker and the Bible suggests that Gascoigne is answerable to God rather than to other human beings who, like Martha, might fault her sole focus on the divine. Books offered another medium for hearing God’s call, and Baker had encouraged the Cambrai house to read Thomas à Kempis’s Soliloquium animae in English translation.62 The remainder of Gascoigne’s Latin passage is borrowed from chapter 12, section 1, of Kempis’s Soliloquium. Gascoigne’s turn away from creatures toward God is thus predicated upon the words of various spiritual authorities that held special currency within her cloister, which she has stitched together in order to represent her own thoughts. Although the I-­You dynamic is fleeting and wordless, such intertextual moments preserve its traces by showing Gascoigne’s response to God’s perceived addresses to her soul. As the historical and bibliographical contexts of Gascoigne’s comments reveal, her text in turn became a means for others to access God. Gascoigne was writing in response to a serious crisis within her house: the accusations made by Francis Hull, the convent’s official confessor, that Baker was anti-­authoritarian and heretical.63 Baker’s role as a mediator between God and the nuns was consequently subjected to much scrutiny by the English Benedictine Congregation, and two monks, Rudesind (William) Barlow and Leander à Sancto Martino (John Jones), were assigned to read and approve his voluminous writings. During this perilous time, the house’s very identity was in question, as the English Benedictine Congregation could have removed Baker’s texts and banned further use of his methods. In her role as abbess, Gascoigne composed her description of prayer in order to defend Baker’s practices, and Barlow and Jones validated her stance with the following approbation appended to two copies of the text: “Goe on couragiously you have choosen the best way, we beseech Allmighty God to accomplish this union which your hart desireth Brother Leander Brother Rudesind.”64 This postscript offers material evidence of the text’s origins in the Baker controversy even as it legitimates Gascoigne (and implicitly Baker) as a model for achieving “union” with God. Gascoigne’s defense of Baker in turn became foundational for the spiritual identity of Cambrai and its Paris filiation. The text survives in at least three versions spanning two convents and two centuries: a seventeenth-­century copy from Cambrai and two eighteenth-­ century copies from Paris (the first dated 1724 and the second transcribed by Mary Benedict [Mary] Dalley [professed 1719, d. 1761]).65 The transmission of Gascoigne’s short text demonstrates that her writing was institutionalized

18 Introduction

as a model for other Benedictine nuns seeking God. Gascoigne’s intensely personal search for “one thing” therefore came to function as a textual mediator of God’s voice for her successors. By unfolding the bibliographical, historical, and philosophical layers of texts such as Gascoigne’s description of prayer, this study seeks to uncover the written vestiges of communal lives that were focused on “one thing above All things” and to locate the textual traces of their otherwise ephemeral encounters with that “one thing.”

The chapters that follow pursue that aim by foregrounding the essential alterity of the cloister. Although the convent is demarcated from the secular world by enclosure, monastic space is special not because of its separation, but because of its utter devotion to God. Much as in the convent, God is at the center of this book. This arrangement reflects the nature of monastic life as well as a fundamental premise of the “turn to religion.” A monastic archivist once lamented to me that an edited collection on early modern convents did not focus on religion. This comment puzzled me at first because it would seem that a volume on convents would naturally involve religion. Yet her complaint reflected the previously mentioned tendency for scholarship on these institutions to conflate religion with other topics. Speaking of religious studies in general, Orsi has recently criticized the critical inclination to characterize religion as a metaphor for something else, anything else: “religious practices are more or less distorted refractions of the real circumstances of life. They are representations of social or psychological facts, symbols of something else, but nothing in themselves.”66 Several foundational critiques from the “turn to religion” anticipated Orsi’s comments. As Jackson and Marotti noted in their original article, religion is not the same thing as politics.67 Lupton has since posited a corollary: “Religion is not identical with culture.”68 Along similar lines, the convent is a female-­oriented space, but its piety is not equivalent to feminism.69 Writing Habits responds to these caveats by considering monastic devotion on its own terms, as a means of addressing God rather than culture, gender, politics, or something else. Much as Orsi analyzes the everyday presence of God within the experiences of American Catholics, this study reads the writings of early modern Benedictine nuns through a “matrix of presence” in which God is the living, real center of monastic life.70 Cloistered texts reflect a fourfold set of communal structures based upon this central presence: relationships between the nuns themselves, between the individual nun and God, between the convent and God, and between the convent and the public sphere. The major genres of early modern convent writing—administrative texts, spiritual works, historical writings, and polemics—respectively evoke



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these structural relationships. By exploring these genres and identifying the habits of writing that were particular to early modern English Benedictine cloisters, this study seeks to demonstrate how textual production offered both the individual nun and the community at large a variety of tools for approaching God. The organization of this book reflects the overlapping communities found in monastic life, moving deliberately from the internal to the external. After beginning with intramural forms of fellowship based on face-­to-­face interactions and liturgical observances, Writing Habits explores how Benedictine convents fostered collective identities that transcended the physical cloister. The first two chapters thus analyze how the most basic elements of monastic life facilitated the nuns’ communion with the divine You. Drawing on Ferdinand Tönnies’s influential concept of Gemeinschaft (or community created through daily social interaction), chapter 1 explores administrative texts that offered blueprints for a shared religious life, arguing that these works transformed quotidian routines into a means of approaching God. By providing models for the community’s everyday interactions, administrative writing created a Gemeinschaft that centered on God. After analyzing how nuns at Brussels, Cambrai, and Paris compiled statutes to create daily routines based on God, I consider monastic superiors from Cambrai, Ghent, and Paris who wrote chapter speeches to cultivate a God-­centered, collective spiritual identity that was drawn from the Rule and statutes. Chapter 2 turns to John Macmurray’s theory of religious communion in order to analyze how spiritual writings reflect the interplay between collective and individual experiences of God. While the meditation and the spiritual miscellany are intensely personal genres, examples of these works from Cambrai, Dunkirk, Ghent, and Paris reveal that members of these convents viewed the liturgy of the Divine Office and Mass as an entry point for mystic union. Miscellanies from Cambrai, Dunkirk, and Paris indicate that the Eucharist, the centerpiece of each house’s collective worship during Mass, offered an opportunity for nuns to encounter God on a profoundly personal level. Meanwhile, meditations from Cambrai and Ghent demonstrate that the shared liturgical rituals at the heart of convent life sparked mystic encounters by initiating dialogic exchanges between the individual nun’s soul and God. Turning to more external forms of monastic community, chapters 3 and 4 analyze how nuns formed I-­You relationships that were not bound by spatial or temporal limits. Chapter 3 focuses on texts that conveyed the common spiritual genealogy of convents, arguing that histories and life writing presented God as the creator and thus the center of these communities. Engaging with Benedict Anderson’s theory of imagined community (or perceived social identifications across space and time), this chapter outlines how these

20 Introduction

genres offered a textual framework for understanding a convent’s collective past, inviting nuns to join an imagined community that was composed of their predecessors and established by God. While death notices from Cambrai, Dunkirk, Ghent, Paris, and Pontoise focus on how God called individuals to join the cloister, convent histories trace the workings of a teleological providence that protected these communities from harm. Chapter  4 uses the concept of the counterpublic (or public spheres formed by minority social groups) in order to discuss polemical writings that resulted from quarrels within the convents, revealing that nuns positioned themselves within broader Catholic communities during times of crisis. When a cloister seemed to deviate from orthodox practices or ceased to share a common orientation toward God, polemical writing helped negotiate the resulting breakdown in monastic order by linking nuns with the imagined community of the Catholic Church. Using a broad definition of “polemic,” I analyze how nuns from Brussels and Paris justified their preferred approaches to God by circulating letters, treatises, and printed texts that invited readers to identify with spiritual communities rooted in but extending beyond the cloister. In their exploration of the various manifestations of community that occur within the monastery, all four chapters seek to understand the broader implications of the Buberian dictum that only communal religious life can facilitate the ephemeral and transcendent dialogical encounter between an individual human being (I) and God (You). A brief afterword calls for a critical turn toward feminist philosophy in early modern literary studies, outlining the potential ramifications of this new approach for scholarship on women writers and other marginalized authors. By the term “feminist philosophy,” I mean to evoke not the work of feminist thinkers such as Noddings but rather the critical framework of philosophy as used by literary scholars, particularly in relation to Shakespeare. Outlining four principles of feminist philosophy exemplified within Writing Habits itself, this afterword argues that we can achieve a broader and richer understanding of human experience by reading non-­Shakespearean works through a philosophical lens. Finally, a few words must be said about the time frame of this study, which ignores the usual boundaries of literary periodization by covering the years 1600 to 1800. I chose this two-­hundred-­year span for one simple reason: it reflects the entire length of the English Benedictine convents’ existence on the Continent, from the 1598 foundation of the first house in Brussels through the nuns’ migration to England during the 1790s in the wake of the French Revolution. The Benedictine experience was typical of other English cloisters abroad, and much of the historical scholarship on these institutions has employed this same chronological framework as a result.71



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From a literary standpoint, however, this project bridges two periods that have long been viewed as completely separate from one another: the early modern era and the long eighteenth century. While these eras did indeed produce radically different forms of culture and literature, such distinctions mattered less in the space of the cloister, where eighteenth-­century nuns looked to their seventeenth-­century predecessors for successful models of monastic piety. Consequently, the convents abroad provide an interesting case study of the ways that a particular group of eighteenth-­century readers received early modern texts. Thus, even as this book analyzes textual production and communal formation throughout the full duration of the English Benedictine convents’ existence on the Continent, it also encourages scholars to rethink the nature of literary periodization itself.

This study advances a new paradigm for the “turn to religion” by mending the rift between historicist and philosophical approaches to religion in early modern English literature. Although historicism and presentism are often viewed as polar opposites, this book demonstrates their complementarity. By elucidating the historical and material specifics of a particular text, historicist methodologies allow for a detailed reconstruction of devotional practices from the past. Presentist approaches, in contrast, reveal persistent facets of religious experience that transcend the ages, such as the believer’s profound desire to know and access God, the enigmatic Other. When combined, these two critical modes demonstrate the value of basing existential speculation on the gritty historical details of lived experience. By positing that the material text is an essential starting point for philosophical inquiry, this study reveals how early modern English Benedictine nuns used their pens to negotiate the fundamental alterity of the monastery, a space where, as Benedict says, nothing whatsoever is to be preferred to Christ. In its sympathetic attunement to this alterity, Writing Habits also seeks to make a radical intervention in scholarship on early modern literature more broadly. This book contributes to the feminist project of recovering previously marginalized works by early modern women writers, an effort that has resulted in the construction of a diverse and vibrant canon. The texts of early modern nuns deserve a wider audience than they have heretofore received due to the lingering influence of Whiggish narratives of literary history. Yet in attempting to reach this wider readership, Writing Habits rejects the impulse toward integration at play in much feminist scholarship since the first recovery of women writers in the 1970s and 1980s. With a few notable exceptions, such as Elizabeth I and Mary Wroth, early modern women writers remain outside of the traditional literary canon. As a result, female authors

22 Introduction

are often viewed as a supplement to mainstays such as Milton, Shakespeare, and Spenser. To counteract this tendency, literary critics have often sought to reorient women writers from the margins by exploring the links between their works and those of canonical authors.72 This approach, however, paradoxically encourages us to view women writers through the critical paradigms associated with the traditional canon. Writing Habits offers another path forward by consciously eschewing assimilative approaches to early modern women writers. Although I do gesture toward links between the nuns’ writings and the larger world, my focus is on the convent itself. This tactic is not meant to keep these texts within the cloister but rather to recognize the uniqueness of that space, which is defined by its inhabitants’ desire to separate themselves from the secular sphere for the purpose of pursuing their vocations. In doing so, I want to suggest that literary subcultures, such as those found in Benedictine convents, possess relevance for our understanding of early modern literature in general. Scholars who read literature philosophically have demonstrated the value of “thinking with Shakespeare.” As Lupton explains, “To think with Shakespeare is, ideally, not to instrumentalize the plays in the service of an ideological program (as one drives in a nail ‘with’ a hammer), but rather to think alongside Shakespeare about matters of shared concern (as one speaks ‘with’ a friend).”73 This book asks a simple question: if we can “think with Shakespeare,” what happens when we “think with nuns”? That is, what can mainstream literary criticism learn from the cultural and textual margins? In their very distinctiveness, these literary subcultures can foster new critical frameworks with broad applications, such as feminist philosophy. The blend of historicism and philosophy employed in this book, for example, could easily be used to analyze texts produced by other religious communities within early modern England, including the congregation (whether a local parish or an Independent church) and particular households (whether Little Gidding or the country estate of Margaret Hoby). Writing Habits thus challenges the usual optics of literary scholarship by contending that the future of early modern literary studies lies in the margins, not just because literary subcultures produced works that contest, complement, and extend the canon, but also because these marginalized bodies of work can generate new analytical tools that reframe our understanding of early modern English literature writ large.

One

Cloistered Gemeinschaft Administrative Writing and Communal Formation

A

few years after she became abbess of the Pontoise Benedictines, Elizabeth Dabridgecourt (professed 1661, d. 1715) took up her pen to compose an administrative manuscript that would have a long and rich history within her community: Seremonys and Customs, through out the Year, for All Feasts and Occations, Drawne from Our Seremoniall, in a Brife Maner (1692).1 As its title indicates, Seremonys and Customs is an abridgment of the house’s ceremonial, which provided extensive guidance on liturgical rites performed by and for the house throughout the year. Although Dabridgecourt left no record of her intentions, this abbreviated version of the ceremonial served as an essential reference work for her and later abbesses, who needed ready access to key information on the house’s liturgical life. In addition to a calendar of feast days with instructions on their observance, the manuscript contains miscellaneous information, such as rites for the dead, the daily schedule within the house, and forms of communal prayer. The material aspects of this manuscript reveal that the convent’s ceremonies were not static customs observed by rote. Rather, they changed in major and minor ways over the decades as Dabridgecourt and four successive abbesses updated the text regularly. In addition to crossing out obsolete material, abbesses at Pontoise added new guidelines by writing in blank spaces, tipping in scraps of paper, tucking loose papers between leaves, and pasting or pinning slips of paper into the manuscript.2 Revised repeatedly up until the 1786 dissolution of the Pontoise house, Dabridgecourt’s Seremonys and Customs was thus a living document whose slow evolution reflected an ongoing process of communal formation that ended only with the closure of the convent itself. Even then, members of the Pontoise house brought Dabridgecourt’s manuscript with them to the Dunkirk Benedictines, suggesting that it remained relevant to their understanding of how to perform the basic elements of monastic life. While abbesses at Pontoise relied on Seremonys and Customs in order to make sure that their house observed the liturgical calendar in an exact

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manner, their frequent emendations to Dabridgecourt’s original text also recorded the community’s spiritual development over time. Many of these alterations concerned the convent’s obligations in relation to particular feast days or other communal rites. An entry for August 15, for example, begins in the hand of Dabridgecourt and continues with a later clarification added by Abbess Mary Ann (Anne Barbara) Clavering (professed 1751, d. 1795), which is represented here in angle brackets: “at lauds a comemoration of st rock: and all must hear masse, by vertue of a voue the towne made: tis not holly Day: .”3 Since St. Roch is the patron saint of those suffering from the plague, the town of Pontoise had probably vowed to commemorate him during an outbreak of this disease. Clavering’s comment implies that this special Mass may have become a burdensome distraction for the community, as she apparently inquired about the need to continue with its performance. By stating that participation in this observance was now optional, Clavering encouraged her spiritual community to focus on cultivating its own distinct forms of piety rather than following the spiritual practices of its municipality. Other emendations to Seremonys and Customs offer even more direct evidence of the ways that monastic superiors adjusted their houses’ customs in order to strengthen the collective focus on God. In her original account of liturgical practices on Good Friday, Dabridgecourt notes that at the singing of the words “Flectamus genua [Let us bend our knees],” the nuns were to assume a specific pose: “All kneels & riseth at Levate [Rise].”4 She later amended this passage to emphasize the symbolic point of this posture, specifying that “thay kneel towards the aulter,” the site where the crucifixion was reenacted daily at Mass. Both embodied and spiritual, these rites reinforce the collective nature of the Pontoise nuns’ worship (“all”) as well as their shared orientation toward God (“towards the Aulter”). The revisions made to Dabridgecourt’s text thus gesture toward an essential fact of monastic life: communal spiritual formation is a cumulative activity that must be furthered by each subsequent generation of monks and nuns. In both its content and its material characteristics, Seremonys and Customs illustrates how monastic superiors used writing to develop collective spiritual experiences that could foster God-­centered communities. Drawing on Ferdinand Tönnies’s theory of Gemeinschaft, this chapter analyzes how two other forms of administrative writing—statutes and chapter speeches— provided a template for everyday experience within the early modern English Benedictine cloister by reaffirming the values of the Benedictine Rule. While statutes supplied idealized regulations for daily life in specific convents, chapter speeches were delivered weekly by abbesses and prioresses to



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the house in order to address the practical aspects of monastic discipline. The following analysis reveals that these works created a Rule-­based structure for daily existence that encouraged the formation of God-­centered communities akin to those theorized by Buber. By dictating and facilitating everyday patterns of prayer, labor, silence, and worship in ways that reinforced the Rule’s tenets, administrative texts offered guidance on cloistered life that was essential to the English Benedictine convents’ day-­to-­day existence. This form of monastic writing also provides new insights into the ways that early modern women exercised religious authority, by outlining the distinctive forms of power available to cloistered women who occupied leadership positions within female collectives. Although nuns’ administrative writing bears some similarities to texts produced by laywomen, in many respects this genre is unique to convents.5 Female Baptists and members of other Independent congregations penned texts that aimed to influence communal governance and worship, even as female Quakers and some Scottish Presbyterians took leading roles in certain aspects of congregational life.6 Protestant women of all stripes composed catechisms, mother’s legacies, and prayerbooks meant to orient household devotion.7 Yet none of these women wrote for a religious community made up solely of other women. Furthermore, the corporate existence of the cloister transcended centuries, which resulted in plural modes of authorship as generations of nuns contributed to and revised administrative texts. In addition to expanding our knowledge of the kinds of religious works that women wrote, administrative texts from English Benedictine convents demonstrate how one set of female communities used the everyday to forge a collective life centered exclusively on God. Through an analysis of representative administrative writings that combines bibliographical, material, and philosophical approaches, this chapter will show that spiritual formation is a continuous process, requiring the conscious practice of a monastic Gemeinschaft that revolves around God.8 As I argue, administrative writing was vital to the construction and implementation of this Gemeinschaft, providing textual traces and material witnesses of the nuns’ daily struggle to fashion a communal existence that met the Benedictine Rule’s vision of a monastic life centered on God. At the same time, this chapter seeks to refine Buberian philosophy by demonstrating the crucial role that writing plays in the development and maintenance of God-­ centered communities.

The School of God: Gemeinschaft and Administrative Texts Administrative writing is essential to Benedictine life and monasticism more generally, both past and present. Indeed, any understanding of Benedictinism

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must begin with a foundational administrative text: the Rule of St. Benedict, which has provided a durable and much-­imitated template for communal life centered on God. As Benedict explains toward the end of the Rule’s prologue, “Wee are therefore now to institute a schoole of the service of God .  .  . never departing from his schoole, but persevering in the monastery in his doctrine untill death, by patience wee participat of the sufferings of Christ, that wee may deserve afterwards to bee partakers of his kingdome.”9 The ensuing chapters offer a flexible scheme for religious life in the Benedictine tradition of ora et labora (pray and work), centered on the Divine Office as well as periods of refection, silence, and work. The community’s daily routine in turn serves as a basis for the individual monk or nun’s pursuit of a personal relationship with God. As the English Benedictine Congregation has recently observed, the Benedictine “schoole . . . of God” ideally leads to communion: “fraternal relations in a monastery are brought about by our engagement with the exchanges of life that flow from responding to the divine initiative of call and consecration. The school of the Lord’s service is where monks and nuns learn and practise communion. Life according to the Rule gives a daily experience of it, and provides for its support and nourishment. This is how monks and nuns are able to grow in communion and to reach the wholeness of monastic integrity that is traditionally called purity of heart.”10 This “communion” derives from the commonplace and everyday elements of Benedictine life mandated by the Rule, such as daily work: “Communion is also experienced in the ordinary round of daily work, whether manual and repetitive, professionally burdensome or intellectually demanding.”11 Taken together, these mundane “exchanges of life” foster the communion that is at the heart of Benedictine experience. This Benedictine view that the divine may be found in the quotidian bears striking similarities to Martin Buber’s theory that community emerges from the I-­You relationship whereby humanity encounters God. For Buber, true community—which consists of a circle wherein each member acts as a radius leading toward the common center, God—can only occur as part and parcel of everyday life: “if people group together nothing short of their lives—please do not substitute the word life with a concept of feeling or something that only exists in a holy hour, for life is an everyday occurrence, which happens day after day, hour after hour, in lofty as well as in humble situations, a demand of heavens and earth; all this together and nothing less I mean when I say life—if people, then, group together their lives, are willing to live together, and if their will is not a mere agreement that has emerged from the mind and remains in the mind, but a will that grows in the real soil of life, then community can happen as a destiny and



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calling among men.”12 Eschewing the idea that the communal can only occur within the consecrated space of the “holy hour,” Buber contends that “the real soil of life,” those “humble situations” and “everyday occurrence[s]” that constitute life both in and out of the Benedictine monastery, can foster a God-­centered community reaching beyond the plane of human existence. The life force of such a community may in turn be measured by the extent to which it fosters the I-­You relationship: “The structures of communal human life derive their life from the fullness of the relational force that permeates their members, and they derive their embodied form from the saturation of this force by the spirit.”13 By means of this spiritual “saturation,” the daily routine (or “structures of communal human life”) becomes meaningful as a space for the individual to access God through even the most fleeting encounters with others: “the pure relation can be built up into spatio-­temporal continuity only by becoming embodied in the whole stuff of life. It cannot be preserved but only put to the proof in action; it can only be done, poured into life. Man can do justice to the relation to God that has been given to him only by actualizing God in the world in accordance with his ability and the measure of each day, daily.”14 As a communal space that prioritizes this divine “saturation,” the Benedictine monastery offers an exemplary case study of how community is produced when individuals enter into a common routine based on their shared orientation toward God. Indeed, this analysis can easily be used to illuminate the philosophical implications of daily life in other orders due to the historical primacy of the Benedictine Rule within Western Europe. Ferdinand Tönnies’s influential theory of Gemeinschaft allows for a more precise understanding of how the Buberian dynamic of the everyday operates within Benedictine life. As Paul Mendes-­Flohr has demonstrated, Buber’s thoughts on community were strongly influenced by Tönnies, to the point that Buber sought to advance a “neue Gemeinschaft” that would move beyond the instrumentality of religion or politics by uniting human beings in an immediate experience of life.15 For Buber, Gemeinschaft was consequently an essential component of communal formation. As he commented in 1930, “I do not believe that true communal existence can happen without the association of communal cells [Gemeinschaftszellen].”16 Here Buber alludes to Tönnies’s well-­known distinction between the “real organic life” of Gemeinschaft (community) and the “purely mechanical construction” of Gesellschaft (society).17 Whether constituted as a family, marriage, or religious community, Gemeinschaft is “familiar, comfortable, and exclusive” while also entailing a “total community of life.”18 Tönnies identifies three different kinds of Gemeinschaft: “Community by blood, indicating primal unity of existence, develops more specifically into community of place, which is expressed first of

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all as living in close proximity to one another. This in turn becomes community of spirit, working together for the same end and purpose. Community of place is what holds life together on a physical level, just as community of spirit is the binding link on the level of conscious thought.”19 For Tönnies, “the fraternity or religious congregation” is one example of “the ultimate and highest expression of the idea of Community,” involving as it does community of both place and spirit, if not necessarily community by blood.20 The monastery certainly exemplifies many of the ideals of Gemeinschaft as laid out by Tönnies. For example, the monastic practice of collective ownership is congruent with Tönnies’s belief that “community life means mutual possession and enjoyment, and possession and enjoyment of goods held in common.”21 Furthermore, Tönnies describes Gemeinschaft as “a living organism in its own right” that grows from “a complete unity of wills,” a phenomenon encouraged by the monastic emphasis on subordinating self-­will in favor of the common good.22 Such convergence of wills results in a collective purpose that may be identified with the Benedictine goal of communion: “The aggregate of determinate will which governs a community, and which is as natural as language itself and contains a multitude of understandings regulated by its norms, I shall call concord or family spirit (the term concordia implies a heartfelt sense of integration and unanimity). Mutual understanding and concord are one and the same thing: namely the will of the community in its most basic forms.”23 In a monastic context, such concord occurs as individual monks and nuns turn collectively toward the center of their community, God. Built on the Gemeinschaft of quotidian monastic routines, the cloistered community is truly realized as each nun enters into a “total community of life” that is predicated upon a personal relationship with God, as in the Buberian paradigm. At the same time, the monastery resembles the neue Gemeinschaft advanced by Buber in its appropriation of utilitarian religious ends (such as the composition of administrative texts) for the mystical purpose of attaining an immediate experience of God. Administrative writing served as an important tool for early modern Benedictine nuns seeking to foster a Gemeinschaft that could establish the community’s shared orientation toward God. From the individual nun’s perspective, this kind of textual production began with her formal entrance into the convent. At all of the English Benedictine convents, the profession ceremony required written vows that witnessed the nun’s new identity as a member of a specific community of place and spirit.24 At Cambrai and Paris, for example, each novice wrote and signed English and Latin copies of her monastic vows that were then notarized. The Cambrai Constitutions provide this template for the English vows: “I Sister M: G: of the Countrye of Nomen [name] and such a citty, or Parrish promise stabillitie and Conversion



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of my manners, and Obedience before God and his Saincts, according to the Rule of our most hollie Father St Bennett, and perpetuall inclosure in this Convent of our Blessed ladie of Comfort in the Citty of Cambraie of the Order of the same Sainct, In the presence of the Reverend Mother ladie C: G: Abbesse of the saied Convent, and under the Obedience of the very Reverend father S. B: President of the wholl Inglish Congregation of the same Order.”25 Read through the lens of Gemeinschaft, this model reflects the various layers of communal identity assumed by the newly professed nun. First, she must transition from the community of place associated with her secular life to the community of place constituted by the monastery, where she vows to remain. The Benedictine vows of conversion of manners, obedience, and stability also locate her within local, national, and international communities of spirit: first, the Cambrai convent; second, the English Benedictine Congregation (which held jurisdiction over the Cambrai convent); and third, the Benedictine order at large. Significantly, this example from the Cambrai Constitutions is identifiable as the vow taken by Margaret (Margaretta) Gascoigne (d. 1637), who professed in 1629 during the abbacy of her sister Catherine Gascoigne and the presidency of Sigebert (Robert) Bagshaw. The Cambrai Constitutions thus enshrine a discrete occurrence as a pattern for all to follow, showing how one member’s experiences could be transformed into Gemeinschaft. Although the monastery centers on the ineffable nature of God, such written documents provide tangible evidence of the human composition of these communities. Members of the English Benedictine convents also used textual production to create and record monastic routines that could endure for generations. The most important documents of this kind were the statutes and constitutions written by these communities and their spiritual advisors as supplements to the Benedictine Rule: the Brussels Statutes (1612), the Cambrai Constitutions (c.  1629–31), and the Paris Constitutions (1657).26 These statutory works emphasize the importance of recordkeeping as a means of preserving the protocols associated with particular monastic offices. The Brussels Statutes and Cambrai Constitutions, for example, task the infirmarian (who tended the sick) with recording doctors’ prescriptions and medicinal recipes, the sacristan (who managed the chapel) with chronicling donations made to the church, and the abbess with keeping a book of the house’s possessions and revenues.27 All three sets of monastic guidelines instruct the chantress (who supervised the liturgy) to compile a book of the Masses and other rites due to the house’s benefactors.28 Because such records were essential to the convents’ daily operation, these statutes and constitutions dictated that administrative and financial records should be carefully safeguarded. As the Brussels Statutes observed, “If their Originall writings,

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Registers, Instruments, and monuments should happen through ouldnesse, Rottennesse, or evill keeping to bee spoyled or corrupted, the Abbesse and depositarye must take Care to have them authentically coppyed out, and well kept.”29 The Paris Constitutions took the practical step of requiring that the house’s financial accounts, official papers, and obituaries be kept in the depositum, a lockbox for money with three separate keys held by the prioress and depositaries.30 The convents’ adherence to these requirements is evidenced by the survival today of various record books: most notably, financial accounts, registers of professions, obituaries, and books of ceremonies. Since these documents were maintained by monastic officeholders who built on their predecessors’ efforts, they necessarily involved plural authorship. The resulting texts indicate that each cloister’s Gemeinschaft was produced by the slow accretion of its members’ lived experiences. Occurring over generations, the creation of monastic community was a constant work in progress, a reflection of the fact that the “living organism” of the convent survived the lifespan of any individual nun. The leaders of English Benedictine convents—whether abbesses or, as at Paris, prioresses—had a special duty to foster Benedictine communion, and administrative genres offered a useful means of doing so. For example, Mary Teresa (Mary) Caryll (professed at Ghent 1650, d. 1712, abbess at Dunkirk 1663–1712) was linked to the publication of two works: an edition of the Latin ceremonies for clothing and profession (Liber ceremoniarum pro vestitione et professione . . . Dunkercae, 1694) and a translation of the Benedictine Rule (The Rule of the Holy Father Saint Benedict Translated into English, 1700). These books were clearly meant for use within the convent, but the 1700 edition of the Rule also advertised Dunkirk’s piety to English readers who might be inspired to support or even join the house. The anonymous translator’s preface claims that Caryll’s leadership has endowed the Dunkirk house with “the most favourable circumstances both spiritual and temporal, of any of our Nation whatsoever.”31 One of the most important forms of abbatial writing was the chapter speech, a short address delivered when the entire convent met in chapter to discuss discipline and other official matters. These texts offer an especially rich source of insight into daily life in these institutions, both in its realities and in its ideals as envisioned by monastic leaders. For abbesses and prioresses, writing functioned as an extension of their leadership roles as they offered prescriptive guidance that could shape the everyday occurrences of monastic life for the present and future. The remainder of this chapter will analyze the philosophical, bibliographical, and material aspects of statutes and chapter speeches in order to demonstrate how these works created the God-­centered community of the Benedictine monastery by reinforcing adherence to the Rule.



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“Better Observation of the Holy Rule”: Statutes and Constitutions During the seventeenth century, three English Benedictine convents generated related sets of regulations intended to codify the daily routines of monastic life and, in turn, to establish a Gemeinschaft that emphasized God’s role at the center of the cloister. Brussels, Dunkirk, Ghent, and Pontoise followed statutes produced by the Brussels house in 1612, while Cambrai and Paris developed their own sets of constitutions based on the Brussels Statutes. These documents provided necessary guidance to nuns as they undertook a communal life focused on God in response to their Benedictine vocation. The Brussels Statutes, for example, open by defining the purpose of cloistered life: “Where as the cheifest scope and end of Every Religious Order is to advance the Professours there of to the Salvation and spirituall perfection of their Soules, therefore all that enter this Congregation, must dilligently apply themselves, that by meete and convenient, meanes, they may attayne to the proposed end of their Vocation.”32 Statutes provided the “meanes” for achieving this “Vocation,” which may be identified with the first kind of good work mentioned by Benedict: for the monk (or nun) “to love our Lord God with all his hart, with all his soule, with all his strength.”33 This all-­consuming love in turn leads to union with God, whether on earth or in heaven. As the reference to “Salvation” in the Brussels Statutes suggests, the purpose of cloistered life is only realized when the soul of a monk or nun joins God in heaven. The Paris Constitutions portray convent regulations as a crucial aid in achieving this goal: the “Rule & Constitutions are their [the nuns’] way, in which they are to walke from vertue to vertue till they see their eternall Spouse in Sion; wherefore lett them walke wisely & carefully in it without straying either to the right hand, or to the left.”34 On earth, contemplation and prayer allowed more fleeting moments of contact with the divine. The Cambrai Constitutions enshrine a contemplative ideal by identifying such union as the goal of a monastic vocation: “the end of their profession [is] . . . to serve their Creatour, and save their owne soules with all religious perfection possible: that is, to come to a perfect union of their spirit with God.”35 Through their encouragement of the individual’s union with God by means of a monastic Gemeinschaft, all three sets of Benedictine statutes sought to forge communities that, as in the Buberian paradigm, originated from each member’s relationship with God. While all monastic communities are oriented toward God by nature, these statutes and constitutions advanced a specifically Benedictine form of Gemeinschaft by seeking to complement the Rule of St. Benedict. Indeed, the nearly identical titles of these works foreground that aim: Statutes Compyled

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for the Better Observation of the Holy Rule of the Most Glorious Father and Patriarch St Benedict (Brussels, 1612); Constitutions Compiled for the Better Observation of the Holie Rule of Our Most Glorious Father and Patriarch St Bennet (Cambrai, 1631); and Constitutions for the Better Observation of the Holy Rule of Our Most Glorious Father & Patriarch St Bennet (Paris, 1657). This interest in ensuring “better observation of the holy rule” reflects a key theme within the Benedictine Rule itself: common discipline. Echoing St. Paul’s admonition at Galatians 3:28 (“there is neither bond nor free . . . you are all one in Christ Jesus”), Benedict admonishes abbots and abbesses to treat all of their subordinates equally: “whether bondman or free man, wee are all one in Christ, and beare an equall burthen of servitude under one Lord; for with God there is noe acception of persons. Onely in this he maketh a difference, if in good workes and humility wee surpasse others. Therefore let the Abbot beare equall love towards all: and let all be subject to the same orders, and discipline according to their deserts.”36 Similarly, Benedict’s eighth degree of humility entails that “a monke doe nothing but what the common Rule of the monastery or the examples of his seniors teach and exhort him.”37 The Rule’s emphasis on uniformity (“all one,” “equall,” “same,” “common”) conveys the importance of collective adherence to monastic regulations. Indeed, such regularity produces monastic community itself by instilling a very particular form of Gemeinschaft. Through the composition of statutes and constitutions meant to facilitate “better observation” of the Rule, these exiled communities thus hoped to fashion a collective identity that was recognizably Benedictine in its daily experiences. In his approbation of the Brussels Statutes, Mathias Hovius, archbishop of Mechelen-­Brussels, notes that the house had requested statutes for the express purpose of achieving “the exact and uniforme observation of the sayd [Benedictine] Rule.”38 Such “exact and uniforme observation” formed a Benedictine Gemeinschaft that could ideally provide a strong foundation for communal identity. The Cambrai Constitutions, for example, observe that their contents aimed to encourage “the more perfect observance of their holy Rule, and better living in Religious unitie and conformitie.”39 As the remainder of this section will demonstrate, statutes and constitutions sought to inculcate a uniform Benedictine identity by instituting a Gemeinschaft that would help the nuns maintain their focus on God as the center of their monastic institutions, much as in the Buberian model.

A Philosophical Analysis of Statutes and Communal Formation Statutes and constitutions provided essential guidance on how to structure the physical and sensory aspects of the convent, nurturing a Gemeinschaft that could minimize potential distractions and, from a Buberian perspective, enhance God’s central role within religious life. After the Council of Trent,



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enclosure became one of the defining physical characteristics of the cloister, a clear sign of its separation from the secular world.40 In speaking of the grates placed on the convent’s exterior windows, the Cambrai Constitutions present enclosure as a means not of keeping others out, but of training the nuns’ attention on God and the afterlife: “all the windowes [must be] so disposed and contrived with wood on th’outside, that the Religious maie looke out noe waies but upwards towards heaven.”41 Monastic poverty, evidenced by the lack of individual possessions, provided another opportunity for reiterating Christ’s place at the center of the community. The Brussels Statutes note that “whatsoever is given to the Monasteryes use, through the pious liberalitie of good people, is to bee esteemed as applyed to Christ our Lord, or to the Religious as his poore membres, that there by being freed from all care of temporall matters, they may the better attend to the Service of his divine Majesty.”42 Even on a financial level, Christ occupies a central role within the monastery, with the nuns taking a subordinate position as his limbs (“membres”). The Paris Constitutions conclude a chapter on poverty with a similar affirmation of the way that renouncing material goods fosters reliance on God alone: “lett the Priouresse visit sometimes . . . their Cells, & all they have for their use, & if shee finde any One inordinatly to affect any thing, lett her discreetly reforme it, or deprive her of it; that by externall poverty they may possesse true poverty of spirit, which is, to affect, or adheare to nothing but God.”43 Statutes thus controlled the physical space of the cloister in order to institute a Gemeinschaft that reinforced the Benedictine understanding of vocation as a preference for nothing besides Christ. By regulating the nuns’ daily experiences, these texts also sought to establish ideal circumstances for the daily contemplation and prayer that could lead to divine union. The Divine Office, an essential feature of Benedictine Gemeinschaft even today, was carefully monitored to maintain a communal orientation toward God. The Paris Constitutions, for example, stipulate which portions of the Divine Office were to be performed as a group: “Mattins must bee read devoutly & distinctly in unison; Te Deum, the Ghospell & Prayer onely sung, & Laudes sayd as Mattins in unison.”44 By identifying when nuns should read and sing “in unison,” this clause reaffirms the cloister as a space constituted by shared devotion to God. Other directives emphasized the deportment necessary while reciting the Divine Office, theoretically preventing or reducing distractions during this solemn time. The Brussels Statutes highlight the need for reverence in the choir: “lett them observe due gravitie and Modesty, and decent composition of their cariage, neither may they post over their service, but they must pronounce each worde with moderate leisure, distinctly, and truly.”45 The Cambrai Constitutions expand on this clause by barring specific examples of inappropriate

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behavior: “During the divine Office and meditation, they must observe Monastical gravitie, reverence, modestie, and decent composition in their external carriage; also attention, decent pause; avoiding all needlesse motion, speaking, looking about, and all uncivil coughing, spitting, sighing, etc: also hastie precipitation or dissonance in voyce, or teadious protraction; so that they may pronounce each word with moderate leasure, distinctly, truly, uniformely; beginning, pausing, and ending alltogether.”46 Convent guidelines likewise attempted to control the auditory environment of the cloister, particularly during times of solitary prayer and reading. As the Cambrai Constitutions observe, silence is an essential prerequisite for contemplative prayer: “Besides Inclosure, the practize of silence is allsoe as necessarie for the conservation of a Contemplative spirit, as for increase of devotion.”47 The Paris Constitutions identify silence as being as “necessary for the leading a true Relligious life” as the vows of enclosure, poverty, and obedience, further observing that “Brideling of the tongue is cheifly necessary in our Order, whose end is Contemplation, or union of our Soule with God.”48 Nicky Hallett’s work on the convents as sensory spaces has already demonstrated the surprisingly wide variety of sounds that could be heard in these institutions.49 Regulation of noises during times of recollection, mental prayer, and sovereign silence (between compline and the morning conventual Mass) was thus key in maintaining individual and collective attention to God. The Cambrai Constitutions stipulate that the community “must at those times keepe as little noyse as maie be, in shutting doores, removing things etc.”50 The Brussels Statutes contain a similar directive: “In their going and shutting of the doores, lett them make noe noyse, as much as lyeth in them, but this they must beware of in tyme of soveraigne Sylence, and when the Religious are at their reading and meditation.”51 In dictating how nuns behaved during these times of collective and individual prayer, statutes advanced a recognizably monastic Gemeinschaft that attempted to maintain the community’s orientation toward God. Finally, the statutes offered guidelines for the nuns’ interactions with each other, placing Christ at the center of the interpersonal relationships that constituted yet another fundamental aspect of the Gemeinschaft found in Benedictine convents. The Rule states that monks and nuns can work toward union with God by showing love toward one another: “As there is an il zeale of bitternes which seperateth from God, & leadeth to hell: soe there is a good zeale which seperateth from vices, & leadeth to God and life everlasting. Let Monkes therefore exercise this zeale with most fervent love, that is, that they prevent each other with honour, that they paciently suffer each others infirmityes, whether they be of body or of minde, and that they strive to obey each other . . . Let them shew all brotherly charity with a



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chast love. Let them feare God, and love their Abbot with a sincere and humble affection, and prefer nothing at all before Christ.”52 Statutes and constitutions offered practical guidance on how to achieve a sororal charity in keeping with this Benedictine ideal of “good zeale” that “leadeth to God and life everlasting.” As the Brussels Statutes observe, interpersonal exchanges offered one means of accessing God in a manner that anticipates the Buberian paradigm: “lett them behave themselves each to others with due respect, and Religious gravitie, and every one is to behould as it were Christ himselfe in her Sister.”53 In order to foster the “respect” necessary to treating others as Christ, the nuns must cultivate a Gemeinschaft based on charity toward one another: “In their speeches and Conversation lett them avoyde and fly all shew of contempt and litle esteeme of others, all kinde of mocking, and scoffings, and all other things what soever, whereby either throughe their wordes or actions, any kinde of occasion of brabble or displeasure may arise.”54 Such good zeal is also recommended by the Paris Constitutions in the discussion of recreation, a daily time of communal free speech: “from this recreation (in which, beeing a Conventuall act, & of great good effect if rightly used, the Relligious must shewe their free common love & charity) none are to exempt themselves without speciall leave of the Priouresse.”55 By regulating the nuns’ physical environment and comportment in these ways, statutes ideally fashioned a Benedictine Gemeinschaft in order to transform the cloister into a closed circuit where all experiences flowed inexorably back to God as the center of monastic life, much as in the Buberian ideal of the God-­centered community.

A Bibliographical Analysis of Statutes and Communal Identity Bibliographical analysis of these statutes reveals the communal nature of their production, suggesting that these texts reflect to some extent the convents’ own understanding of how the daily routines of their Gemeinschaft reflected Christ’s centrality to the cloister. As I have shown elsewhere, the Brussels house wrote its statutes collectively, in consultation with its confessor Robert Chambers and several other English priests.56 A letter sent by the convent to Hovius describes a process that involved culling material from other monastic guidelines: “ex diversarum Synodorum decretis, variorum Summorum Pontificum sanctionibus, nonnullorum Religiosorum Ordinum, et congregationum sanctissimis, et prudentissimis Regulis, et Statutis (ultra ea quae ipsamet prudentia et experientia suggessit) collectae sunt hae Constitutiones [from the decrees of diverse synods, from the ordinances of various supreme pontificates, from the most sacred and most wise rules and statutes of several religious orders and congregations (beyond those very things which prudence and experience suggested), these Constitutions were collected].”57 Through compilation

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and consultation with each other and priests, the Brussels nuns created a largely self-­determined blueprint for devoting their life to God. The Brussels Statutes in turn provided the basis for the constitutions produced at Cambrai and Paris, a fact that has not been previously recognized. Three Brussels nuns assisted with the foundation of the Cambrai house, and it seems likely that they brought their statutes with them for the new convent’s use. In 1629, the English Benedictine Congregation requested that the Cambrai house produce its own set of guidelines. According to the Paris Benedictines, Rudesind Barlow and Leander à Sancto Martino compiled the Cambrai Constitutions.58 As Margaret Truran has observed, Augustine Baker may have written the preface and a few other passages in the Cambrai Constitutions that set forth a contemplative ideal of monastic life.59 However, Barlow and Sancto Martino based the larger part of these constitutions on the Brussels Statutes. Anne (Mary) Neville (professed at Ghent 1634, d. at Pontoise 1689) records that Barlow “gave . . . a most high prayse” to the Brussels Statutes during the period that he stayed in Brussels before leaving with three of its members to found Cambrai.60 Perhaps Barlow even went so far as to recommend their use at Cambrai. In turn, Clementia (Anne) Cary (professed at Cambrai 1649, d. 1671), Bridget More (professed at Cambrai 1630, d. 1692), and Peter Salvin, the confessor at Paris, compiled the Paris Constitutions by borrowing from those used at Cambrai and Val-­de-­Grâce.61 All three sets of statutes thus resulted from an incremental process of composition, compiled over time by nuns and male spiritual advisors who transformed their personal knowledge of Benedictine Gemeinschaft into an idealized model for English cloisters to follow. Nevertheless, similarities and differences across these statutes and constitutions suggest that the distinctive identities of specific houses influenced the way these texts represented Benedictine Gemeinschaft. As previously noted, all three sets of statutes bear a nearly identical title, emphasizing conformity to the Rule. In many respects, these texts agree on the fundamental elements of daily routines in Benedictine convents. The Brussels Statutes and Cambrai Constitutions both employ a similar tripartite organizational structure, devoting the first section to piety, the second to governance, and the third to temporal matters. The Paris Constitutions are much briefer and eschew a tripartite format, but they still follow the same general structure. This common organization foregrounds piety as essential to cloistered life, yet the varying order of chapters hints at slightly different emphases, as shown by the initial seven chapters of each text (table 1). While the Brussels Statutes prioritize the three vows typical of religious life known as the evangelical counsels (chastity, obedience, and poverty), the Cambrai and Paris Constitutions give precedence to enclosure, perhaps because the



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Table 1. Comparison of opening chapters in Benedictine statutes Brussels Statutes

Cambrai Constitutions

Paris Constitutions

Chapter 1

Of Piety

Of Pietie

Of the Divine Office

Chapter 2

Of Povertie

Of the Vow of Inclosure

Of the Distribution of Time

Chapter 3

Of Chastitie

Of Silence

Of the Vowe of Inclosure

Chapter 4

Of Obedience

Of Povertie

Of the Vowe of Poverty

Chapter 5

Of the Inclosure

Of the Vow of Obedience

Of the Vowe of Obedience

Chapter 6

Of Silence

Of Fasts and Common Diet

Of Silence

Chapter 7

Of the Fasts, and the Common Diett

Of There Apparell and Bedding

Of the Common Diet & Fasts

Benedictine vows were not identical to the evangelical counsels. As these differences suggest, each set of regulations developed its own vision of Benedictine Gemeinschaft, reflecting the multiplicity of ways that monasteries of any given order can live out the charism of their founder. Similar localized variations in Gemeinschaft are evident in material appearing in all three sets of statutes from the English Benedictine convents, and these minor deviations reveal the distinctive identities of these institutions. The Brussels Statutes dictate that the community should commemorate a nun’s death by leaving her seat empty in the refectory (dining room): “Neither may any other sitt in that place, but it being left voyde, lett a litle Crosse bee placed on the Table covered with a blacke Cloth, and another blacke Cloath bee made fast to the Wall in the vacant place in Remembrance of the dead Religious Sister, that the rest may bee moved to due Compunction by the memory of death, and bee the more excited to pray with greater fervour for her that is dead, and finally may there by bee stirred upp to lead their lives more carefully and perfectly for the tyme to come.”62 Through this ritual, the stuff of communal life became a basis for preparing for union with God in heaven, as the sight of the empty seat and “blacke Cloth” should cause the nuns to feel “due Compunction,” or contrition, and lead them to work toward salvation by living “more carefully and perfectly.” The Cambrai Constitutions include a very similar clause: “And let that place be void, and a little Crosse be placed on the table, covered with a black cloath; and an other

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black cloath be fastned to the wall in the vacant place, that the rest may be moved to compunction and compassion by this object.”63 Likewise, the Paris Constitutions contain a compressed version of this directive: “lett that Place bee voyde, & a little blacke Crosse bee placed upon the Table, which must under it bee covered with blacke cloath, as also the Wall in the vacant Place to move the Relligious to compassion, & remembrance of the Soule departed.”64 In both of these latter examples, the triple senses of “compassion”—“suffering together with another, participation in suffering”; “emotion, when a person is moved by the suffering or distress of another”; and “sorrow”—suggest that identification with the deceased nun allows members of the community to think about their own heavenly reward.65 While each version relies on a similar emotional logic to enhance the nuns’ piety, only the Brussels Statutes explicitly mention prayers for the dead. The Cambrai and Paris houses focused their spiritual lives on contemplative prayer, which may explain why their constitutions eliminate this reference to rote prayer. All three statutes share the same purpose of ensuring uniform observance of the Benedictine Rule, yet these differences show that their understandings of Benedictine Gemeinschaft varied.

A Material Analysis of Statutes and Communal Formation in Practice The material characteristics of these documents offer valuable insight into how members of these institutions actually used the statutes to fashion a communal Gemeinschaft centered on God. The earliest extant manuscript of the Cambrai Constitutions very likely belonged to one of the convent’s vicars (or confessors) since references to that position have been underlined or otherwise marked throughout. More intriguingly, one reader has added crosses in the margins of the following sections of chapter  1 (“Of Pietie”): Let the Abbesse with the advice of the Vicair, cause such as they shall thinke fit, to retire themselves for some space, and give themselves more seriously to prayer and recollection. During the divine Office and meditation, they must observe Monastical gravitie, reverence, modestie, and decent composition in their external carriage. we ordaine, that the Novices be well instructed so to performe the divine Office; that it be not a meere, vocal, arid, and teadious prayer; but also mental and jaculatorie, singing in their heart with spiritual joy and gust . . .



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we ordaine that before Third [terce], and Vespers they have a quarter of an hower to retire themselves in their cells, and to recollect them by some good exercise.66

These marks show an interest in how the Cambrai Constitutions could facilitate moments of prayer. The reader has noted clauses that stipulate when prayer should occur and how collective prayer should be performed. Whether this reader was a nun or vicar, she or he is clearly reading the constitutions with an eye to fostering a Gemeinschaft that emphasized contemplation and, in turn, might facilitate union with God. A copy of the Brussels Statutes owned by the Dunkirk Benedictines offers an even richer example of how statutes could reinforce a communal orientation toward God by regulating the particulars of daily life. Borrowed in 1720 by Mary Xaveria (Xaveria) Pearce (d.  1767) around the time of her profession, this book contains numerous readers’ marks from one or more nuns. Only one such notation can be roughly dated, a mark resembling a closing angle bracket (>) next to a passage on convent elections: “The Sister of the lady Abbesse may not bee chosen for Prioresse, deane, Assistant, depositary, Cellarier, Thourier, or Portresse.”67 It seems likely that it was the same reader who left a related comment on the volume’s front pastedown: “The Abbess’s Sister may be Chosen. Chantress, Sacristin, Guardrobe & Infirmarian.” Of the five abbesses at Dunkirk, only Mary Teresa Caryll, abbess from 1663 to 1712, had siblings within the house during her abbacy: Justina (Catherine) Caryll (professed 1689) and Eugenia (Elizabeth) Caryll (d. before 1700). These annotations reveal a concern about election protocols while Caryll was abbess, one that was important enough to merit direct commentary on the front pastedown. Since familial ties might introduce factions and so under­mine the collective focus on God, the Brussels Statutes themselves warn against admitting biological sisters without good reason.68 Other marks in this book fall into discernible patterns that reflect the readers’ interest in encouraging monastic Gemeinschaft by eliminating potential distractions that undermined God-­centered community. Two passages relating to external affairs that might hinder the nuns from fulfilling their religious duty are accompanied by a symbol resembling a hash mark (#): a clause prohibiting the nuns from “any talke among themselves . . . of the Jarrs or enmities that one Province or Country hath with another,” and a warning against writing letters to “frends or parents” without permission.69 A Teutonic cross documents similar concerns about contact with laypeople, highlighting a clause that bans speech with “secular people” without a chaperone and places a prohibition on any “accesse of externes [laypeople]” during Lent and Advent.70 Whether made by the same person or different readers, these annotations

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suggest a shared interest in monitoring the house’s contact with the outside world, which might impede the nuns’ spiritual progress by undercutting their shared focus on God. Other marks seem to indicate an interest in maintaining the uniformity of Gemeinschaft advocated by the Rule. A section prohibiting eating and drinking outside of meals is accompanied by a Teutonic cross enclosed in a large curved bracket.71 This rounded bracket recurs in several other moments relating to proper conduct: prohibitions against making noise in walking and closing doors and guidelines on seating order in chapter.72 Whether the marks in this volume were made for the benefit of individuals or the house, they demonstrate how one or more members of a particular convent turned to statutes for guidance on the exact performance of a monastic Gemeinschaft oriented toward God.

“Simple and Pure Exhortations”: Chapter Speeches While the Benedictine Rule and monastic statutes articulate an idealized vision of monastic Gemeinschaft, the actual daily experiences of English Benedictine nuns surface in texts written by the superiors who enforced the Rule and statutes. Monastic officers oversaw every aspect of monastic life, but abbesses (and, at Paris, prioresses) were ultimately responsible for the spiritual and material well-­being of their convents. As the Rule observes, an abbess or prioress served as a representative of Christ himself: “let the Abbot because he representeth the person of Christ be called Domnus [Lord], and Abbot not as assuming it himselfe, but given him for the honour & love of Christ.”73 A recent commentary on this passage from the English Benedictine Congregation explores the finer implications of this symbolic position: “Monastic superiors are themselves under authority (Rule 63.2–3; cf. Lk 7:8), but have power to act and to make decisions (Rule 39.6, arbitrium et potestas). We understand how the Abbot or Abbess holds the place of Christ in the monastery in this light. More precisely, the Rule uses the phrase vices Christi agere. Since the Rule draws a neat distinction between status and service (praeesse and prodesse, Rule  64.8), the old translation of occupying a place is probably less helpful than that of playing a role or doing a job, imitating the Lord who came to serve and not be served.”74 By playing the “role” of Christ, the abbess or prioress both led the house and functioned as an emblem of the intangible divine presence whose place is at the heart of any monastic community. This embodiment of the divine may be understood as “corporalization of the sacred,” a concept advanced by Robert Orsi to describe how believers make “the invisible visible by constituting it as an experience in a body—in one’s own body or in someone else’s body—so that the experiencing body itself becomes the bearer of presence for oneself and for others.”75 In addition to



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acting as “bearer[s] of presence,” abbesses and prioresses served the greater needs of their community by helping to ensure that its members cultivated a shared spiritual life. As the following discussion of chapter speeches will demonstrate, superiors used writing to help orient the community around God. By exhorting the entire convent to adhere more closely to the ideals prescribed by the Rule and statutes, abbesses and prioresses sought to perfect the Gemeinschaft of their institutions and to aid their spiritual children in attaining union with the divine.

A Formal Analysis of Chapter Speeches Unique to the English convents in exile, the chapter speech constitutes a new addition to the canon of early modern Englishwomen’s writing. For this reason, it is necessary to begin here with an explanation of the place of the chapter speech within cloistered life. Every Friday morning after Mass, each of the English Benedictine convents met in chapter, an assemblage of the entire house, in order to discuss matters of governance. These gatherings took their name from the fact that they began with the reading of a chapter from the Benedictine Rule. Chapter meetings followed the same general structure, which is described in detail in the Paris Constitutions: “The manner of the Chapter is to bee as followes: The Lectrice having asked the Benediction (after the Martyrologe & Pretiosa) is to read the Chapter, or part of the Rule, which the Superiour who keepes Chapter shall have appointed her. And on that, or some other thing, the Superiour may make some little plaine discourse, without straining for elloquence, curious conceipts, or, high learning, but with a simple & pure Exhortation as God shall inable her, lett her exhort her Relligious to the prosecution of their calling, & then aske the Claymers what they have marked amisse in any.”76 Following traditional monastic custom, the chapter meeting began with material otherwise included in the office of prime: the martyrology, the versicle “Pretiosa in conspectu Domini,” and the response “Mors Sanctorum eius” (Psalm  115:6). After the community listened to a portion of the Rule chosen by the abbess (or, at Paris, the prioress), this same monastic superior then delivered a speech on that chapter. Next the community handled disciplinary matters, whether through self-­confessed faults (as in the Brussels Statutes) or through accusations made by “claimers,” nuns specifically tasked with identifying monastic lapses (as at Cambrai and Paris). Business matters might also be discussed as appropriate. The convents’ statutes emphasize that these meetings were intended to preserve both monastic discipline and piety. As the Brussels Statutes note, “The Chapters were instituted and appoynted for the exercise of humilitie, Conservation of Monasticall disciplyne, and for the advancement of the Common good of the Convent.”77 Using more poetic language to

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elaborate on this section of the Brussels Statutes, the Cambrai Constitutions present the chapter meeting as a means of fostering vigilance within the monastery: “Chapters and visits are as it weare the two eyes of a monastarie, and two chiefe meanes to concerve in it Regular observance, or to restore it if it be lost or decaied, and are instituted for the exercise of humillitie, correction of faults, and conservation of monasticall disciplin.”78 In their attention to individual and shared piety, chapter meetings were essential to fashioning a pious Gemeinschaft that reinforced monastic ideals. More than one hundred fifty chapter speeches survive from the English Benedictine convents (table  2), primarily due to the preservation of the speeches of Prioress Justina (Catherine) Gascoigne (professed at Cambrai 1640, d. 1690) of the Paris house. Their commonalities reveal that this genre was fundamentally administrative and functional in nature. One of the most notable characteristics of the chapter speech is its brevity. The Cambrai Constitutions note that these exhortations should only last “the space of a quarter of an hower,”79 and chapter speeches are usually only a few manuscript pages long. In terms of style, chapter speeches are typically concise and plainspoken. It is worthwhile to return to the aforementioned description of chapter speeches in the Paris Constitutions as “plaine discourse,” lacking “elloquence, curious conceipts, or, high learning.” Such prescriptions draw a distinction between chapter speeches and sermons, privileging “a simple & pure Exhortation” meant to inspire the community to fulfill its shared vocation. This ideal of “plaine” speech also eschews the pleasures to be found in the literary aesthetics of the secular world, recommending instead a linguistic restraint that better suits the ascetism of the convent.80 Finally, chapter speeches were tailored to

Table 2. Extant chapter speeches Convent

Superior

Chapter speeches

Brussels

Mary Percy (abbess 1616–42)

1

Cambrai

Catherine Gascoigne (abbess 1629–41, 1645–73) 1

Ghent

Paris

Christina Brent (abbess 1641–45, 1677–81)

5

Cecilia Tyldesley (abbess 1730–36)

1

Magdalen Lucy (abbess 1736–61)

8

Mary Baptist Phillips (abbess 1761–81)

9

Mary Magdalen Arden (abbess 1781–97) Anonymous (death chapter for Sister Scholastica)

3 1

Justina Gascoigne (prioress 1665–90)

160, plus 3 fragments



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the needs of a specific community. Within these constraints, abbesses and prioresses covered a wide range of topics, including observance of the Rule, the spiritual formation of novices and postulants, preparation for liturgical seasons (especially Advent and Lent), and attainment of key Benedictine values, such as humility. At Ghent (and probably at Brussels, Dunkirk, and Pontoise), the death chapter was a special subgenre.81 Given thirty days after a nun’s decease, these chapter speeches provided an opportunity for reflection on an individual’s attainment of monastic virtues. Addressing the spiritual necessities of individual houses at particular moments in time, chapter speeches offer snapshots of Benedictine Gemeinschaft (both experiential and idealized) and thus provide an excellent basis for examining how the leaders of English Benedictine convents sought to establish a God-­centered community.

A Philosophical Analysis of Chapter Speeches and Communal Disruption Chapter speeches offer fascinating glimpses of the ways that monastic superiors interpreted and implemented the prescriptions for Gemeinschaft found in the Benedictine Rule and its supplementary regulations (the Brussels Statutes, Cambrai Constitutions, and Paris Constitutions). As this chapter has already shown, these documents envisioned the Benedictine community as ideally centered on God, much as in the Buberian paradigm. In their chapter speeches, superiors conveyed this understanding of cloistered life by encouraging the community to focus its attention on God. Justina Gascoigne, for example, exhorts her convent to seek God alone: “Let Every one therfore assidiously tend toward God, the best they can, by internall Prayer & a continuall desire of hart, By Exteriour works & Obedience, By Patience and a quiet Silent acceptance of all kind of sufferance whatsoever, as from the Divine Providence, constantly persevering in our best Endeavours. Which doing, our desires, our Wills and Affections will meete in God our Center, and be united in him soe, as thô perhaps we shou’d but seldome speak or convers with one an other, yet in Him, whom we labour to Love & serve, we shall bee one Hart and Desire.”82 As in a Buberian community, each nun must “tend toward God” on a personal basis, putting her relationship with the divine above all others. Like points on a circle’s circumference, these individuals then “meete in God [their] Center, and [are] united in him,” cohering around a shared point of reference. This common orientation toward God allows the community to achieve unity “in him” even though they may “seldome speak” with each other. Since this divine presence at the heart of monastic community remains intangible, superiors emphasized their own role as God’s vicegerent. In a chapter speech from the 1740s on humility, Abbess Magdalen (Mary) Lucy (professed 1705, d. 1761) of Ghent states that “in cases where

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Obedience is Concern’d they [superiors] aught to be rever’d as christ himself without this practice non can ever arrive to any eminent degree in this great virtue [humility].”83 As the individuals responsible for enforcing “obedience” to the monastic regulations that instilled Gemeinschaft, monastic superiors sought to spur a communal orientation toward God, whom they represented through their actions and words. Chapter speeches helped abbesses and prioresses inculcate a charism specific to both their order and their particular house by increasing reverence for the Rule and local regulations. Superiors present these monastic guidelines as ideal tools for achieving spiritual perfection on both an individual and a communal basis. Gascoigne, for example, identifies administrative texts as essential aids toward achieving union with God: “for this end we come into Religion, & forsake all the alluring pleasures of this world, that we may the better, & the more freely seek after God in our souls, & attain to a Divine union with him. Making use of all the means & helps which God of his infinit mercy has provided for us; as our holy Rule, Constitutions, orders, & commands of Superiours.”84 By using the “holy Rule” and “Constitutions” as a framework for seeking God “in [their] souls,” nuns can theoretically pursue a relationship with the divine “more freely” than in the secular world. Their uniform observance of these guidelines should in turn create a sense of unity within the community that implicitly derives from Gemeinschaft. Gascoigne notes in a different speech that such directives produce monastic regularity: “there is many Laws, degrees & Constitutions in all Orders; for to caus Religious disciplin to be observ’d; and to keep good order in Communitys.”85 Chapter speeches are by nature an occasional genre, taking their very name from their grounding in chapters of the Benedictine Rule. Hence it is unsurprising that superiors place special emphasis on the spiritual benefits of observing the Rule. In a chapter speech on Benedict’s feast day (March 21), Abbess Mary Baptist (Elizabeth) Phillips (professed 1731, d. 1781) of Ghent exhorts the community to imitate Benedict: “let our lives be a faithfull Coppy of his virtues, they are very Clea[r]ly expresst in the Rules he has left us for our Direction that if our observance is exact our lives will be perfect.”86 Serving as a blueprint of Benedictine Gemeinschaft for the nuns to “Coppy,” the Rule illustrates how monastic perfection can be obtained. Superiors thus show a keen awareness of how administrative texts could provide a basis for transforming everyday experiences into a means of furthering piety. In order to foster a Gemeinschaft that supported such spiritual progress, abbesses and prioresses addressed three essential aspects of daily life in the convent: silence, good zeal, and the Divine Office. As this chapter has already shown, both the Rule and statutes dictated that silence must be observed in specific locations and times. In their comments on these stipulations,



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superiors identify silence as a necessary precondition for achieving and maintaining the twin pillars of convent life: individual contemplation and communal discipline. As Lucy comments, silence is the foundation of more advanced virtues: “tis the keeper & guardian of all other virtues it helps to recollection of heart & attention in prayer gives birth to good thoughts & preserves us from innumerable Imperfections.”87 Both “recollection of heart & attention to prayer” are requisite for attaining spiritual union with God and fulfilling the purpose of Benedictine Gemeinschaft. Gascoigne states even more explicitly that silence aids contemplation: “Let us carefully keep it, in times ordain’d for it, by our orders & Constitutions. And in just occasions, avoid unnecessarys & impertinences; and hasten to retyrment, where true Light and knowledg from God is to be had.”88 Presenting noise and speech as hindrances to the “true Light” experienced in silent conversation with God, Gascoigne suggests that real piety is found in the “retyrment” that allows each nun to approach God. The routine silences of monastic Gemeinschaft thus play a key role in keeping God at the center of cloistered experience. Yet in practice, nuns faced a daily struggle in maintaining silence, as shown by the many admonitions on this subject in extant chapter speeches. Making a distinction between exterior and interior observation of silence, Lucy exhorts the community to avoid noisy behavior, both verbal and otherwise, during the times of silence: “the perfection of this Rule as to the exteriour Consists in Carefully avoiding an unnecessary word in time or place deputed to Sillence when permistion or necesity requires speech, to be brief & only express what Buisines Charity or Civility obliges, not to speak or laugh lowd & to shutt Doors and windows with out Noise, the interiour is the sillence of the heart . . . to all worldly Concerns & Constant tendancy to God.”89 These two forms of observance are implicitly linked since exterior breaches, such as “lowd” laughter or slamming of doors, could serve as impediments to “sillence of the heart” and “tendancy to God,” both for those making the noise and for those hearing it. Similarly, Abbess Christina Brent (professed 1629, d. 1681) of Cambrai often mentions lapses of silence in her chapter speeches. In addition to rebuking “lowd & clamorous speakings in verie silent times,” Brent lists a host of other infractions: “some that goe into by Corners spending sometime in unnecessarie talkes, perhaps to the prejudice not only of their owne soules but of others concerned in such discourses . . . others speake at Cell doores & the ends of the Dorters & up & downe in other places to no purpose but only to distract one another, nay the verie Quier is not free from this fallt, allso ta[l]king in the entrie at the Quire doore till the office is begun.”90 As this catalog suggests, Brent is especially concerned about the way that infractions of silence can “distract” the community and prevent recollection in places and times devoted to silence.

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Her exhortation to silence after communion is particularly revealing in this respect: “A religious silence particularlie in the morning especially after communion is so recommendable that you must not wonder I so often call upon you for it, & I am sorrie to see we are so negligent in so essentiall a poynt.”91 Having physically consumed God in the form of the Eucharist, the nuns should practice recollection of heart by silently communing with the divine entity then physically present in their bodies. In pointing out these breaches of silence, superiors sought to prevent behavior that was at odds with an idealized vision of Benedictine Gemeinschaft and that might displace God from the center of monastic life. This emphasis on silence relates to another important theme in extant chapter speeches: the Benedictine Rule’s mandate that religious should cultivate good zeal toward one another. Such charitable behavior could ideally create a Gemeinschaft that promoted union within the convent, an outcome Brent greatly desired: “I recommend & wish heartelie to see a great union of hearts among us, that we might be but one soule & one heart as the faithfull christians were in the primitive church.”92 In order to achieve this communion, superiors underscored the need for seeing the divine in each other, as in the Buberian model. In a Pentecost speech from 1762, Phillips elaborates at length on the rationale behind the Benedictine idea of good zeal: first he has commanded us to shut our eyes to the defects of our Neighbour, by commanding us to love him for God, secondly he has orderd us to correct our own faults that wee may render our selves more aimable to our Neighbour and be a means by our good example to correct their faults If wee take notice wee shall find in the Scripture that the Love of God and our Neighbour is allways joynd togeather which gives us to unde[r]stand that allways finding God in him wee ought to look upon these 2 precepts as having the same object hence we may conclud that the highest point of perfection consists in the love of our Neighbour: secondly that our love to him is only elevated to this point of perfection, in as much as it has refference to God the love of our Neighbour is the pitch of perfection: for . . . perfection consists in the love of God, and the love of God is not perfect unless it be extended to our Neighbour.93

This passage offers a remarkable explanation of how a charitable Gemeinschaft can support and enhance monastic piety. Since God may be accessed through “our Neighbour,” the love of God and of one’s neighbor are “allways joynd togeather.” Indeed, love of our neighbor is “the pitch of perfection” when it is grounded in the love of God. Gascoigne expresses this philosophy in a more concise manner: “If we Love god as we ought, we shall Love



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our Naibour in him & for him with a true & sincere charity .  .  . for those two Loves of god & our neibour can not be seperated.”94 By practicing Benedictine good zeal, individual nuns can use every communal interaction to deepen their love for God and maintain their orientation toward the divine. Superiors consequently devoted considerable time in their chapter speeches to discouraging behavior that thwarted good zeal, most especially negative words. In a 1747 chapter on St. Benedict’s feast day, Lucy reiterates the Rule’s prohibition of “all rash & imprudent speaches especially in point of Murmuration.”95 While “rash & imprudent speaches” could suggest that Lucy was concerned about anger, “Murmuration” indicates that complaints and rumors also caused problems at Ghent. Phillips, one of her successors, addresses similar issues in a Lenten speech from 1764, encouraging the convent not to make “our Neighbours defects the Commone subject of our discourse and never to repeat to any one any thing that has been sayd against for this is sowing discord, and I fear that somet[i]mes Religious Persons may be in danger of Comitting a mortall Sin by such repetitions.”96 Speaking about other nuns’ “defects” impeded good zeal, undermined communal unity, and threatened the offenders’ own souls through potential “mortall Sin.” The Ghent house was not alone in facing these issues. Brent rebukes similar breaches of communal charity at Cambrai, revealing how difficult it was to realize Benedictine Gemeinschaft in practice: “we often see that from a verie few words carelesly spoken or suddainly answered great disgusts doe arise to the disturbance of sisterly peace & a charitable correspondance.”97 The adverbs “carelesly” and “suddainly” suggest that even an inadvertent lapse in good zeal could have serious consequences. Brent also seeks to correct more intentional violations: “There is a great fallt in some who speake of others fallts or what they dislike in others in a taunting jeering way & manner to their confusion.”98 Such uncharitable conduct posed a serious problem for monastic piety, as the mocker indulged in vice by “taunting” and “jeering” and her target experienced “confusion” that could prevent proper recollection. By “sowing discord” and disturbing “sisterly peace,” these infractions hindered the community from fulfilling the Benedictine ideal of loving one’s neighbor for and in God. The Divine Office is at the heart of Benedictine Gemeinschaft even today, and its due observance features prominently in extant chapter speeches from Cambrai and Paris. Gascoigne states that God is present in the church and that appropriate reverence must thus be displayed in both external and internal behavior: “When we are about the performing of that Work which doth more immediately tend to his honour & service, when we do assist at the divine office & service of the church, doth He regard our comportment, our interiour & Exteriour composition & behaviour.”99 Because the Divine Office provides an opportunity to encounter God multiple times throughout

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the day, it can also help the community maintain its collective orientation toward the divine. Just as the nuns’ tongues sing and speak together in God’s praise, so theoretically their souls are united in a shared love of God. Gascoigne insightfully comments that the founders of religious orders instituted the Divine Office “to rais & Enflame their own harts towards the Divine Love; and dayly therby, to Encreas their affection & desire of their soules, to be united, & conform to his sacred will.”100 Disturbances during Divine Office thus prevented both individuals and entire communities from working toward spiritual perfection, thereby undermining Benedictine Gemeinschaft itself. In a Lenten speech, Brent offers a revealingly detailed description of the Cambrai nuns’ faults in observing the Divine Office: “there is a great fallt in not comming to the devine office in due time, sometimes a whole psalme is past before everie one is come in, & this not for necessitie but through idlenesse which makes [it so that] the quire cannot be put in order, some also doe not their duties there as they should doe, some laugh & whisper one to another, even the officers of the Quire for want of preparing their bookes & looking before hand what office was to be said, many are negligent in doeing their ceremonies & not answering at high masses, which makes the answers so poor that it is taken notice of in the church, this holy time I hope will moove everie one to amend what is amisse especially in the grand dutie of the Quire, which our holy father most perticularly calls the worke of god.”101 This exhaustive list conveys the seriousness that must be cultivated during the Divine Office, designated by Benedict as “the worke of God.” Not only should the nuns arrive on time and perform the office with due gravity, but they must also take care to prepare by readying their books and reviewing the office beforehand. Brent notes that, when performed properly, the Divine Office allows for individual conversation with God: “we ought to use our best diligence to performe the dutie of our service therin giving all our attention to the singing & answering & in the pauses to intertaine ourselves interiourly with god as well as we can.”102 Such disturbances would impede this interior entertainment with God on a communal basis since lapses in the Divine Office would necessarily distract both those who committed and those who observed them. As these examples have shown, chapter speeches gave superiors a weekly opportunity to intervene in the Gemeinschaft of their houses, encouraging the nuns to work toward the ideal, God-­centered communal life proposed by the Rule and other guidelines.

A Bibliographical Analysis of Chapter Speeches and Communal Formation In their textual aspects, chapter speeches provide written traces of how superiors fostered a Benedictine charism through daily routines that placed God



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at the center of communal life. Most of the Ghent chapter speeches are extant as holograph bifolia (a leaf of paper folded in two), which could be easily carried in a pocket and read aloud in chapter.103 While the bifolium was an ideal format for composing and delivering chapter speeches, convents also preserved the chapter speeches of deceased superiors in more substantial manuscript volumes. Just two years after Christina Brent’s death in 1681, Barbara Constable (professed 1640, d. 1684) copied her chapter speeches, along with her other extant writings, into a 908-­page compendium of major spiritual texts produced for the Cambrai nuns. Significantly, this text only contains two additional works by female authors: an anonymous letter from a Cambrai nun to Leander (Richard) Thompson, and Andrew Whitfield’s translation of excerpts from the writings of Catherine de Jésus (1589–1623), a French Carmelite.104 The manuscript is missing its first 196 pages, but its surviving contents are primarily letters, sermons, and translations by Benedictine monks. The authors constitute a veritable who’s who of the English Benedictine Congregation, including three of its presidents: Rudesind Barlow (1621–29), Jocelin (Felix) Elmer (1641–45), and Benedict (Gregory) Stapleton (1669). The Cambrai house clearly valued Brent’s guidance, or her work would not have been incorporated into a text meant to be an authoritative spiritual resource for the Cambrai community. Demonstrating a similar interest in preserving the wisdom of a much-­respected superior, a Paris nun transcribed Justina Gascoigne’s chapter speeches into two sizeable volumes dated 1710, twenty years after her death. The second of these volumes, MS 71B, contains a second set of quires that are separately numbered with “N” (e.g., 1N). This “N” denotes their content, as Gascoigne addressed these speeches to novices and postulants. It thus seems that the scribe originally envisaged three discrete volumes, with specific readerships (two books for professed nuns, one for the novitiate). By preserving these otherwise ephemeral texts, the Cambrai and Paris houses transformed responses to particular communal issues into lasting witnesses of their convents’ spiritual identity. Indeed, Gascoigne’s speeches bear ink and pencil marks suggesting that they were read into the twentieth century, possibly even read aloud in chapter. Intertextuality within this corpus further demonstrates how the circulation of chapter speeches contributed toward the slow accumulation of a monastic Gemeinschaft oriented toward God. An individual abbess might repeat the same speech in different years as a means of addressing subjects with perennial relevance for her community. Most of the Ghent chapter speeches bear multiple dates, indicating the years when they were delivered. Gascoigne’s chapter speeches, which probably span her twenty-­five-­year career as prioress, offer additional evidence of how one particular superior reused her own writing. In an exhortation on the Divine Office from the first

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volume of her chapter speeches, Gascoigne comments on the purpose of these communal prayers: For our Rule, & holy Church, hath laid an obligation upon us: and this obligation, (if we performe it as we should,) will be a great help, & advancement to our spirit in the way of vertue; & the holy Love of God. And for this End it was instituted & ordain’d by holy Church; & the Founders of Religious orders, that the Religious Communitys should recite & say the Divine office publickly not only for the Edification of others, & to move them to praise, & honour God the more, (as questionless it doth much,) but allso for the good of their owne soules, to rais & Enflame their own harts towards the Divine Love; and dayly therby, to Encreas their affection & desire of their soules, to be united & conform to his sacred will. And doubtless those soules that Endeavour to dispose them selves in the best manner they can, to make right use of their vocall prayers they are oblidged to, will in time (with continuance) find the good Effects of it.105

As previously noted, this passage emphasizes the way that the Divine Office can help nuns direct their attention to God by increasing their “desire . . . to be united & conform to his sacred will.” A modified version of these sentiments occurs in another address on the topic of the Divine Office, which appears in the second volume of her chapter speeches: And for vocall prayer, to wit, the divine office, our holy Rule, our Order & Constitutions hath lay’d an obligation on us. And this obligation, if we perform it as we should; it will be a great help & advancement, to our Spirit in the Way of vertue. And for this End, it was instituted & ordain’d by ho[ly] Church, and the Founders of Religious Orders, that the Communitys of Religious should sing or resite the divine Office in publick dayly, not only for the Edification of others and the moving them to praise & honour God the more; (as doubtless it doth much help to stirr up their harts & Encreas their devotion,) but allso, for the good of their own souls, to rais up & inflame their own harts towards the divine Love, and to increas the affection & desire of their souls to be united and conform to his sacred Will. And doubtless those souls that dispose them selves in the best manner they can to perform well the Divine Office, will in time find the happy Effects of it; and that therin Lieth hidden Manna, the sweetnes wherof, none doth know, but those that Experience it.106

It seems likely that this second iteration is a revision of the first, as the minor changes in MS 71B make Gascoigne’s phrasing more precise and vivid.



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By substituting “Our Order & Constitutions” for “holy Church,” Gascoigne foregrounds the role of the Divine Office in Benedictinism and the community’s life. She also adds fresh imagery with the concluding reference to “the hidden Manna,” or spiritual nourishment, acquired only by those who perform the Divine Office properly. Since due performance of the Divine Office results in this divine and secret “sweetnes,” Gascoigne encourages the community to focus on unifying their soul with the divine as they experience this foundational element of Benedictine Gemeinschaft. Chapter speeches from Ghent provide a complementary case study of how consecutive superiors could collectively shape a convent’s spiritual focus by seeking to alter its Gemeinschaft. Magdalen Lucy, Mary Baptist Phillips, and Mary Magdalen (Magdalen) Arden (d. 1797)—the last three abbesses during the community’s exile—all delivered chapter speeches to celebrate St. Benedict’s feast day, using this occasion to reaffirm Benedictine ideals that could foster a shared orientation toward God. Lucy delivered a speech on this topic in 1747, repeating it in 1755, 1757, and 1761.107 On one of these occasions, she lightly revised the speech’s opening line to emphasize her main point: “The solemnity which assembles us this Day aught not only to be a subject of Joy, but instruction to the eminent degree of Glory, with which Allmighty God Crown’d on this festival the merits of our great Patriark st Benedict.”108 In a light brown ink, Lucy has added “much more of” and crossed out “to.” The change is illuminating as it reveals a desire to underscore the edification to be gained from Benedict’s feast day. Later in the speech, for example, Lucy praises the Rule as a guide to emulating Benedict’s holiness: “if these be our constant study & faithfull practise our souls will be adorn’d with the same virtues that made him so pleasing in the Eyes of God.” Lucy’s twofold theme for this day, joy and instruction, subsequently informs a speech that Phillips delivered in 1765 and 1777: “The yearly Celebrateing the Feast of our Great and Glorious Father St Benedict, is not only a Subject of joy; but to us who have the Honour to be his Children a great lesson of instruction.”109 Like her predecessor, Phillips presents observance of the Rule as a means of attaining Benedict’s virtues: “we have his Holy rule for our Direction, and if our observance is exact, we then shall not want any of those virtues with which his life was ardorned . . . wee must endeavour to imitate his life if we hope to pertake of his Glory.” By highlighting the exemplary nature of Benedict’s life and the Gemeinschaft found in his Rule, Lucy and Phillips represent Benedictine charism as essential to the ultimate aim of their listeners: union with God, whether in heaven or on earth. In a 1763 speech on the same topic, Phillips made a small but crucial change to Lucy’s original formulation of joy and instruction, crafting a speech that would inspire her successor to advance her own view of Benedictine

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Gemeinschaft. This speech begins with a pronouncement modeled on Lucy’s 1747 address: “The Feast wee are so near Solemnizeing ought not only to be a subject of joy but of imitation.” Imitation was, of course, at the heart of Lucy’s chapter speech since learning about Benedict’s virtues would ideally result in mimicry of them. By foregrounding imitation, Phillips more directly exhorts the convent to embrace its Benedictine identity through monastic routines based on the Rule: “he himself was the first of each Religious Duty, Recolected in his retirement exact in the observance of Silance Charitable in his Discours humble in his behavior he has taught us to practiss each virtue and shewd us how to avoid every vice.” As we have seen, administrative writings from the Benedictine convents uniformly note that the virtues of recollection, silence, and charity are essential for maintaining a Gemeinschaft that encouraged individual and communal focus on God. Phillips concludes with a rousing exhortation to follow the Rule in order to achieve the ultimate goal of monastic life, union with God: “was the question to be put to us why wee left the Wo[r]ld and enterd Religion, wee should all answer for the greater Security of our Eternall Salvation, and if wee make the faithfull Complyance of our Rule the practiss of our life and actions as much as human fraility will permit in this mortall life wee may then assure our selves wee are in a secure way to happyness and every step wee make will purchas us an Eternal Crown of Glory.” In 1782, Arden delivered nearly this same chapter speech, copying it out with only slight changes until she reached the conclusion: was the question put to us whi we left the World & Enterd Religion, we should all answer for the greater security of our Eternal Salvation, if we are exact in each rule as far as human frailty will permit, we may than assure our selves we are in a secure way to Happyness & every Step we make will purchase an eternal Crown of Glory.110

Arden’s revision, represented here in angle brackets, more forcefully urges the community to observe the Rule faithfully by asking the nuns to conduct “a serious examination” of their obedience to its precepts. As motivation for



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this self-­scrutiny, she reminds her audience of their “sacred vows” to God, whose centrality in convent life is symbolized by the “Alter.” These reworkings of Lucy’s chapter speech indicate that successive superiors built on the foundations laid by their predecessors in the never-­ending effort to achieve the idealized Gemeinschaft of Benedictine regulations and their delineation of a communal spirituality that emphasized God’s position at the center of monastic life.

Conclusions In 1676, Abbess Anne Neville of the Pontoise Benedictines wrote a short preface to a book of advice for monastic officeholders that she had composed five years earlier, explaining why she had written the book and how she used it: “I writt this litle booke cheefely for a rule and dirrection to my selfe and to give an evidence to thos who under God I depend uppon, at what I aym, and by what ways I endeavour to Govern this Community according to my obligation to Almighty God and holy Religion and though I fall short in the discharge of this duty, not withstanding, as the mason squars his worke by the measure of his Rule; so by reading and considering some times how I proceede and carry my selfe in thes perticulers, I am the better able to judge, how neare I come to thes derrections and how farr of[f] I am from the perfection and du practis of what I heere set down.”111 The simile of the mason nicely conveys the precision that Neville seeks to achieve in observing the ideals of “holy Religion.” By recording and rereading her own template for monastic governance, Neville both measures how far she falls short of its “perfection” and repeatedly mortifies herself so that she can better honor “Almighty God and holy Religion.” This evocation of the mason’s “Rule” is also a pun since Neville has distilled these precepts from the Benedictine Rule and its supplement, the Brussels Statutes. Much as Benedict urges the members of his order to prefer nothing to Christ, so Neville states later in the same preface that the “higher aymes” of monastic life entail “resting only in God aloan, and nether seeking or delighting in any thing out of him: this I confess is what I wish & desire, and what I hope I both teach others & endeavour to labour for my selfe.” In her constant exertions to attain these “aymes” and to help others achieve them as well, Neville exemplifies the iterative nature of convent life. As nuns and their superiors attempt to implement Benedict’s vision of monasticism, they must ceaselessly measure their lives by the Rule and amend their conduct according to its dictates. Although these ideals may never be fully realized, it is the ongoing effort to achieve them through Gemeinschaft that aids the Benedictine nun in reaching the aim of her monastic vocation, divine union.

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As this chapter has shown, administrative texts provide an important new genre of women’s writing, documenting how nuns worked together and separately to produce written guidelines for cultivating a Gemeinschaft that was particular to the monastery. Authored, read, and heard by generations of women religious over the course of two centuries, statutes and chapter speeches enabled a long-­standing process of communal formation in which a loose collection of individuals became a tightly knit spiritual community through observance of common regulations. At the same time, chapter speeches offer concrete evidence of the strategies that abbesses and prioresses used in governing the cloister on a day-­to-­day basis. The patriarchal framework of most ecclesiastical institutions prevented the majority of secular women from exercising such official forms of authority within their own religious communities. However, married women were often responsible for overseeing household devotion and their children’s early religious education, and they produced catechisms, mother’s legacies, prayers, and other writings in fulfillment of these duties. Comparison of these texts with nuns’ administrative works should shed fresh light on the ways that women writers sought to advance communal formation by instilling various forms of Gemeinschaft through daily routines, whether in the cloister or in the home. In its analysis of how administrative writings could facilitate the God-­ centered communities envisioned by the Benedictine Rule, this chapter also offers a basis for considering the ramifications of Buberian philosophy. How can the I-­You relationship become “embodied in the whole stuff of life,” as Buber puts it?112 Since the Buberian encounter with God is fleeting by nature, what measures are necessary to facilitate and maintain that embodiment over the long term? As Neville’s metaphor of the mason’s rule indicates, the construction of a God-­centered community is a difficult, unending task because it depends upon the constant reinforcement of a Gemeinschaft focused on the divine. The Rule alone was not enough to ensure the development of this Gemeinschaft, even though it outlines the basis of Benedictine life. As a result, nuns produced a series of paratextual documents—including advice books, ceremonials, statutes, and chapter speeches—that offered further instruction on how to achieve the Rule’s ideals. These works aim to establish Benedictine communion by countering the emotional and sensory appeals of the physical world (or the It-­world, in Buberian terminology). In their everyday life, Benedictine nuns sought to imbue materiality itself with the divine, emphasizing the spiritual function of objects and attempting to see Christ in other nuns. As tangible objects that encouraged this endeavor, administrative texts played a key role in aiding the nuns’ unending efforts to view the material world in terms of the ineffable center that informed monastic existence. These written touchstones also reveal that the contemplative



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encounter with God demands considerable exertion beforehand. Transitory as these moments were, they required that both the individual nun and the entire community practiced Benedictine piety as actively as possible. Mystic texts conceal this labor by focusing on the moment of the soul’s union with the divine. In its attention to the nuts and bolts of monastic life, administrative writing offers valuable evidence of the careful preparation, both individual and communal, that allows the soul to transcend the It-­world and briefly meet the divine You. One of the most vital forms of such spiritual labor was the compiling, penning, and transcribing of administrative texts themselves. By reading Benedictine statutes and chapter speeches through a philosophical lens, we can therefore understand just how essential writing is to the inculcation and preservation of God-­centered community within the monastery.

Two

Religious Communion Spiritual Texts and Liturgical Rites

U

nknown today beyond the walls of Stanbrook Abbey in England, two manuscript volumes of meditations by Prioress Mary Clare Joseph of Jesus Bond of the Paris Benedictines offer a fascinating glimpse into cloistered modes of spiritual writing (MSS  65 and  66). Largely undated, these meditations begin just before Bond’s profession, as detailed at the start of MS 66, and continue through at least 1779, the date noted at the end of MS 65. Each manuscript is made up of holograph “loose papers”: quires of various sizes inscribed with a constantly shifting array of inks and quills, and marked by evidence of hasty composition, such as ink blots. Members of the community presumably found these texts in Bond’s cell after her death and had them bound together for inclusion in the house’s library. To all intents and purposes, these works are deeply personal, composed for the writer’s idiosyncratic purposes and with no sense of any other audience than God. In some moments, Bond writes in order to combat aridity, the desolation and spiritual dryness that arose when God seemed to withdraw his presence: “To Adress you thus my Lord is all that I can do to beguile this teidiousness your pleased to lett me feel.”1 At other times, Bond seeks to prepare herself for the “sweet & tremendious mistery” of communion, aiming to make her soul “a pleasing habitation for the[e].”2 Above all, the meditations chronicle Bond’s long battle to sacrifice herself to the Lord’s will, which she figures through the trope of victimhood: “What I so much desire—and againe Desire—[is] to be purefied cleansd & sanctified till I become a pleasing Victim to thy Imaculat Love.”3 Indeed, she even signs one meditation as “Sister Mary Joseph Clare Victim of Jesus.”4 On the whole, Bond’s manuscripts offer an intimate portrait of one nun’s personal struggle to achieve a closer spiritual union with God. Yet despite the undeniable privacy of these meditations, Bond’s writings are also predicated upon the collective life of the monastery, especially her participation in shared liturgical rites. Most obviously, Bond notes the occurrence of particular holy days (the feast of the Conception of Mary, the



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feast of St. Paul) and liturgical seasons (Advent).5 The Eucharist itself plays a central role within her manuscripts, offering a unique opportunity for achieving mystic union with God as she physically consumes the transubstantiated body and blood of Christ: “Come then my Lord lett this blessed union and communion of thy adorable body & blood be the happy moment in which I may be yours inseperable & you mine as my soul wishes.”6 Eucharistic language also suffuses her representation of victimhood, as Bond envisions herself taking part in a metaphorical rite of communion upon the altar of her heart: “That same beloved son whom you [God] gave for sinners I a sinner & nothing else offer up to you receive my grateful Oblation the all that can be offerd worthy of you this Eternal Preist & sacrifice This Victim of Love I offer upon the Alter of my hart which I beg him to purefie with his adorable blood & ador[n] with his holy presence & devine Virtues that for his sake & your honour my nothingness may be transformd into him and Make one only Sacrifice Which In union with him may be gratefuly receivd to your glory.”7 Just as the priest tenders an oblation to the Lord during Mass (the bread and wine that will be consecrated at the altar), so too does Bond take on a clerical role and present God with Christ himself as her offering. The desired result of this ritualistic action is “union” with Christ, as Bond joins him upon the altar of her heart to become “one only Sacrifice” made up of two indistinguishable “Victim[s] of Love.” Public rites such as Mass thus provided the foundation for Bond’s intensely personal meditations, supplying both material for contemplation and models for connecting with the divine. The subtle interaction between the personal nature of Bond’s meditations and their grounding in collective liturgical acts reveals a paradox at the heart of cloistered existence: that the individual’s most private experiences of God are always mediated in some way by the public aspects of monastic life. Focusing on the spiritual writings of English Benedictine nuns, this chapter explores that conundrum by using John Macmurray’s theory of communion to investigate how the rituals of the Divine Office and Mass provided a shared experiential framework that could facilitate each participant’s union with God. The following consideration of miscellanies and meditations demonstrates that these particular genres may have been among the most personal forms of writing produced within a convent setting, but the resulting texts themselves were often strongly informed by the communal rituals that structured the monastic day. As records of the ways that nuns understood, prepared for, and experienced religious ceremonies, spiritual writings provide crucial insight into how members of the English Benedictine convents used communal life to fulfill their vocation of growing closer to the divine. At the same time, this chapter offers a new method for approaching early modern women’s devotional texts. As the groundbreaking edited collection

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Silent But for the Word (1985) long ago established, pious forms of textual production offered early modern women a culturally approved means of entering into and shaping public discourse about religion.8 Since then, scholars have traced the political agency that Catholic and Protestant women exercised in composing religious texts of all kinds, including spiritual autobiographies, devotional poetry, psalms, prayers, translations, and accounts of heresy trials.9 Indeed, the writings of the Cambrai Benedictines have already generated a great deal of criticism in this vein. Viewing the house’s controversial mysticism primarily through the lens of gender politics, scholars have explored how Barbara Constable and Gertrude More defended their spiritual autonomy in proto-­feminist texts that challenged the authority of male confessors.10 While these analyses have offered valuable insight into female agency during the early modern era, the scholarly focus on religious politics has unduly privileged politicized devotional writings over more personal compositions. For example, critics have shown much more interest in the life writings of Anne, Lady Halkett and Elizabeth Delaval than in their occasional meditations.11 Nevertheless, the work of Paula McQuade on catechisms, Kate Narveson on scriptural writing, and Laurence Lux-­Sterritt on Benedictine emotions has pointed in a new direction for this subfield: viewing women’s religious works as records of lived religious experience.12 When read through a Buberian lens, Benedictine nuns’ devotional texts provide further evidence for the value of moving beyond the New Historicist conflation of religion and politics even as they expand our knowledge of women writers. Scholars have already demonstrated that milieux such as the court and the Catholic country house spurred women such as Mary Shelton, Anne Cornwallis, and Constance Aston Fowler to participate in the construction of literary miscellanies that responded to the concerns and needs of specific settings.13 The convent was another such locus of textual production, with a particularized culture of its own.14 Consideration of the meditations and spiritual miscellanies produced in this space can therefore deepen our understanding of how discrete social environments shaped women’s engagement with popular genres, such as meditations and miscellanies. At the same time, Benedictine nuns’ spiritual writings offer an opportunity to engage with women’s religious texts on the basis of liturgical practices rather than political views. Of course, the liturgy itself was certainly not apolitical. However, by focusing on its experiential aspects, we can better understand the ways that the collective framework of the congregation informed its individual members’ spiritual lives and writings, thereby supplying a model for analyzing works of this era that emerged from other faiths. Through philosophical and intertextual analyses of meditations and spiritual miscellanies produced in several different English Benedictine convents,



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this chapter demonstrates that in a cloistered setting the individual’s access to God hinges on participation in monastic community itself, more specifically the shared rituals that create religious communion. The spiritual writings of English Benedictine nuns display a rich engagement with these liturgical practices, which in turn reveals how the God-­centered community of the monastery relied on this interplay between the collective and the personal in order to facilitate its members’ interaction with the divine. In its exploration of liturgical practice, this chapter also extends Buberian philosophy by considering the ways that communal ritual can foster an individual’s encounters with God, a topic in which Buber showed little interest.

The Work of God: Religious Communion and Spiritual Texts Almost all monastic writing could be defined as spiritual in nature, since monks and nuns who take up the pen often seek to facilitate piety, whether their own or that of their community. Certain genres, however, serve a purely devotional function by allowing cloistered authors to reflect on and deepen their personal relationship with God. This connection between the individual and the divine is at the heart of monasticism, yet it is nonetheless mediated by the communal life of the cloister. Indeed, the Benedictine Rule states that common prayer allows monks and nuns to experience the divine presence in a special way: “We beleeve the divine presence to be in all places, and the eyes of our Lord continually to behold both the good & the bad: But then especially and particularly, when we ar at the worke of God.”15 Benedict’s circumlocution for the Divine Office (opus Dei, “work of God”) indicates that such shared worship is the primary labor of the monastery. In accordance with that idea, the English Benedictine Congregation has recently emphasized the centrality of this activity to Benedictine life: “the regular celebration of the Liturgy of the Hours occupies a primary place in the day. The Rule understands this, rather than any other activity, as the work of God (Opus Dei); according to the Rule, nothing should be preferred to this worship which consecrates the day to the glory of God, and leads the monk and nun, awakened to a sense of God’s presence in all things and all people, to a life of continual prayer.”16 A central feature of Benedictinism, the Divine Office ideally fosters a sense of transcendence that is grounded in communal experience, so that collective worship becomes the basis for an individual’s access to God. Martin Buber’s theory of the I-­You dynamic between humanity and the divine offers a philosophically grounded means of comprehending this Benedictine interrelationship between communal and personal experiences of God. For Buber, prayer situates the I of the individual in a deeply receptive

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position, that of complete reciprocity with the sacred You: “Two great servants move through the ages: prayer and sacrifice. In prayer man pours himself out, dependent without reservation, knowing that, incomprehensibly, he acts on God, albeit without exacting anything from God; for when he no longer covets anything for himself, he beholds his effective activity burning in the supreme flame . . . sacrifice and prayer step ‘before the countenance,’ into the perfection of the sacred basic word that signifies reciprocity. They say You and listen.”17 Through contemplative prayer, humanity naturally says, “You,” or “the sacred basic word that signifies reciprocity,” as it voluntarily enters into a space of radical mutuality with the divine. In doing so, human beings abandon an It-­world characterized by instrumentality and utilitarianism, in which God merely functions as an object to grant the things that we “exact” and “covet.” Ceasing to view prayer as a transaction, humanity seeks one thing alone: communion with the divine. Prayer thus has a very powerful function within Buber’s philosophy, as it is the sole mechanism by which humankind can initiate the I-­You dynamic. While Buber does not mention communal prayer, he does contend elsewhere that the divine manifests itself within community: “We expect a theophany of which we know nothing but the place, and the place is called community. In the public catacombs of this expectation there is no single God’s Word which can be clearly known and advocated, but the words delivered are clarified for us in our human situation of being turned to one another.”18 When the Benedictine community comes together as one in collective prayer to God, placing itself within a radically open position of reciprocity with the divine, it is this shared and simultaneous act of “turn[ing]” together toward “one another” and toward the divine center of monastic life that allows the presence of God to be felt on both a communal and an individual level. Yet the common prayer of Benedictine monks and nuns is also a ritual activity, and as such it cannot be fully understood through the Buberian paradigm alone. Throughout his life, Buber advocated vigorously for a renewal of Judaism that transcended Jewish law and its rituals, which he viewed as a human codification of spiritual revelation rather than as a direct, transcendent experience of the divine as exemplified by the I-­You encounter.19 In an epistolary exchange with Franz Rosenzweig concerning observance of the law, Buber contended, “I do not believe that revelation is ever a formulation of law. It is only through man in his self-­contradiction that revelation becomes legislation . . . I cannot admit the law transformed by man into the realm of my will, if I am to hold myself ready as well for the unmediated word of God directed to a specific hour of life.”20 Drawing a sharp contrast between “revelation” and “legislation,” Buber argues that the rigidity of the law is irreconcilable with the immediacy and spontaneity of the mystic encounter



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with God, which is both “unmediated” and “specific” to one person. Indeed, Buber suggests that a single-­minded focus on complying with such laws may even thwart revelation by keeping an individual from being “ready” to receive the divine address. In a later letter to Rosenzweig, Buber clarifies that he objects to the principle that everyone must follow the law as a matter of course: “I cannot accept the laws and statutes blindly, but I must ask myself again and again: Is this particular law addressed to me and rightly so? So that at one time I may include myself in this Israel which is addressed, but at times, many times, I cannot.”21 While laws are imposed on all believers of a certain faith tradition (in this case, “Israel”), such general commandments are not automatically compatible with the individualistic nature of the I-­You dynamic. For Buber, then, the Jewish law and, by extension, the ritual life of the synagogue may potentially be a vehicle for the addresses of the divine You, but these aspects of Judaism are by no means essential to the creation of the relationship between I and You and may even prevent its occurrence. As a result, Buber’s writings do not provide a systematic account of the role that ritual plays in either the I-­You paradigm or the God-­centered community. The relational framework of religion proposed by the philosopher John Macmurray supplements this major gap in the Buberian model by elucidating the ways that liturgy can generate spiritual collectivity. In his Gifford Lectures, Macmurray argues that communion only occurs when individuals come together to take part in acts with a larger metaphorical symbolism: “To celebrate communion or fellowship must then involve a communal reflection, in which all members of the community share. It must find its expression in a common activity which has a symbolic character, with a reference beyond itself; an activity undertaken not for its own sake but for the sake of what it means or signifies. The celebration of communion cannot be solitary or private reflection: it must be a common activity. The members of a primitive community do in fact live a common life; but they also perform in common certain ritual activities which express their consciousness that they live a common life and their joy in the knowledge.”22 For Macmurray, the term “reflection” carries a special weight, as he observes, “reflective activity is symbolic, and refers beyond itself for meaning.”23 The “communal reflection” necessary for “communion” is thus nothing less than the tacit understanding that this shared activity is symbolic. In other words, communion is achieved when people collectively undertake a “common activity” not for its own merits but rather for what it “means or signifies.” Since the liturgy itself is just such a “common activity” enacted for figurative purposes, Macmurray’s understanding of religious communion both illuminates a key feature of Benedictine experience and supplements the Buberian paradigm of spiritual community. Much like the “members of a primitive community”

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described by Macmurray, Benedictines share “a common life” even as they regularly “perform in common certain ritual activities”: in their case, the Divine Office and Mass. As the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life has observed about religious fraternity, “community is built up starting from the liturgy, especially from celebration of the Eucharist and the other sacraments.”24 Grounded in physical acts that invoke a sacramental order, Benedictine communion happens when monks and nuns gather as one to experience the sacred center of monastic life through the liturgy. While these shared liturgical rituals produce a Macmurrayan form of spiritual collectivity, they also serve as an entry point for individual members of the community to experience the I-­You dynamic proposed by Buber. From a Catholic perspective, it is the Eucharist that allows for the truest encounter between humanity and God, allowing the Buberian I and You to come into physical contact as well as spiritual union. As Pope Francis has commented, “The Eucharist is the sacrament par excellence of encounter with the person of Jesus,” a statement reflecting the Catholic belief that the communicant literally receives the body and blood of Christ.25 Understood by members of the Catholic Church to be much more than a simple wafer, the consecrated host is also a prime example of the symbolic, “communal reflection” that is key to Macmurray’s theory of communion. Within the setting of the monastery, the Eucharist therefore takes on a primary role in fostering religious community. Indeed, the modern English Benedictine Congregation defines monastic communion as fundamentally sacramental in nature: “The communion of a monastery, as is that of the Church as a whole, is a sacramental reality; it is nourished sacramentally, above all by the Eucharist, where the Risen Jesus himself makes himself really present in the midst of his followers.”26 The real presence of the Catholic sacrament in turn provides an opening for a meditative dialog between the communicant and God: “Like Moses we seek to enter into the tent of God’s presence where he can speak to us as a man speaks to his friend.”27 Along similar lines, Pope Francis has stated that the Eucharist is “at the very core of the contemplative life.”28 Facilitated by an intimate experience of “God’s presence,” the interchange between the communicant and God parallels the Buberian conversation between the I and the sacred You, even as its collective dimension evokes the symbolic communion theorized by Macmurray. When viewed from a philosophical perspective that unites the ideas of Buber and Macmurray, the liturgy of the Mass can be seen as sustaining the religious fellowship of the Benedictine monastery, simultaneously demonstrating the community’s shared devotion to God and offering the individual an opportunity to access the divine within a collective setting. Spiritual forms of writing functioned as supplements to the communion



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found in the liturgy, Mass, and other pious exercises. It is worth noting that textual production was always ancillary to higher spiritual endeavors, such as contemplation. At the end of her life, for example, Margaret Knatchbull (professed 1627, d. 1637) of Ghent regretted prioritizing transcription over meditation: “in time of health she had writt out many pious Devotions and practicall methods which spirituall fathers had given in direction of spirit; and though this was so Good a spent time, yet when she Came to Dye, she had a regrett that it had not been imployed rather in Mentall prayer, so to be a means of more Dear union with her best beloved spouse & God.”29 Even so, many members of the English Benedictine convents found writing to be complementary to their spiritual progress, as demonstrated by the survival of a wide array of meditations, prayers, and other devotional texts in convent archives. To take just one example, a bundle of miscellaneous leaves and quaternions in different hands from the Cambrai convent, now known as MS 20 H 49 in the Archives Départementales du Nord in Lille, contains a partial treatise on proper devotion at Lent, an extract from “Androtius of the Society of Jesus Remedies against Desparation,” “A Spirituall Contract” excerpted from “The Life of the Soule,” and a copy of “Litanies in Honour of the Divine Infancie of Jesus.” The link between transcription and an individual’s spiritual course can be seen even more clearly in an obituary for Elizabeth Brent (professed 1629, d. 1660) of Paris: “she was of a sereine & Equal Temper & an Interne spirit; much Relishing venerable Father Bakers divine instructions; as may be seene by her Collections, and his Bookes, which she write out and faithfully practised.”30 In a similar vein, Maria (Mary) Appleby (professed 1667, d. 1704) of Paris repeatedly copied the same biblical verse as she sought patience in suffering: “after her Death we found that she had writ upon several bits of papers and little pictures this following vers of the Royal Prophet Psalm 93[:19]. Secundum multitudinem dolorum meorum in corde meo, consolationes tuae laetificaverunt animam meam [According to the multitude of my sorrows in my heart, thy comforts have given joy to my soul].”31 Transcription was therefore particularly useful in allowing nuns to obtain personal copies of texts that could serve as spiritual exemplars or sources of pious inspiration. Demonstrating the fluidity between individual piety and religious communion, these private texts entered the community’s library after the death of the copyist and thus became part of the basis for the house’s collective spirituality. More particularized spiritual genres also flourished within the convents, as nuns created bespoke forms that fostered personal devotion as well as religious fellowship. According to her death notice, Abbess Mary Roper (professed at Brussels 1619, d.  1650) of the Ghent Benedictines “had many pious inventions and used much fervent prayer and indeavours to maintain

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and increase the true spirit of our vocation in every one of her Charge.”32 One of her most noteworthy “pious inventions” was to transform the very fabric of the Ghent house into a text to be read by every literate member of the community: “She Caused a writing to be sett upon every Common passing door in the monastry, Containing these wordes: IN SILENCE AND RECOLLECTI[ON] shall be our profit and hope. As also a pious purpose which she Composed in behalf of all, ordaining every one to Coppy it out, and place it upon their oratory.”33 Ideally, these writings would help inculcate the religious communion of the cloister, as each nun encountered the same pious words repeatedly throughout the course of the day, whether on the “Common . . . door[s]” or at their oratory. Roper’s written “inventions” thus helped fulfill her abbatial duties to model proper monastic piety for her spiritual daughters and to cultivate a collective spiritual outlook within the convent. Nuns created a number of individualized texts that sprang from collective activities, such as the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises practiced by nuns at Brussels, Dunkirk, Ghent, and Pontoise. “A Method of Consideration,” which appears in a Dunkirk miscellany compiled by Mary Gertrude (Gertrude) Darrell (d. 1749), offers instruction on how nuns could use writing to enhance the fruits of the Spiritual Exercises: “dureing the retraite I’le make a firm purpose by the grace of god to put in execution whatever I shall judge most proper to correct such & such faults & avoid the occations thereof; it will be proper to mark down in a paper or some little book for that end all those good purpo’s god has inspired you to make & every week or oftener to read the same.”34 Surviving examples of writing associated with retreats underscore the practicality of this genre. An obituary for Clare Vaughan (professed 1657, d. 1687) of Pontoise contains the resolutions she wrote for her confessors after making the “holy exercyse.”35 Vaughan begins with a resolution to maintain the recollection that she had achieved during the Spiritual Exercises: “In the first place now that my mind, is a litle recollected from the distractions of the world, I must endeavour to keepe it soe, by beeing blind deaf and dumb, endeavouring to know nothing but christ crucifyed; and what belongs to the duty of my office, the better to performe my spirituall exercyses, which I must doe by minding the present action only, and attention to the methode and wordes.”36 The act of writing at once documents her resolution while also focusing her mind on “the present action,” thus temporarily extending the recollection obtained through the Spiritual Exercises. Vaughan also notes the insights she gained from particular meditations within the Spiritual Exercises: “On the meditation of death God gave me lihght to see, the remaynder of my life to come, could not but bee, tedious to my selfe thro infirmityes and troublesome to others by my litle ability to serve any; and disagreable way to all, the only benifit that I can make of it is



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to do penance for my former life, and suffer for Gods love all payns in it.”37 This “light” from God gives Vaughan a new perspective on her personal failings, while also suggesting the means by which she can advance beyond such defects. Grounded in a communal retreat, this kind of writing preserved the insights gained through shared reflection even as it provided a source of personalized spiritual direction. As each new generation of nuns became inspired by its predecessors’ textual output, convents developed new types of spiritual writing that reflected their distinctive forms of spiritual communion. Clementia Cary of the Paris Benedictines composed “A Dielodge betweene Our Lord and a Soule in Grea[t] Dessolatione, Obsecurity, and Derelitione.” In this dialog, God strengthens the timid soul with pious advice and displays of affection: “be confident, for I will never forsake thee, though thou hast ben very unfaithfull to me.”38 Perhaps in imitation of Cary, who was revered as the convent’s foundress, Maura of St. Mary Magdalen (Maura) Wytham (professed 1683, d.  1700) and Mary Benedict Dalley of Paris later wrote or copied devotional treatises entitled “God to the Soul” in their miscellanies.39 In these brief texts, God directly exhorts the soul to seek a more complete union with him, as the divine speaker of Cary’s dialog had done. In Wytham’s compilation, for example, God encourages the speaker to go to “the Temple” with her sisters, adding her widow’s mite to their “rich gifts of great meritts solide vertues & fervent love.”40 The collective devotion of the Paris house thus served as a backdrop for Wytham to meditate upon her own humility, inculcating a core Benedictine virtue. Tracing the fine line between personal piety and religious communion, the rest of this chapter will explore the philosophical and intertextual aspects of two key genres of spiritual writing, spiritual miscellanies and meditations, in order to consider how collective experiences mediated the individual’s access to the divine.

The Commonplace and the Eucharist: Spiritual Miscellanies The spiritual miscellany was one of the most popular genres within early modern English Benedictine convents for good reason: this form of writing allowed nuns to produce customized texts that furthered their goal of entering into union with God. Communal and individual reading held a prominent role within the monastic day, and nuns turned to commonplacing in order to make personal copies of works that seemed especially suited to their spiritual needs. When viewed through a Buberian lens, this practice can be seen as providing a means for monastic readers to preserve the ephemeral addresses made by the divine You to their soul. As St. Bernard observed in a treatise translated by Anthony (William) Batt and dedicated

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to Mary Francis (Frances) Gawen (professed at Brussels 1600, d. at Cambrai 1640): “when we read, God talketh with us.”41 Benedictine miscellanies thus contain many citations from the Bible, Benedictine saints and writers, and other spiritual authorities that served as inspiration for their transcribers. At the same time, English Benedictines also copied devotional instructions into their commonplace books, using these works as a means of readying themselves to encounter the divine You in more public forms of piety, such as communal prayer and Mass. As the following discussion of Benedictine miscellanies will show, such preparatory texts shed light on the ways that monastic authors used shared devotion to initiate an intensely personal dialog with God. Viewing the Divine Office, Mass, and other liturgical rites primarily as opportunities for making contact with the divine, English Benedictine nuns understood communal worship as a catalyst for entering into a contemplative state grounded in the relationship between the soul and God, which parallels in many ways the Buberian “world of relation” inherent in the I-­You dynamic.42

A Bibliographical and Formal Analysis of Spiritual Miscellanies Extant manuscripts and library catalogs indicate that English Benedictine spirituality was strongly informed by a culture of spiritual commonplacing. The library of the Paris Benedictines was well stocked with miscellanies compiled by its members and incorporated posthumously into the house’s reading material: two volumes by Bridget More, eight by Clementia Cary, and one each by Justina Gascoigne, Scholastica (Anne) Hodson (professed at Cambrai 1642, d. at Paris 1690), Mary Tempest (professed 1662, d. 1678), and Placida Coesneau (professed 1683, d. 1695).43 While none of these texts is known to be extant today, collections by Maura Wytham, Mary Benedict Dalley, and several anonymous nuns do survive today. Intriguingly, the Paris Benedictines also owned copies of miscellanies produced by nuns from Cambrai: two volumes each by Catherine Gascoigne and Eugenia (Mary) Hoghton (professed 1639, d. 1701), as well as one volume each by Gertrude More, Mary (Francis) Watson (professed 1625, d.  1660), Magdalena (Lucy) Cary (professed 1640, d.  1650), and Scholastica (Dorothy) Houghton (professed 1674, d.  1726).44 Several of these women’s deaths postdate the Paris house’s foundation in 1650, suggesting that Cambrai and Paris continued to share manuscripts into the early eighteenth century. The circulation of miscellanies between the two houses testifies to a common perception of the genre’s high value as a source of spiritual wisdom for readers beyond the original compiler. Indeed, the survival of a miscellany composed by Anselma (Elizabeth) Anne (professed 1735, d. 1794) suggests that nuns at Cambrai made a practice of commonplacing well into the eighteenth century. The Dunkirk Benedictines



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maintained a similar tradition over the course of two centuries, as witnessed by the collections of Constantia (Katherina) Savage (professed at Ghent 1638, d. at Dunkirk 1687), Mary Bede (Anne) Culcheth (professed 1696, d.  1748), Mary Gertrude Darrell, and Mary Winifred (Winifred) Englefield (professed 1735, d. 1777).45 Since many commonplace books have undoubtedly been lost, these manuscript miscellanies from Cambrai, Dunkirk, and Paris serve as instructive exemplars of a vital form of convent writing. Whatever their house of origin, these pious compilations share the same basic format, consisting of excerpts from a variety of authors. Yet careful inspection of their contents reveals that the Benedictine nuns’ commonplacing practices were influenced by the differing spiritual traditions of their institutions. Augustine Baker, the unofficial spiritual guide at Cambrai and a major influence on its Paris daughter house, encouraged his charges to read classic and contemporary works of mysticism that offered models for achieving contemplative union with God. Unsurprisingly, miscellanies from Paris reveal that members of the convent followed Baker’s advice. A 316-­page compilation entitled The XXIVth Book of Collections features passages from medieval and early modern mystics (Louis de Blois, Benet Fitch, Gertrude of Helfta, John of the Cross, Henry Suso) along with writings by Cambrai nuns touted by Baker himself as paradigms of monastic contemplation (Margaret Gascoigne, Gertrude More).46 By contrast, the commonplace books of the Dunkirk Benedictines contain material that reflects the house’s Ignatian orientation, such as instructions from Jesuit priests and devotional texts in traditional Ignatian formats (structured meditations, colloquies). Thus, while the miscellany of Mary Winifred Englefield from Dunkirk does include one excerpt from de Blois, it is largely composed of Ignatian material related to the Spiritual Exercises, such as “A Preparation to the Exercise” and “A Meditation upon Death.”47 As these contrasts reveal, the very malleability of this genre made the commonplace book an excellent tool for creating texts that were attuned to the specific devotional experiences and needs of individuals and their communities.

A Philosophical Analysis of Spiritual Miscellanies and the Liturgy Extant miscellanies from the Cambrai, Dunkirk, and Paris convents reveal that several generations of English Benedictine nuns turned to this genre in order to prepare themselves for receiving the Eucharist. The Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, in which the essential aspects (or substance) of the wafer and wine are transformed into the literal body and blood of Christ despite retaining their former outward appearance (or accidents), deeply informed the compilers’ understanding of the Eucharist as a sacramental rite that transcended the mere acts of eating and drinking. When read through

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the lens of Macmurrayan communion, this collective perception of the Eucharist allows for a philosophical exploration of the ways that this “communal reflection” facilitated individual nuns’ encounters with God.48 Mary Bede Culcheth of Dunkirk, for example, transcribed an explication of Christ’s words at the Last Supper that briefly encapsulates the Catholic view of the Eucharist by rejecting Protestant interpretations of this rite as purely figurative. Glossing the words “this is,” the unknown author comments, “The bread and the wine be turned in to the body and bloud . . . of Christ by the same Omnipotent power, by which the world was made, and the word was incarnate in the wombe of the Virgin.” The author continues by explicating the words “My body” in the following way: “he said not, this bread is a figure of my body: or, this wine is a figure of my bloud: but this is my body, and this is my bloud.”49 Because the Catholic communicant ingests the actual “body and bloud” of Christ, the Eucharist enables its participants to experience God in a profoundly personal manner that is both physical and spiritual. An entry added later to the miscellany of Constantia Savage, a member of the Ghent and Dunkirk Benedictines, contemplates the ramifications of this encounter in even more detail: “you the god of heaven & earth with all your divine atributes, your power, your wisdome, your love, your mercy, your bounty, your body, your blood, your Soule, your divinity, your humanity, you I say, you are contained under the poore formes of bread & wine, & borne in the poore cottage of my body of dust & clay.”50 Using the repetition of the word “poore” to draw a parallel between the inferiority of the Eucharist’s accidents and the communicant’s physical body, this excerpt highlights the paradoxical nature of transubstantiation: that “the god of heaven & earth with all [his] divine atributes” lodges within the lowly “formes” of bread, wine, and human flesh. As Christ takes up his residence within the “poore cottage” of the communicant’s “body of dust & clay,” God and the soul come together temporarily through a physical intimacy that ideally entails spiritual union as well. Neatly illustrating Macmurray’s understanding of “communal reflection,” this shared understanding of the Eucharist as an encounter with the divine was central to the liturgical rituals that structured life in the early modern Benedictine convent. For Catholic believers then and now, the consecration of the host transforms the wafer from a mere object into God himself, a metamorphosis that can be productively read in Buberian terms. According to Buber’s paradigm, humanity can come into contact with God by momentarily forgoing the It-­ world (a world of experience in which people and things function as objects with utilitarian value) for “the world of relation” (a mode of being in which we recognize another person or an object as a unique You that addresses us intimately and without any transactional intent).51 Just so, the consecrated



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host takes on the personhood of Christ, moving from the It-­world of experience to the You-­world of relation. Engaging with the sacrament as a living being (a You, in Buber’s terms) rather than as a thing (an It), English Benedictine nuns experienced transcendental encounters with the divine that bear obvious parallels to Buber’s understanding of the relationship between humanity and God. Savage’s miscellany, for example, contains instructions on how to create an affective connection with the consecrated host during Mass: “At the elevation [of the host] I will behould my saviour mounted upon his cross in calvary and from thence perticulerly casting his eye upon my soule; at which I will indeavour to repay his love with some like affection.”52 Even before the worshipper has had the opportunity to consume the Eucharist, the real presence of Christ allows her to enter into an I-­You relationship with God, who hails her personally and directly from within the consecrated host by “casting his eye upon [her] soule.” In a similar vein, the Paris Benedictine who compiled the XXIVth Book of Collections included a passage from Gertrude of Helfta’s Insinuations that focuses on the personhood of the consecrated host at the moment of its elevation during Mass: “she saw in like vision, that the Priest toake him [Jesus] up who was much biger then he & did carrie him . . . Then touched with a sweet affection of compassion, she understood that thereby was represented the vehement force of that superexcellent love wherewith . . . Jesus our Lord fell into a trance, was ravished with the expectation of his delightes, which he should have being united to so dearly beloved soules by his sacred communion.”53 Making visible the real presence of Christ in the consecrated host, this mystic revelation allows Gertrude to understand the way that the Eucharist enables spiritual union with God through the act of “sacred communion.” The inherent personhood of the consecrated host initiates a dialog between the communicant and the divine that resembles the interpersonal rapport found within the Buberian world of relation. While such shifts between the It-­world and the You-­world are only temporary in Buber’s model, the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation allows for a permanent investiture of divine personhood within the object of the consecrated host. Culcheth, for example, transcribed an excerpt that encourages readers to engage with the host as they would with the person of Christ: “In all your troubles & difficultys what soever have recourse to our deare saviour in the Blessed Sacrament & seeke comfort in non but him, who remaines allways there for your comfort, & is continually sacrifising himself for your sake upon our Allters.”54 Since Christ is ever present in the consecrated host (“allways,” “continually”), this object, to all appearances merely an It, allows nuns to enter into the Buberian world of relation by taking a personal interest in its beholder (“sacrifising himself for your sake”).

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Culcheth also copied some spiritual advice that recommends entering into conversation with the consecrated host as often as possible: “Allwayes when you can in passing, goe before the Blessed Sacrament, & there converse with God about the afaires of your soule, & your salvation.”55 Even outside of Mass, then, the consecrated host permits individuals to become temporarily involved in a dialogical relationship with God. The doctrine of transubstantiation consequently reveals the relational stakes of the Eucharist, where the It of the wafer has forever yielded to the You of God. The communicant’s experience of the divine is necessarily fleeting, since she must receive the Eucharist again and again in order to renew her spiritual union with God, but the permanency of the consecrated host’s transformation offers a fixed means of accessing the always transient Buberian world of relation. Although English Benedictine nuns shared a common understanding that the Eucharist could facilitate interpersonal exchanges with God, their perceptions of these mystic encounters were strongly influenced by the nature of their house’s piety. Most of the English Benedictine convents practiced Ignatian spirituality, which aimed to rouse an individual’s will to love God through prescribed prayers and set meditations based on the Spiritual Exercises developed by St. Ignatius of Loyola. In keeping with this mindset, nuns from Dunkirk expected that their minds and souls would play an active part both before and during the rite of communion. A miscellany compiled by Catherine Sheldon (professed 1709, d. 1748) contains an intention for communion that reflects this action-­oriented stance: “I firmly resolve & purpose not to offend thee any more, and to avoid all the occasions of sin, & therefor I desire now to take this holy sacrament, that I may be conformd in thy Love, & be protected against the occasions of sin, that I may dwell in the[e] and thou in me for ever.”56 By vowing to amend her behavior (“I firmly resolve & purpose”), the communicant consciously engages her will in order to ready herself for mystic union with God. Even more strikingly, Constantia Savage’s miscellany includes a brief meditative passage that evokes Christ’s exchange with the Canaanite woman as described in Matthew 15:22–28 and Mark 7:24–30: “When I communicate sacramentally I will whilst 2 or 3 goe before me immagin I here our saviour speaking these [words]. It is not good to take the bread of childeren and give it to doggs. Wherat I will deeply humble my selfe with the holly Cananean whoman and say within my selfe. Yes o lord; for wee see the little doggs doe eate up the crumes that fall from the table of there masters.”57 Adopting this biblical dialog as a model for approaching Christ within the Eucharist, the communicant uses her imaginative faculty to actively request the favor of God’s presence rather than passively awaiting his approach. Sheldon, meanwhile, transcribed a meditation for communion in her miscellany that could spur active contemplation of Christ’s



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Passion: “O Divine jesus I will now accompany you to mount Callvery make me pertaker of the Charity that conducted you thether unite my cross unto thine & enable me to bear it willingly.”58 Calling into motion the faculties of both the imagination and the will, this brief instruction would ideally facilitate the communicant’s desire to unite herself to Christ by asking her to envision herself “accompany[ing]” him to Calvary. As these miscellanies from Dunkirk reveal, nuns familiar with Ignatian spiritual methods perceived the Eucharistic encounter with God as being predicated upon the worshipper’s ability to exercise faculties such as the imagination and the will. In contrast, miscellanies assembled by the Cambrai and Paris Benedictines emphasize the need for the soul to abandon its own agency before and during communion, in keeping with the mode of passive contemplation associated with Augustine Baker. Believing that Ignatian methods had no place in the cloister due to their aim of activating the will, Baker advised the Cambrai nuns to employ personalized forms of prayer that were intended to result in a contemplative state where the faculties of the imagination and will were suspended. As the commonplace book of Anselma Anne shows, the Cambrai Benedictines continued to follow Baker’s practices well into the eighteenth century. Anne copied an instruction on “How to frequent the Sacrament of Communion for the renewing our hearts in the grace of God” that recommends total passivity of the soul as preparation for communion: “The true disposition required in a Soul for this devine mystery consisteth in that she deliver herself up wholy to God, . . . bearing herself in the receiving of him only passively, & without disquieting herself.”59 Another passage from this same miscellany exhorts the reader to refrain from undertaking any specific devotional actions while she is before the consecrated host, thereby encouraging her to enter into a state of deliberate inaction: “your soul shou’d be in this devine presence rather in a disposition of peace & quietness, than by acts, or by thoughts.”60 In direct opposition to the Ignatian activation of the mind in meditation, this treatise also exhorts the reader to shut off the faculty of the understanding in order to enjoy passive contemplation of Christ: “Shutt your eyes & open your heart, that is to say shut your understanding (which is the eye of your soul) least the Splendor of the Sun deprive you of your sight, & open your will, to the end that by the heat of the Sun you may be warm’d, & in fin[e] enflamed with his love.”61 A miscellany from Paris contains nearly identical advice on how to approach the consecrated host: “before the Blessed Sacrament, shut your Eyes & oppen your hart that is to say Shut your understanding & open your wil. It wil suffise you to remaine in Silence before your Jesus, let him opereat without your hindering him by seeking with your understanding to perseave hou or in what.”62 This aim of achieving a state of complete passivity has obvious parallels with Buber’s

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understanding of prayer as a form of radical reciprocity, in which humanity abandons itself without reservation to an untrammeled experience of God. As a result of this emphasis on passivity, miscellanies from Paris convey a very different understanding of the interpersonal nature of communion. While members of the Dunkirk Benedictines envisioned themselves as actively involved in dialogic exchanges with God when they consumed the Eucharist, the Paris nuns understood this rite as requiring a complete emptying of the self so that God could take possession of their interior. “An Exercise for Devout Souls” from one Paris commonplace book thus encourages readers to aspire toward complete inaction after receiving communion: “you shal deliver your self as soon as possible from any thought whatsoever, not only of your self, & creatures, but even of him whom you have receav’d, to the End that leaving & abandoning your whole beeing, life & all you are and al your acts to the good pleasure of god & his sacred operation, he may unlimited, freely & without impediment from you, Injoy you, & accomplish what he most intimatly desires.”63 By abandoning the “acts” that are central to more active forms of spirituality such as Ignatian meditation, the soul becomes entirely pliable to God’s “desires.” This passive stance led the Paris convent to view the Eucharist less as an opportunity for conversation with God than as a means of utter openness to the divine, a perception that can be discerned in a passage from Gertrude of Helfta that appears in three miscellanies from this house. Gertrude queries God about how she should approach him, only to learn that she must become an empty vessel who can receive his blessings: “My Lord with what dispositions shall I come before you Who comes to me with so great liberality & munificiance. I demand of you noe other thing said our Saviour, but that you present your selfe to me, wholy void & empty, to the end; I fill you with my aboundance.”64 By becoming “wholy void & empty” and eschewing any particular mental or spiritual “dispositions,” Gertrude offers a model of passive contemplation that is compatible with Baker’s methods. Much as in Buber’s understanding of prayer, the Cambrai and Paris nuns seek to “say You and listen” during the Eucharist, jettisoning their own agency in order to enter into a state of radical mutuality with the divine.65 While this analysis has so far focused on the ways in which Benedictine nuns’ experiences of the Eucharist parallel the Buberian ideal of the I-­You encounter between humanity and God, one important divergence must be noted: members of the Dunkirk convent did not always abandon the utilitarian mindset of the It-­world during this rite. For example, one intention for Mass that appears in Catherine Sheldon’s miscellany envisions the Eucharist as a transactional exchange that allows the communicant to receive a specific and desired outcome: “O great god of heave[n]ly majesty I offer you this holy sacrifice & communion for remission of my sins.”66 Similarly,



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Constantia Savage transcribed a preparatory prayer for Mass in which the speaker offers up communion “for remistion of my sinns victory over my passions and all hinderances in perfection.”67 The miscellany of Mary Bede Culcheth explicitly identifies attendance at Mass as an opportunity to request spiritual favors from God: “In the holy sacrifice of Mass allways offer your selfe body & soul to Allmighty God & beg of him any favour that you find your self to stand most in need of at that time.”68 As these examples suggest, the action-­oriented nature of Ignatian spirituality was not conducive to a complete surrender of the self to the You-­world. Rather, nuns at these convents continued to exercise their wills even as they entered into dialog with God, a conversational exchange that they envisioned as requiring their active participation through the soul’s request for particular benefits. The persistence of this transactional mindset also reveals the difficulty of achieving complete liberation from the It-­world, whose norms may shape humanity’s understanding of how to interact with God. In contrast, the nuns at Cambrai and Paris aimed at a complete passivity of the will that comes much closer to Buber’s model. One Paris nun, for instance, copied into her miscellany an extract from Baker that directly rejects the idea that a communicant receives any transactional favors from God: “let your Comunicating be (viz) to honour God or to be united to him, & not for to obtaine any Sweetnes or quietnes or riddance of remorces.”69 When read in philosophical terms, then, miscellanies from the Cambrai, Dunkirk, and Paris convents reveal not only that members of these institutions disagreed about the best way to facilitate communion with the divine but also that they held fundamentally different understandings of what that union entailed.

From the Communal to the Individual: Spiritual Meditations The written meditation was central to the spiritual lives of the English Benedictine convents on the Continent, facilitating the nuns’ ultimate goal of union with God in both its composition and its circulation. Yet since this state could only be realized temporarily, Benedictine nuns undertook a sustained quest to achieve contemplation. As Buber observes, “This .  .  . is the sublime melancholy of our lot that every You must become an It in our world . . . Genuine contemplation never lasts long.”70 In a Buberian sense, the fleetingness of “genuine contemplation” occurs because the divine You can only be encountered during those brief moments of transcendence when we cease to view other people and objects through the utilitarian lens of what they can do for us. Because we naturally return to the functionalist way of thinking that characterizes the It-­world of things, the You-­world of relations is inherently short-­lived: “Every You in the world is doomed by its nature to

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become a thing or at least to enter into thinghood again and again.”71 Participating in this contemplative cycle, meditative writing itself served as a You that could bring the soul into dialog with God, the ultimate You. When a nun pondered the meditations written by another or penned her own spiritual reflections, she placed herself in the position of radical reciprocity associated with prayer and thus opened herself up to deeper communication with the divine You by eschewing the praxis-­based viewpoint of the It-­world. At the same time, she took part in a virtual form of sacramental practice, one that was mediated by textual rather than physical engagement with the liturgy.72 The genre of the meditation consequently promoted the development of a transhistorical communion that located mysticism within the everyday liturgical rites of a specific community, not the dreamy “spaces of utopia” or “ruins” of the past that, in Michel de Certeau’s view, provided refuge for mysticism after the Reformation.73 Taken together, the Divine Office, Mass, and other collective exercises with a Macmurrayan (or symbolic) resonance fostered intimate, if ephemeral, conversations between the I of the individual nun and the sacred You of God.

A Bibliographical Analysis of Spiritual Meditations Evidence from convent archives reveals that English Benedictine nuns prized the written meditation as a vehicle for advancing collective and individual spirituality. The manuscripts of the Ghent Benedictines include numerous meditations composed by priests for the Spiritual Exercises and convent retreats, including Meditations for the Exercise (MS G 23), a volume of eight-­day spiritual retreats (MS G 27), Retreats and Renovation Meditations by Father Clark (1712; MS G 38), A Retreat of Ten Days upon the Principal and Most Essential Duty’s of a Religious Life by confessor James Whetenhall (c. 1728–73; MS G 46), and an eighteenth-­century volume of retreats (MS G 73). Although the copyists of these works are largely anonymous, Mary Meynell (professed 1635, d. after 1672) transcribed a volume of meditations related to monastic profession, presumably for her own yearly use as she approached the anniversary of her profession. This manuscript contains works entitled “Five Meditations on Your 5 Vowes Conforme to the 5 Dayes Preparation for the Anneversary of Your Profession” and “A Devotion for the Anniversary of Our Profession,” among other texts.74 Similarly, Catherine Sheldon of Dunkirk transcribed a manuscript entitled 3rd MSS Retreat, with Renovations by Fr Bisson & F. Sabran for her own personal meditation. The front flyleaf contains a crossed-­out inscription in her hand, “For the use of Dame Catharin Sheldon,” as well as the signatures of other Dunkirk nuns who later borrowed this manuscript from the convent library: her niece, Mary Benedict (Anne) Sheldon (professed 1740, d. 1798); Mary Placida (Mary) Macclesfield (professed



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1757, d. 1799); and Mary Agnes (Elizabeth) Parkes (professed 1787, d. 1808).75 Probably originating as retreats given by priests for the entire community, most of these volumes initially memorialized a communal experience of collective devotion. When copied and read by successive generations of nuns, these meditations continued to offer material for individual reflection decades after the retreat had concluded, thereby extending the experience of religious communion through textual circulation. While convents that practiced Ignatian spirituality turned to written copies of retreats as a means of guiding their meditations, nuns at Cambrai and Paris followed Augustine Baker’s “way of love.” Instead of employing the Spiritual Exercises or any form of rote prayer, Baker encouraged his adherents to reach passive contemplation of God through individualized activities, such as spontaneous aspirations (or short ejaculatory prayers). Ideally, such exercises would result in direct contact with God that was not dependent on any person or thing, including the house’s confessor. Gertrude More, who was one of Baker’s prime adherents at Cambrai, helpfully elaborates on this idea in Confessiones amantis [Confessions of a Lover] (c. 1633): “when we adhere to any created thing we become slaves to our owne passions, and are in eminent danger to Sinne. No way is playne, secure, easy and without all perill of Errour, but this, That the Soule seecke Nothing but thee her creatour.”76 A generation later, Barbara Constable, another Cambrai nun, expressed a similar attitude more concisely in a volume of meditations entitled Gemitus peccatorum [Groans of Sinners] (1649): “heu me misere [alas, wretched me], when shall I love thee wholly & without medium?”77 Yet the Cambrai nuns’ spiritual lives were in fact mediated by their experiences during the shared activities of the Divine Office and the Mass. Much more than just a simple recitation of words or the shared consumption of wafers, these religious exercises created communion in a Macmurrayan sense by serving as the basis for collective interaction with God. From a Buberian perspective, the divine You addressed the convent on a daily basis through the ritualized language and actions of these ceremonies, inviting each member of the community to enter into a dialog that transcended the utilitarian It-­world.

A Philosophical Analysis of Meditations and Divine Addresses at Cambrai Within the context of the Cambrai house, the written meditation offered a means of memorializing or initiating a contemplative conversation between the I of the individual nun and the heavenly You. Both Constable and More composed their treatises as a means of providing comfort to their souls during future moments of spiritual desolation. As More observes in her Confessiones amantis, “This is my solace in sorrowes, & my Refreshment in labours

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to call uppon my God to writt to & in him, that when my Soule groweth more heavy & dull, I may Read the mercies of my Lord, Thereby to raise up my Soule to a sweeter Remembraunce of him whome my heart desireth in all & above all to Love & enjoye.”78 Writing with a similar purpose, Constable likewise characterizes her meditations as a source of self-­encouragement in times of hardship: “to thee I speak & write in my poor manner, whereby in times of affliction & obscurity I may have some help & means to stirr up my frozen soul the more to love thee.”79 Constable and More also use writing as a means of addressing God during intervals of spiritual aridity, when his presence cannot be felt. Experiencing a period of such desolation, More represents God as an “absent Lover” who can only be addressed from a distance: “what shall I do to lift up my soule to thee, but as one sicke with Love of her absent Lover? . . . she may writt to & of him: & if none will carry it to her deare beloved, it shall Remaine by her, that he may see att his Returne hou shee Languished for love.”80 Offering a twist on More’s metaphor, Constable portrays some of her written meditations as a one-­sided form of correspondence with a faraway friend: “to thee I speak & write, not as one who presumes to think herself worthy to do it, but as one being banished far from her beloved & true friend, cannot be at rest, but endeavoureth to do something that may yield some comfort to her, sometimes writes, of him & to him, & speaketh of & to him, though far absent, endeavouring by that means, to mitigate the difficulty she finds for his absence.”81 As this figuration of God as a distant friend or lover indicates, the Cambrai nuns understood their relationship with the divine to be dialogic in nature. Spiritual meditations offered a text-­based means of maintaining that conversation when an individual nun was unable to engage in passive contemplation due to aridity, desolation, or some other hindrance. Profoundly intertextual in nature, the meditations of Constable and More are also dialogic in their frequent inclusion of God’s word as represented by Latin excerpts from the Bible, Divine Office, and Mass. As Buber comments on the way that the divine You addresses humanity, “Nothing can refuse to be the vessel for the Word. The limits of the possibility of dialogue are the limits of awareness.”82 Within the framework of early modern monasticism, there could be no better “vessel for the Word” than the Word itself, whether that took the form of the Bible or the biblical language of the Divine Office and Mass. Indeed, More praises the Divine Office in particular for offering a script for a conversation between God and humanity that resembles the I-­You dynamic described by Buber: “the Divine office is such a heavenly thing, that in it we find whatsoever wee can desire, for some­ tymes in it we adresse our selves to thee for helpe, & pardon for our Sinnes, and somtymes thou speakest to us, that it pierceth & wo[u]ndeth (with a



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desire of thee) the verie bottome of our Soules, and sometymes thou teachest a Soule To understand more in it of the knoweledge of thee & of them selves, then ever could have bin by all the teaching in the world shewed to a Soule in 500 yeares.”83 Significantly, More’s comment presupposes a convent that was fully literate in Latin, the language of the Divine Office. Meeting together seven times a day to hear passages from the Bible and to read aloud selected psalms and prayers, a community that understood Latin had multiple opportunities to “adresse” themselves to God through recitation while also listening to God “speak” in turn. Constable similarly evokes the conversational potential of the Divine Office in one of her petitions to God: “O that thou wouldst enable me to say it with that attention that is due, & that thou wouldst open unto me the sense of so many mysterious speeches, as these holy psalms are replete withall, whereby my soul might abundantly enjoy thee in the recital of them.”84 Constable’s focus on the role of speech acts (“say,” “recital,” “speeches”) in providing occasions for mystic communion between her soul and God once again highlights the conversational nature of this shared prayer. The components of the Divine Office thus function as a conduit for the emergence of an exchange between I and You that is dialogic by nature, allowing Constable and More to converse with God through the medium of human speech. Constable and More continue these conversational interchanges within the pages of their meditations by citing and contemplating extracts from the Divine Office and Mass. More reacts to Psalm 33:6, which is read as part of matins on the feast of All Saints (November 1), as if it was spoken directly to her by the Holy Ghost: “Accedite ad eum & illuminamini, et facies vestrae non confundentur: Come yee to God and be illuminated, and your faces shall not be confounded. These words in our Divine office . . . proceed from the holy Gost, the spiritt of all trueth, who speaketh by the Apostles & Prophets for the comfort, instruction, & illumination of such as are true Members of our wholy Mother the Church.”85 Finding comfort in these words, More enters into a conversational exchange with God that parallels the I-­You dynamic conceptualized by Buber: “I flie to thee in all my doubts and obscurities . . . If he by whome thou speak this, had excepted any, I should not have dared to have applied it to my selfe, but as it is I should doe thee wrong to flie from thee, when thou bidst me come and be illuminated.”86 In some cases, these passages came to mind well after communal prayer. Constable, for instance, notes that during times of spiritual desolation, “to pray is death to me, being not able to think of any thing but distractions & vanity, only now & then as it were a far off I hear the sound of some verses of the psalms, or some sayings of the scripture, & sometimes some short aspirations which I had read here tofore in some books, being most commonly in latin.”87 From a

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Buberian perspective, these “verses of the psalms” and “sayings of the scriptures” heard from “a far off” are the voice of the divine You, calling Constable into dialog. It is likely that Constable first encountered many of these biblical passages in the Divine Office or Mass, as in a meditation that she wrote on the feast day of St. Paul (June 30). Constable begins by lamenting her “great imperfections,” which she views as preventing her from achieving holiness: “I am not able to do the least good, but . . . I fall into a thousand inconveniences, & even out of one evil into another.”88 At the conclusion of the meditation, she turns for consolation to an excerpt from 2 Corinthians 12:9, which serves as the antiphon to Psalm 110 at vespers: “O my God regard me I beseech thee & let me not be a cause of scandal through my perversness & imperfection thou knowest my desire therefore resigning myself to thy holy will I conclude with thy holy Apostle (St Paul) whose feast we serve this day, Libenter gloriabor in infirmitatibus meis [gladly will I glory in my infirmities].”89 Pivoting suddenly from the first-­person singular (“I beseech”) to the first-­person plural associated with the community’s celebration of vespers (“whose feast we serve this day”), Constable draws on the day’s shared worship for a biblical phrase that legitimates human weakness and thus appears to function as a divine response to her prayer. Placing herself in conversation with God through the language of the Divine Office, Constable assuages her fears through a direct exchange with the divine that fits Baker’s “way of love.” Constable and More also turned to the Divine Office and Mass as a means of preparing themselves for the passive contemplation encouraged by Baker. More, for example, refers to several readings from the feast day of Mary Magdalen (July 22) in order to initiate a meditation on her own sinfulness: “This day we Reade in our office that St Mary Magdalen comeing to thy feete (which shee watered with her teares) heard that comfortable answere from thee, to witt, Goe in Peace thy Sinnes are forgiven Thee, but it was out of this Regard that she loved much. This answere thou makest to her, whose heart in Silence speake unto thee, Doth comfort my sinfull Soule much.”90 More’s references to Luke 7:37–38 and 7:47–48 weave together excerpts from a few moments in the Divine Office and Mass for July 22. The fourth reading of matins, which comes from St. Gregory the Great’s twenty-­fifth homily on the Gospel, contains a paraphrase of Luke 7:47: “Dimissa sunt ei peccata multa, quia dilexit multum [many sins have been forgiven her because she has loved much].”91 In the eighth reading, Gregory comments specifically on her posture and tears: “Accessit ergo non ad caput Domini, sed ad pedes. Et quae diu male ambulaverat, vestigia recta quaerebat. Prius fudit lacrimas cordis, et lavit Domini pedes obsequio confessionis . . . tacita loquebatur [therefore she came not to the Lord’s head, but to his feet. And she who had long walked evilly sought



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the footprints of righteousness. First, she poured out the tears of her heart, and she washed the Lord’s feet in the obedience of confession . . . silent, she spoke].” The Cambrai nuns would then have recited the biblical source for this homily as the antiphon to the Magnificat at vespers: “Mulier quae erat in civitate peccatrix . . . attulit alabastrum unguenti, et stans retro secus pedes Jesu, lacrimis coepit rigare pedes eius, et capillis capitis sui tergebat [a woman that was in the city, a sinner, . . . brought an alabaster box of ointment, and standing behind at his feet, she began to wash his feet with tears and wiped them with the hairs of her head].”92 Furthermore, the Gospel reading from the Mass of that day focuses on this episode, offering an opportunity for the nuns to hear Christ’s words spoken aloud by the priest: “Remittunter ei peccata multa, quoniam dilexit multum . . . Remittuntur tibi peccata [Many sins have been forgiven her because she has loved much . . . Your sins are forgiven].”93 Creating her own English synthesis of the Latin readings for this feast day, More emphasizes Christ’s merciful act of forgiveness in the face of Mary Magdalen’s humble submission. After establishing this intertextual web of references to Luke, More metaphorically takes up the deferential posture of Mary Magdalen in order to await God’s clemency herself: “I will hope in him, and will approach to his feete, who is mercie it selfe. And There my Lord My God I will sigh & weepe both for my Sinnes and for my defect in loveing thee, who art worthy of all love & praise what so ever. There I will begge this love so much to be desired. There I will wish & long for it, and from thy feete I will not depart till thou denounce to me Thy Sinnes are forgiven thee, and sayest to my Soule Goe in Peace. Thy voice I longe to heare In my heart that I may with voice of Exaltation Praise thee for ever.”94 On the whole, the readings from matins, vespers, and Mass present Mary Magdalen as a template for speaking to God, which More in turn follows as preparation for the passive contemplation advocated by Augustine Baker. Like Mary Magdalen, she will “approach to his feete” and “sigh & weepe,” considering her “sinnes” and “defect” in loving God. Waiting silently for God’s “voice” to respond to this acknowledgment of her sins, More enters into the radically open receptivity of contemplative prayer as theorized by Buber. From a philosophical viewpoint, More employs the convent’s communal reading as a springboard for entering into conversation with the divine You, thereby moving from the communion of collective worship into the more personalized realm of individual prayer. Barbara Constable likewise uses shared devotion as a basis for addressing God in several meditations on Corpus Christi, a feast day that celebrates the Eucharist. Early on in Gemitus peccatorum, she copies out in full the antiphon that follows the Magnificat during first vespers, which the community would have recited on the evening before Corpus Christi: “O quam suavis est

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Domine, spiritus tuus: qui ut dulcedinem tuam in filios demonstrares pane suavissimo de caelo praestito, esurientes reples bonis fastiodiosos divites inanes [O how sweet is your spirit, Lord; so that you might show your sweetness to your children, you—after furnishing the sweetest bread from heaven—fill the hungry with good things, leaving empty the disdainful rich ones].”95 This reference to communal prayer is followed by a short meditation that stresses the interpersonal nature of the Eucharist: “I am not able to contain myself from coming to thee, my most sweet Lord, though I seem never so unworthy . . . I have ever a longing after thee, my soul seeming, as it were, famished till it hath received thee, its most delicious food, ever desiring to receive thee with all the honour, love & purity, reverence & devotion, that a creature can receive her Lord & maker.” As Constable experiences God’s presence in a manner that is simultaneously corporeal and mystical, the wafer is at once “delicious food” and “her Lord & maker.” Constable’s meditation thus memorializes the way that the Macmurrayan communion of the Eucharist could yield an intimate fellowship with God. This meditation is followed by part of the sequence hymn used during Mass on Corpus Christi: “Ecce panis Angelorum, factus cibus viatorum, vere panis filiorum non mittendus Canibus [Behold the bread of angels, made into the food of pilgrims! Truly the bread of children must not be given to dogs].”96 Identifying these “children” as “those that receive thee [God] with all purity love & devotion,” Constable petitions the Lord: “O my God, grant that I may be one with thee, & that I may be of the number of these children, who receive thee worthily.” Inspired by the liturgy of Corpus Christi, Constable seeks to fulfill her monastic vocation through complete union with God, to “be one with thee.” As the examples of Constable and More demonstrate, members of the Cambrai Benedictines found that experiences during the Macmurrayan communion of the Divine Office and Mass initiated a conversation between the individual soul and God that bears many similarities to the I-­You dynamic theorized by Buber.

A Philosophical Analysis of Meditations and Divine Conversation at Ghent Benedictine nuns also composed original accounts of their contemplation for the purpose of sharing them with their confessors and other male spiritual advisors. Because these texts passed beyond the boundaries of the enclosure, few survive today. The meditations of Abbess Lucy (Elizabeth) Knatchbull (professed at Brussels 1611, d. 1629) of Ghent are a happy exception to this rule only because Tobie Matthew, SJ, incorporated them into his biography of Knatchbull, A Relation of the Holy, and Happy Life, and Death, of the Lady Lucie Knatchbull (1652). In addition to supplying several letters and a spiritual autobiography that Knatchbull wrote at his request, Matthew



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includes meditative texts sent to him between 1619 and 1620, as well as several contemplative documents that she gave to William Vincent, confessor of the Ghent Benedictines, between 1624 and 1629. These texts are retrospective and necessarily incomplete accounts of Knatchbull’s experiences during prayer, as she explains in one letter to Matthew: “It is true, that I told you before, that I was not able to give you a good account, of what passed with me in Prayer, and yet you see, I doe it; but I assure you, it costs me somewhat besides the Time. Now the manner which I hold, is this. When I goe to write what passes, I call all my witts about me, and putt my selfe, as neer as I can, into the selfesame disposition of mind, in which, I was in Prayer. I then seeke to remember, what it is, that I should write; and some times, it will be long, before the particulars will come in, and be cleare to me . . . The true reason also, why things fly so farr out of my mind, I cannot well understand, unless it be, that God will have me know by experience, that the thoughts, which I have in Prayer, are not mine owne, nor must be used without his leave.”97 Requiring the “selfesame disposition of mind” as prayer itself, but lacking any direct contact with a heavenly interlocutor, this form of writing is merely an approximation of meditation. Indeed, Knatchbull struggles even to remember “the particulars” of “what passes” between her and God. These difficulties reflect the inscrutability of contemplation itself: the moment of encounter between the soul and the divine You takes place in a manner that is beyond human expression or even comprehension. As Buber comments on the way that “spiritual beings” address humanity, “the relation is wrapped in a cloud but reveals itself, it lacks but creates language. We hear no You and yet feel addressed; we answer—creating, thinking, acting: with our being we speak the basic word [You], unable to say You with our mouth.”98 Just so, contemplative activities take place in “our being” rather than in the realm of language, meaning that meditative writing can only offer a mediated account of the dialog between the soul and the divine You. Imperfect as they may be, Knatchbull’s accounts of her meditation nonetheless reveal the ways in which this intensely personal communion with God derived from the experience of religious community. Every time the convent observed its hour of mental prayer, Knatchbull stood before her oratory and prepared for contemplation by seeking the assistance of heavenly patrons: “I renue the memory of the Presence of God; before whom, our Blessed Lady, my good Angel, St Paule, St Bennett, St Joseph, and divers other my Patrone Saints, I cast my Selfe, with as profound reverence as I can. Then I crave breefly, the assistance of my Saints, and our Blessed Lady, and turninge myselfe to the holy Ghost, I humbly beseech his helpe.”99 Through intercessory prayer invoking these “Patrone Saints,” Knatchbull constitutes an imagined community of Catholic figures who can aid her meditation (on

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imagined communities, see chapter 3). In the case of this particular hour of prayer, Knatchbull also relies on a more immediate source of assistance by choosing a biblical passage (Song of Songs 2:4) given to her by Vincent himself as the topic of her meditation: “this day it was that, which you gave me of the Canticles, at least thus much of it. The Kinge hath brought me into his Celler of Wine; he hath ordered Charity in me.”100 In a Buberian sense, the ensuing prayers arose from a relational exchange between Knatchbull and Vincent. Transitioning from an object (an It) to an expression of the sacred You, the passage that Vincent shared with Knatchbull allows her to enter into a conversation with God, as documented by the meditation itself: “I sayd in my mind, O my deare Lord God, tell me I beseech thee, what am I to understand by these words . . . I begann to thinke to what the wine Celler might alude, & who they are that the Kinge carryeth thither.”101 As God implicitly answers Knatchbull’s query by guiding her thoughts during the rest of the meditation, the two enter into a conversation that is firmly grounded in her relationship with Vincent. Finally, Knatchbull concludes her prayer by thanking her divine intercessors, thereby suggesting that these saintly patrons had played an important role in fostering her meditation: “givinge thanks to our Blessed Lady, my good Angel and other Patrons, I did wholly offer myselfe to Almighty God.”102 Vincent and Knatchbull’s saintly patrons are thus vital participants in Knatchbull’s prayer, revealing the communal aspects of this apparently solitary practice. Knatchbull’s meditations are also noteworthy for the importance that communal ritual plays in facilitating her contemplation of God. Knatchbull displayed a particular reverence for the Eucharist, and she experienced many mystical visions during Mass that bear a marked resemblance to those of Gertrude of Helfta, who repeatedly saw God enter into her heart after consuming the Eucharist.103 Indeed, Knatchbull’s obituary notes that “she had a most Special devotion to Great St Gertrude Abbess of Elpidia in Saxony, and to all her works, writing out with her own hand, most, or all that book of her Insinuations, etc.”104 A meditation written for Vincent on the occasion of the feast of John the Baptist (June 24) demonstrates how Knatchbull’s experiences during various communal rites served as stepping stones for one such Gertrudian vision. On this day, one of the readings for matins caused Knatchbull to feel deep contrition for her perceived failures as an abbess: “as I was sayinge the divine office, and beinge come to these words of the second lesson, Et universa quaecumque mandavero tibi, loqueris. Ne timeas a facie eorum; quia tecum ego sum [and everything whatsoever I shall command you, you shall speak; be not afraid at their presence for I am with thee]; I was extraordinarily, inwardly touched; my conscience as it were, secretly reprehendinge me, for that I had not, by words and example, sought to incite



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those with whom I conversed, to a more intire observation of the Rules, and Customes of Religion; and this apprehension, tooke stronge possession of my mind, till I went to Mass.”105 Although heard collectively by the house, these words from Jeremiah  1:7–8 strike Knatchbull as a personal message from God, who rebukes her for not speaking to the community of the things that he has commanded them. As she began to make her intention at Mass, Knatchbull thought again of this same reading at matins, now focusing on Jeremiah’s answer to God from the preceding verse (Jeremiah  1:6): “these words of the Prophet A, A, A, ego puer sum [Ah, ah, ah, I am a child], came into my minde; and my Soule . . . sought of our Lord, for wisdome, and sufficient knowledge, to governe myselfe towards all, & to direct his Servants committed to my charge.”106 Entering into conversation with the divine through the exchange of biblical verses, Knatchbull humbly acknowledges her own inexperience as an abbess and seeks God’s help to fulfill her abbatial duties. This plea is indirectly answered by a mystical vision after she communicates: “I had a sight, as it were, of the three divine Persons full of Majesty seated in my Soule, as in severall Mantions; yet undevided, one, and coequall; who, to my seeminge, had made choise of my Soule, as his habitation, and place of rest; and was to me . . . a most stronge refuge, and benigne protectour.”107 Having chosen her soul as a “place of rest,” the Trinity deigns to serve as her “refuge” and “protectour,” implicitly legitimating Knatchbull as abbess and supplementing her weaknesses. From a Buberian perspective, this meditation demonstrates how Macmurrayan religious communion fosters an existential dialog between I and You. Far from being a simple recitation of biblical verses, matins takes on a symbolic function by serving as a means for God and the soul to communicate with one another. The Word of God is realized as the community reads the Divine Office aloud and enables the sacred You to address the members of the convent both individually and collectively. Knatchbull responds to this invitation toward dialog in like kind, trading Bible verse for Bible verse in order to engage with God in his own language. Her Eucharistic vision during the symbolic ritual of Mass is the pinnacle of their exchange. Viewing the consecrated host as much more than mere bread, Knatchbull understands her soul as literally possessing the Trinity, in keeping with the Catholic theological doctrines of transubstantiation and real presence. This indwelling of God permits an intimate conversation between Knatchbull and the divine You, which assures her of their special relationship and strengthens her desire to submit to God’s will: “givinge away my selfe unto our Lord, with such an absolu[t]e desire, to be all intirely his, as I have not words to express it.”108 As Knatchbull’s accounts of her meditations indicate, symbolic communal rites, such as the Divine Office and Mass, could offer a basis for individuals

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to establish a more personalized and immediate conversation with the divine You who was invoked by these ritual observances.

Conclusions The monastic career of Margaret Gascoigne of Cambrai was short, yet influential thanks to her spiritual meditations. Augustine Baker’s posthumous edition of these devotions provided an important template for how to achieve passive contemplation, becoming part of the libraries at both the Cambrai and Paris convents.109 While Gascoigne largely focuses on her individual struggles and revelations, at one point she makes a revealing allusion to the Mass in order to underscore her willingness to choose God over all other things: it is onlie thee [God] in thy most sacred puritie & simplicitie above all humane suffrings & feelings, yea & gifts of thine that I desire, & looke after, & do now and ever will (through thy grace) make choise of, as my onlie delight & good, desiring & hoping to remaine ever stable with thee & in thee as the anchour of my soule in all changes exterior or interior, to which of my selfe through naturall corruption & instabilitie I am subject. To thee be it even as thou pleasest for ever and ever. Benedicamus Domino. Deo gratias. Be it to thee even as thou desirest; for though I can not give it, yet thou canst take it; do thou therefore effect it in me & thereby satisfie thy selfe & there with me allso, who desire nothing but thy satisfaction, & to live or have being for no other ende save for thee, & the satisfieng of thy best pleasure.110

In the Tridentine Mass, “Benedicamus Domino [let us bless the lord]” functioned as the final salutation given by the priest at Mass during Lent and other seasons lacking the Gloria. The congregation answered the priest in turn with the formula “Deo gratias [thanks to God].” Gascoigne pledges to seek God as her “onlie delight & good,” yet her incorporation of a communal, first-­person-­plural voice (benedicamus; “let us bless”) reveals the way that her engagement with God was informed by the religious communion of the cloister. As Gascoigne expresses her fervent commitment to rely on God alone, this deeply personal pledge is effectively confirmed by liturgical language evoking the collective body of the Catholic Church, which Gascoigne and the other Cambrai Benedictines experienced both physically and spiritually during Mass. The personal piety of early modern English Benedictine



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nuns thus arose from shared liturgical experiences that served as the focal point of the convent’s God-­centered fellowship, a movement from the communal to the individual that remains essential to monastic life today. By tracing the ways that the most intimate and personalized forms of convent writing—miscellanies and meditations—responded to the collective religious experiences of English Benedictine nuns such as Gascoigne, this chapter has attempted to provide a new way of thinking about early modern women’s spiritual writings that complements the usual emphasis on political agency. No matter their particular religious beliefs, women participated in many different forms of communal worship, from services held publicly in churches to more private observances, such as household prayer. As the devotional texts of English Benedictine nuns reveal, these activities supplied an experiential basis for encountering God on both an individual and communal level. By reading early modern women’s religious works with an eye to liturgical and ritual experiences, we can better understand how participation in religious communities could influence even the most personal meditations on God. Given the wide range of liturgical formats available in England during the seventeenth century, this experiential lens also opens up a new comparative framework for analyzing women’s religious texts. As this chapter has shown, the two major spiritual traditions found within the English Benedictine convents led nuns to experience God in different ways. By extending this paradigm beyond the Benedictine context, we can develop a richer understanding of how the diverse forms of communal worship employed by various faith traditions (from Anglicans to Independents, from Baptists to Quakers, and from Augustinians to Poor Clares) facilitated distinctive ways of knowing and writing about God. At the same time, this chapter has drawn on Buberian philosophy in order to consider the interplay of personal and public spirituality within the cloister. If, as Buber maintains, theophany can only be found in community, then the monastery offers especially fruitful terrain for exploring how God manifests within religious communion. As English Benedictine nuns met together to recite the Divine Office, hear Mass, and consume the Eucharist, they participated in collective rites whose symbolic nature facilitated private encounters with the divine You. The individual nun’s access to God thus emerged from a matrix of shared belief, which was affirmed on a daily basis by the community’s ceremonial actions. The miscellanies and meditations of English Benedictine nuns demonstrate the importance of these collective religious observances for the spiritual experiences of the individual, thereby providing a useful opportunity for building on Buber’s theory of the I-­You relationship. Given his own distaste for organized religion, it is unsurprising that ritual plays no role in Buber’s philosophy, which essentially seeks

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to supplement the traditions of the synagogue with a new kind of Jewish community based on personal encounter. Yet religious ceremonies can provide an important framework for entering into a union with God that can be profitably understood in Buberian terms, as demonstrated by this chapter’s philosophical analysis of English Benedictines’ spiritual writings. Initiating a profoundly intimate encounter between the I of the believer and the divine You, ritual serves as a catalyst for a dialogic relationship with God that is as transcendent as it is transitory. Indeed, the very ephemerality of this unitive moment explains why these collective religious acts must be repeated over and over again: as Buber argues, the It-­world will eventually reassert its hold on humanity. Ultimately, then, the miscellanies and meditations of English Benedictine nuns reveal that the ceremonial life of a religious community plays a critical role in enabling each of its individual members to make a fleeting Buberian turn toward the divine You and away from the distractions of the It-­world. .

T hree

Monastic Imagined Communities Histories, Life Writing, and the Divine Call

T

he Life of the Lady Falkland (1645), attributed to Magdalena Cary of the Cambrai Benedictines, is simultaneously one of the most widely available and least understood of the writings produced by English Benedictine nuns. Published in a modernized edition alongside Elizabeth Cary’s Tragedy of Mariam, this work has long served as a vital source of biographical information on the first woman to write an original drama in English.1 Yet the Life has posed a critical conundrum because it defies easy categorization. Looking backward to medieval precedents, some scholars have viewed the Life as a specimen of hagiography.2 Although convents possessed many exemplars of this form, the Life fits uneasily within the hagiographical tradition because of the author’s eagerness to highlight her mother’s shortcomings. Others have read the Life as a biography, casting their eyes forward to more modern forms of life writing.3 However, as Marion Wynne-­Davies has noted, approximately 90 percent of the text focuses on the conversion experiences of Elizabeth Cary’s children and not on its ostensible subject, thus failing to conform to the conventions of biography.4 Annabel Patterson best describes the nature of this heterogeneous work by identifying it as a miscellaneous combination of genres, comprising “secular travel romance,” “hagiographical motifs,” “domestic comedy,” and “feminist Bildungsroman.”5 Yet Patterson omits one key genre that shaped the broad contours of the Life: the monastic death notice. Significantly, Frances Dolan has already observed, in a groundbreaking article on the Life, that Cary’s text “is distinguished . . . from convent obituaries by its length.”6 The final sentence of the Life offers the clearest evidence of its participation in the genre of the death notice by ending with a formulaic request for prayers: “And for what may yet be wanting to her to suffer in purgatory, may it please God to inspire his servants to assist her with their prayers and sacrifices, and of his mercy give rest to her soule.”7 From this perspective, Magdalena Cary’s seemingly harsh criticism of her mother’s flaws actually serves as a spur to prayer for the dead, since the Life

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offers ample evidence that Elizabeth Cary was a likely candidate for Purgatory. The Life thus functions as a long-­form death notice, acquainting readers with the story of Elizabeth Cary in order to solicit their prayers for her soul. In keeping with this communal focus, one of the most notable facets of the Life is its emphasis on the Benedictine order as an agent of spiritual conversion and comfort. Toward the end of the Life, the author takes pains to summarize the many benefits that Elizabeth Cary received from her interactions with the Benedictines: She honored very much all the Orders in Gods church, all being most wellcome to her house, which yet the Benedictin Fathers did the honer to frequent most, to which Order she allwayes had the most especiall devotion, having receaved from it the highest and greatest obligations; for besides that (which she ever highly esteemed so) which she had in common with all her Country, (as being of that nation that hath receaved its Christianity from the Benedictin Apostleship) she had many particular ones, being herself in part satisfyed in religion and reconciled by a Benedictin; and to one of the same Order, owing wholy (under god) the conversion of her children; her Ghostly Fathers being from the first to the last of this Order; and she herself having bene a little more then a yeare before her death, admitted into the Confraternity of st Benett.8

Cary also lived to see four of her daughters (Anne, Elizabeth, Lucy, Mary) join the English Benedictines at Cambrai between 1638 and 1639, “she much rejoycing to leave them in the number of the children of such a Father.”9 Further­more, Cary received her deathbed consolation and the last rites from Benedictine monks, and after her death her son Henry Cary professed at the English Benedictine monastery in Paris, while her son Patrick made a trial of the novitiate at the English Benedictine monastery in Douai.10 The Life thus traces the process by which members of a biological family became part of a larger spiritual clan through their devotion to St. Benedict and his order. As a member of the confraternity of St. Benedict, Elizabeth Cary claimed her own place within this Benedictine family and received Masses for her soul from the English Benedictine communities at Cambrai and Douai.11 Intended to be read within the Cambrai house, the Life itself was also the product of familial devotion. Written by Magdalena Cary perhaps in collaboration with her sisters, it bears marginal annotations by Mary Cary, Patrick Cary (in 1650, during his noviceship), and an unidentified Benedictine monk. In both its content and material characteristics, then, the Life demonstrates how one biological family situated itself within the broader spiritual family of the Benedictine order. In this process, the Cary family responded to the call of



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God, who relied on the Benedictines as intermediaries for his divine appeal. Speaking of her daughters’ conversion to Catholicism against all odds, Elizabeth Cary and her confessor Cuthbert (John) Fursdon averred that “the hand of God was in this change.”12 The Life thus reveals a cloistered understanding of communal formation as the product of God’s providential intercession, which assembles pious individuals in fellowship based on their shared filial obedience to St. Benedict. In its representation of the Carys’ transition from biological kinship to membership in a spiritual family headed by St. Benedict, The Life of the Lady Falkland reveals how cloistered forms of historical writing can benefit from philosophical analysis that is grounded in communal formation. This chapter uses Benedict Anderson’s theory of imagined community to consider how histories and life writing represent God as the center, architect, and sustainer of monastic communities that similarly exceed temporal and spatial boundaries. By paying attention to the various forms of imagined community fostered through death notices and convent histories, this chapter demonstrates that English Benedictine nuns viewed themselves as engaged in a constant dialog with the divine that resembles the I-­You dynamic proposed by Buber. Besides documenting such moments of contact with God for future generations, these genres complement secular women’s forms of historical writing and consequently offer new insights into the literary production of early modern women writers. As demonstrated by the pioneering anthology Her Own Life: Autobiographical Writings by 17th-­Century Englishwomen (1989), women wrote a surprisingly wide range of biographical and autobiographical texts, from Margaret Cavendish’s well-­known True Relation of My Birth, Breeding, and Life (1656) to the spiritual accounts of religious dissidents such as Susanna Parr and Sarah Davy.13 More recently, scholars have traced autobiographical strands in other genres, such as romance.14 A common form in English convents of all orders, death notices supply a major new subgenre of life writing that allowed these institutions to position themselves within several religious communities: a convent, an order, and the Catholic Church.15 Meanwhile, it is a critical commonplace that women did not compose formal histories, which has led scholars to establish an alternative canon of unconventional historical writings by women.16 Convents, however, produced formal histories of their houses, many of which are now becoming more accessible through scholarly editions.17 Reflecting an institutional viewpoint not found in secular women’s historical writings, these works can broaden our understanding of how and why women wrote history. Combining philosophical and material approaches, this chapter analyzes how historical writings reflect the nuns’ understanding that God was the center of religious life, who called future members to the community and

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sustained the convent through providence. Viewing themselves as both individual and collective recipients of these divine addresses, Benedictine historians fashioned imagined religious communities that transcended enclosure and other human limitations in order to participate in narratives that were simultaneously localized and cosmic. This chapter will also expand the Buberian model of the I-­You dynamic by demonstrating that Benedictine life writings and histories offer a basis for conceptualizing a We-­You relationship between God and the religious communities that he builds.

God’s Chosen Laborers: Imagined Communities and Collective Histories Like other monastic institutions past and present, early modern Benedictine convents composed histories and life writing in order to document their shared past for the benefit of future generations. These genres were essential to the cultivation of collective identity because monastic communities are based on spirituality rather than blood or social ties—a process of communal identification that begins when the monk or nun hears and heeds the call of the divine. The prologue to the Benedictine Rule opens with this summons, inviting readers to treat the text that follows as an address spoken directly to them: “Harken ô sonne to the precepts of a maister, and incline the eare of thy hart willingly to heare the admonition of a pious father.”18 While many may be called in this manner, the prologue indicates that only a few will answer: “our Lord seeking his labourer amongst the multitude to whom here he speaketh, sayeth again, Who is the man that will have life, and desireth to see good dayes? which if thou hearing answerest; I. God saith unto thee; If thou wilt have true and everlasting life, refraine thy tounge from evill, and thy lips that they speake not guile, Decline from evill, and doe good: Seeke after peace and pursue it.”19 This metaphor of the monk or nun as God’s “labourer” suggests that a monastic vocation involves a dialog between God and the soul: God invites, the “labourer” accepts, and God instructs the “labourer” on how to achieve salvation. Most important, it is God who begins this conversation, not the individual. As the English Benedictine Congregation comments on religious vocation: “The initiative in monastic life is God’s (Jn 15:16 [You have not chosen me: but I have chosen you]). He calls and we respond to his call.”20 Within the Benedictine tradition and monasticism more generally, the term “vocation” thus still carries the connotation of its Latin root (vocare, “to call”): the individual is summoned by God to enter religious life, the Benedictine order, and finally a particular house. The I-­You dynamic theorized by Buber offers further insight into this Benedictine understanding of vocation. Much as the individual Benedictine



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is chosen and hailed by God, so Buber contends that “the You encounters me by grace—it cannot be found by seeking . . . But I enter into a direct relationship to it. Thus the relationship is election and electing, passive and active at once.”21 The paradoxical tension created by Buber’s use of binaries (election/ electing, passive/active) reflects the dialogic nature of this encounter with the divine. Even though “grace” alone can initiate the I-­You relationship, there is also an onus on the individual addressed to respond actively to God’s invitation, like the laborer of the prologue. Just as the divine call eventually leads the monk or nun to the monastery, so too does the I-­You dynamic forcefully, if temporarily, rouse the individual from their immersion in the It-­world of objects, “the world in which one has to live and also can live comfortably—and that even offers us all sorts of stimulations and excitements, activities and knowledge. In this firm and wholesome chronicle the You-­world moments appear as queer lyric-­dramatic episodes. Their spell may be seductive, but they pull us dangerously to extremes, loosening the well-­tried structure, leaving behind more doubt than satisfaction, shaking up our security—altogether uncanny, altogether indispensable.”22 For monks and nuns, these “uncanny,” “queer lyric-­dramatic episodes” cause a renunciation of the “stimulations and excitements” of the secular world in favor of the radical “extremes” proposed by Jesus: to follow his example by abandoning the earthly “security” of family, possessions, and wealth (e.g., Luke 14:26, 18:22). It is in these moments when the divine calls out to individuals that the God-­centered community is established, and Buber consequently presents God as both the “center” and the “builder” of religious community.23 In both the Benedictine and Buberian paradigms, collective religious experience is ultimately predicated upon the individual’s response to a divine invitation to communion. These God-­centered communities are not limited to the face-­to-­face encounters that exist within the walls of the monastery. Viewing the cloister through the lens of Benedict Anderson’s theory of imagined community reveals that monastic community transcends both national boundaries and temporal limits. As Anderson explains, almost all human forms of community are imagined: “the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-­members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion . . . all communities larger than primordial villages of face-­to-­face contact (and perhaps even these) are imagined.”24 The word “communion” has an undeniably religious undertone, and Anderson’s use of this word as shorthand for a sense of shared membership is telling since he identifies the great religious faiths of the medieval era as the initial form of imagined community. These religious communities spanned continents, yet their members were bound by a shared sacred language and ecclesiastical hierarchy. Speaking of the Roman Catholic Church,

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Anderson contends that “the astonishing power of the papacy in its noonday is only comprehensible in terms of a trans-­European Latin-­writing clerisy, and a conception of the world, shared by virtually everyone, that the bilingual intelligentsia, by mediating between vernacular and Latin, mediated between earth and heaven.”25 By permanently dividing the Christian church in Western Europe, the Reformation and its aftershocks created a diverse set of smaller religious imagined communities that were based on the members’ adherence to shared theological tenets. As Christian theology continues to develop infinite variations, so churches of all denominations create similar kinds of community today. Members of monastic institutions belong to a number of religious imagined communities that form four concentric rings of identification. The outermost circle is the Roman Catholic Church itself, an entity that is both transnational and transhistorical by nature. Moving inward, monks and nuns also belong to a specific religious order (e.g., the Benedictines) that likewise spans place and time. Ideally speaking, the individual members of a religious order must identify with the charism (or particular devotional identity) of their order, as exemplified both by its founder or foundress and by subsequent generations of friars, monks, and nuns. The third concentric ring is a congregation of monasteries within a particular religious order, which is also often transhistorical and transnational (e.g., today the English Benedictine Congregation includes houses in Peru, the United States, and Zimbabwe). Finally, the innermost circle of identification is a specific house, a community that is defined by its members’ devotion to Christ, as expressed through a shared charism and as experienced in one particular place. The monastic community, then, is a religious imagined community that transcends time. In its commentary on the Benedictine vow of stability (a promise to remain within one house), the English Benedictine Congregation states that “the rootedness of a particular community’s life is not primarily about geographical location. It includes its history, and the wisdom it has inherited; the rock is Christ (1 Co 10:4).”26 As this observation suggests, all of these nesting rings of identification share the common center of God, who unites Catholics across the generations and throughout the earth. Early modern English Benedictine nuns were certainly aware of their participation in all of these religious imagined communities. Their engagement with the larger community of the Catholic Church may be seen in the nuns’ devotion to particular saints. Mary Southcote (professed 1627, d. 1641) of Ghent, for example, cultivated the favor of a wide range of saints associated with the Virgin Mary: “She was of a more then ordinary devotion to our Blessed Lady doing many pious practices in her honnour singularly addicting her Self to Reverence & Serve all the Glorious Virgins perticular friends, as St



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Joseph, St Joachim, St Ann, St John Baptist & his holy Parents, St Bernard & the rest of her Chaplins, St Cassamirus etc.”27 English Benedictine nuns also naturally viewed themselves as part of the imagined community of the Benedictine order. In a chapter speech on St. Benedict, Abbess Magdalen Lucy of Ghent conjures this fellowship as she exhorts her listeners to follow the Rule: “how Many Thousands of both sexes, & all ranks in Life from the scepture to the spade has this little Book bin a guid to . . . shall our Hearts fail & have the incitment of this great Saint, & so Many thousand of his followers.”28 It was not necessary for the Ghent Benedictines to meet Benedict and his “Thousands” of followers in order to view themselves as part of the same religious community. Similarly, the Brussels Statutes mandate that all monasteries observing its guidelines should cultivate a “pious Conjunction and charitable affection” by “mutuall correspondence, writing, and letters.”29 This clause created a religious imagined community at the level of the congregation by establishing a special tie among the five convents that followed the Brussels Statutes (Brussels, Dunkirk, Ghent, Pontoise, and Ypres). The nuns in these institutions cultivated this imagined community in many ways, including by circulating death notices within the congregation. Finally, English Benedictine nuns were, and remain, acutely aware of their houses as transhistorical communities based on a spiritual kinship that unites the living and the dead. In conversation with me, one modern Benedictine archivist referred to the seventeenth-­century foundresses of her community as “our mother beginners,” echoing a phrase employed c. 1699 in the house’s first book of obituaries.30 This spiritual sisterhood is at heart an imagined community based on membership within a specific institution, yet at the same time it extends outward as nuns participate in broader devotional communities. The genres of history and life writing played a vital role as English Benedictine nuns located themselves within various religious imagined communities, whether the Catholic Church, the Benedictine order, or a particular cloister. When collective experiences, such as those that create national or religious identity, are not based on the face-­to-­face interactions of Gemeinschaft (see chapter 1), individuals can perceive themselves as part of an imagined community by reading about its past.31 Both life writing and history were often occasional in nature, preserving otherwise ephemeral incidents that nuns viewed as signs of God’s favor to their cloister or its members. Miraculous cures experienced by nuns were frequently the spur for life writing. The Brussels Benedictines produced manuscript testimonials for the cures of Abbess Mary Vavasour (professed 1616, d. 1676) and lay sister Barbara Wilson (professed 1742, d. 1778).32 The Ghent Benedictines printed two narratives of miraculous healings: in 1661, one concerning Mary Minshall (professed 1649, d.  1693), and in 1785, another about lay sister Anna (Jane)

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Weardon (professed 1782, d. 1815).33 The Ghent convent also circulated a manu­ script account by Aloysia German (professed 1637, d. after 1672) that detailed her visions of the soul of John Sherman. German had helped convert Sherman, and he requested that she arrange five Masses for his soul so that he could be set free from Purgatory.34 Some nuns composed spiritual autobiographies at the request of their confessors, who sought to document their mystical experiences. Lucy Knatchbull produced a narrative of her spiritual life during her novitiate and early years at the Brussels Benedictines for Tobie Matthew, her unofficial advisor in the early 1620s.35 Similarly, Prioress Mary Clare Joseph of Jesus Bond of the Paris Benedictines wrote an account of “the state of her interior” at the command of her confessor, which is now lost but is said to have covered “many events” and included “the description of a Soul led by God quite above the ordinary way.”36 All of these subgenres of convent life writing offered textual evidence of those fleeting moments when the divine You made contact with a nun by healing her body or granting her supernatural favors. Historical writing, in contrast, chronicled the community’s collective experience of God’s aid, whether during times of tribulation or throughout the house’s existence. Abbess Mary Knatchbull (professed 1628, d.  1696) of Ghent wrote a history of the foundation of the filiation that she established at Boulogne, detailing how this fledgling institution survived a very difficult start.37 Trauma also spurred the production of histories, whether it resulted from internal discord or from external persecution. Abbess Christina Brent of Cambrai wrote a short history of the conflicts surrounding the controversial spiritual doctrines of Augustine Baker, while Thomas Willis, confessor to the Brussels Benedictines, composed two histories in 1761 and 1762 that attempted to explain the house’s disastrous quarrels during the early seventeenth century.38 Along similar lines, both the Cambrai and Paris houses produced narratives of their ordeals during the French Revolution.39 Precipitated by extraordinary spiritual or historical events, these occasional texts documented moments when the nuns felt the divine You interceding in their lives. Once enshrined in the communal history of the institution, such accounts allowed later nuns to view themselves as part of a community sustained by God. Some monastic historians provided an institutional viewpoint on their cloisters’ past, chronicling its continued survival over decades. Abbess Anne Neville of Pontoise assembled a comparative history of the congregation of English institutions following the Brussels Statutes (Brussels, Dunkirk, Ghent, Pontoise).40 Meanwhile, three Paris nuns—Prioress Agnes of the Infant Jesus (Agnes) Temple (professed 1662, d.  1726), Teresa of the Infant Jesus (Teresa) Cook (professed 1663, d.  1728), and Elizabeth of the Blessed Lady (Elizabeth) Cook (professed 1663, d.  1726)—and their confessor Bennet (William) Nelson compiled a history of the house (1695) based on



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the nuns’ memories and written accounts.41 By documenting the common history of a house or congregation of convents, these long-­ranging projects served as textual constructions of religious imagined community that future readers could extend to their own time. The rest of this chapter examines how the philosophical, bibliographical, and material aspects of obituaries and histories reveal the nuns’ participation in various religious imagined communities as well as their shared understanding that these spiritual families had been assembled and sustained by God.

“Our Venerable Mother-Beginners”: Death Notices and Communal Identity Death notices were one of the most important forms of writing within the English Benedictine convents, second only to the genre of statutes in their ability to establish corporate identity. More than two hundred death notices survive today, easily surpassing in sheer number most other extant kinds of writings generated by English Benedictine nuns. This genre is found in such large numbers among the English Benedictines partly because the statutes and constitutions of these institutions mandated that the lives of deceased nuns should be commemorated in a register. As the Brussels Statutes explain, this book should contain “all the names of such Religious as in the Monastery departed this life, and in the same also is to bee written if any thing of noate hapned to them, either in their life or at their death that it may serve for an Example to Posteritie, and lett these things bee reade the day before their yeares yndes, or Annyversaryes, that peculiar care and memory may bee had of them.”42 The purpose of death notices was therefore partly didactic (“an Example to Posteritie”) and partly commemorative (“memory”). Caroline Bowden has already shown that English convents used obituaries for the vital task of establishing corporate identity: “The convent was a community created in religion by law rather than by marriage and blood ties; its identity had to be created self-­consciously.”43 Yet the nature of cloistered community is not as self-­evident as we might assume. By allowing nuns to learn about their convent’s past, Benedictine death notices facilitated their participation in an overlapping set of religious imagined communities that transcended time and place. At the same time, death notices reveal the nuns’ understanding that God was the center and builder of these communities, which ranged from the local cloister to the Catholic Church.

A Formal Analysis of Benedictine Death Notices Since the death notice is a genre specific to convents, it is necessary to outline the contours of this little-­known subgenre of life writing. The English

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Benedictine convents produced three different forms of death notices (table 3), which were generally composed by the abbess, prioress, or (at Paris) the subprioress. The first two forms, obituaries and circular bills, contained similar information (the nuns’ parentage, place of origin, profession date, and death date) and ended with a request for the readers’ or listeners’ prayers. Yet these subgenres differed in both their format and audience. The obituary was produced for the deceased nun’s convent in accordance with its statutes. The longest form of death notices, obituaries often provide richly detailed narratives in order to spur pious prayers and devout imitation. These texts were read aloud yearly on the day before the anniversary of the nun’s death, directly following the reading of the martyrology either during Mass or in the refectory. Seventy-­seven obituaries exist from Cambrai, Ghent, Paris, and Pontoise.44 As their name suggests, circular bills were written for circulation among an external audience, whether that was the convent’s congregation, other English cloisters, or Catholics more generally. Shorter in length and more formulaic than obituaries, circular bills supply a pithy summary of the deceased nun’s virtues and request that readers pray for her soul so that she can avoid Purgatory or lessen her time there. One hundred nine death notices of this kind are extant from Paris and Pontoise. A second kind of circular bill was printed in Latin and probably circulated more widely among English Catholics and the convent’s local network. Twenty-­four survive from Ghent, Dunkirk, and Pontoise. Even terser and more methodical than the circular bills sent to the congregation, these printed notices offered a thumbnail sketch of the deceased nun’s life and asked for the readers’ prayers. Up until the middle of the eighteenth century, these bills were custom-­printed for each nun, a practice that continued for abbesses. By the late eighteenth century, however, convents were using preprinted bills for choir sisters and lay sisters, with blanks for the name and dates of the deceased nun. The third form of death notice is the death chapter, a short speech delivered by the abbess to the assembled community. As Abbess Mary Laurentia Ward explained in a 1917 edition of the Ghent house’s death notices, “on the thirtieth day after the decease of a member .  .  . the religious assemble in the Chapter-­house to recite the Seven Penitential Psalms for the departed, and the Superior gives an exhortation on the lessons to be drawn from the life and death of the deceased sister.”45 Composed on loose bifolia like other chapter speeches, these more ephemeral texts have largely disappeared, with the exception of seven eighteenth-­century death chapters from Ghent. In their composition and circulation, English Benedictine death notices illustrate the concentric circles of the nuns’ religious imagined communities. At the local level, death chapters and obituaries allowed nuns to create



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Table 3. Extant death notices No. extant

Dates

OBITUARIES

Cambrai Ghent Paris Pontoise

15 37 32 1

1631–51 1627–59 1652–1704, 1767, 1775, 1784–99 1687

CIRCULAR BILLS

Dunkirk Ghent Paris Pontoise

18 5 1 109

1748–90 1691, 1764, 1766, 1781, 1794 1789 1656–1785

DEATH CHAPTERS

Ghent

7

1741–59

a transhistorical community that united the past and present members of their house. Meanwhile, manuscript and printed circular bills evoked broader communities: the congregation, the order, and the church. In their prefatory remarks to manuscript compilations of death notices, abbesses and prioresses recognized the importance of this genre in establishing these various communal identifications. Several compilers place their production within the localized monastic community by referring to the statutes and constitutions that mandated the production of obituaries. The preface to the Paris obituaries—which is signed by Agnes Temple, Teresa Cook, and Elizabeth Cook—opens by citing the Paris Constitutions’ mandate and stating the work was produced “to complie with these our solid and Descreet Constitutions.”46 Likewise, the Ghent obituaries begin with a comment that the ensuing work “t’will be the more pleasing to God; because tis Conform to our Statutes.”47 At the same time, members of these convents viewed death notices as a means of instilling and shaping communal spirituality through the commemoration and evocation of the dead. The preface to the Paris obituaries states that the authors were motivated by “the great obligations we have to our venerable Mother-­beginners & that the Memmory of their Vertues should be the more Deeply imprinted in our harts and make us like Good children faithfully walke, in the same paths; they did with so much labour trace out for us.”48 This process of spiritual formation creates imagined community as nuns identify themselves as the “children” of their “Mother-­beginners” by emulating their piety. Read aloud

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yearly to the assembled convent, obituaries served as a primary mechanism for “imprint[ing]” these “Vertues” and creating the imagined community of the cloister. Abbess Anne Neville of Pontoise expresses similar sentiments about this genre in the 1678 preface to her register of circular bills: “by this occation, I pay them [the dead] my respect and gratitude, and confound my selfe to see the litle care I take to immitate theyr vertues; yet I am incourraged to hope a larg participation by theyr powrfull intercession before Allmighty God. with a good advaunce in vertu by thos of the Community that shale succeede both them and us, by the emulation they may have to imitate theyr vertues and imbrace thos good examples they have left us.”49 In Neville’s view, the dead are actively involved in shaping their community’s ongoing life, both by providing examples for imitation and by aiding their successors through “intercession.” Nuns also acknowledged that death notices allowed for communal identification beyond the limits of their enclosure. The Paris compilers, for example, place their work within a wider monastic context by noting that it is “the Practis of our Mother house of Cambray and other Communitys” to write obituaries.50 Meanwhile, the Ghent preface defines the production of obituaries as a Catholic practice akin to hagiography: “many Other Warrants in holy Scripture as also the Continual practice of our holy Mother the Chatholick Church doth authorise, the exhibiting of all due respect, to the true servants of God almighty by Recording their Good works.”51 English Benedictine nuns therefore saw death notices as a means of establishing and participating in multiple communities, both local and imagined, that were based on shared religious identity.

A Philosophical Analysis of Death Notices and Monastic Vocation In their representation of vocation, death notices convey the nuns’ understanding that God was both the center and builder of these overlapping communities, whose members had heard and responded to the uncanny call of the divine You. Much as in the Buberian model, the preface to the Ghent obituaries identifies God as the builder of religious community: “the Eternall God . . . ever lov’d these hapy souls with an Eternal Charity drawing them by a holy vocation in time Convenient to his especiall service.”52 The ways in which God “draw[s]” the nuns to this “service” can be profitably analyzed through Buber’s comments on how the divine You breaks through the It-­ world to address the individual: “Each of us is encased in an armour whose task is to ward off signs. Signs happen to us without respite, living means being addressed, we would need only to present ourselves and to perceive. But the risk is too dangerous for us, the soundless thunderings seem to threaten us with annihilation . . . Each of us is encased in an armour which we soon,



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out of familiarity, no longer notice. There are only moments which penetrate it and stir the soul to sensibility.”53 These unsettling and “stir[ring]” “moments” occur when the otherworldly call of the You supersedes the It-­ world, drawing human beings into a relational dialog with God. Although humanity only perceives these signs occasionally, Buber contends that God speaks to us continually: “If we name the speaker of this speech God, then it is always the God of a moment, a moment God . . . out of the givers of the signs, the speakers of the words in lived life, out of the moment Gods there arises for us with a single identity the Lord of the voice, the One.”54 Within a cloistered context, these “signs” function as God’s invitation to monastic life, as mediated through various “speakers” and events. By chronicling how individual nuns’ vocations arose from such strange moments, Benedictine death notices reflect the fundamental premise that God is the creator, center, and sustainer of monastic community. Some death notices describe vocations that originated from direct engagement between God and the soul, whether through spiritual or supernatural means. In many cases, this call occurred internally as God addressed the soul in prayer. Ruperta (Margaret) Browne (professed 1715, d.  1755) of Ghent was called to religion during a spiritual retreat undertaken in the Ghent house’s school.55 In another example, Anne Neville’s obituary for Clare Vaughan (professed 1657, d. 1687) of Pontoise uses the language of interiority to represent this call: “Allmighty God who certaynly had desighnd her, for on[e] of his cheefe magazins of spirituall ritches, toucht her hart, with soe efficacious a call, that not withstanding all thos naturall oppositions, which were many in her, fomented by the craft and malice of our invisible enimy, yet she firmly resolved uppon a Religious life.”56 Having destined Vaughan to be a storehouse of “spirituall ritches,” God mysteriously “toucht her hart” so that she could overcome Satan and her “naturall” aversion to monastic life. Only with God’s assistance, then, could Vaughan achieve her vocation. God’s call could also occur in supernatural ways that dramatically exceeded everyday life, effectively pulling aside the curtain of the It-­world. Angela (Issett) Mullins (professed 1640, d.  1641) of Cambrai discerned her vocation after “a vision of the soules in Purgatory & of what they suffred, after which shee . . . addicted herselfe to prayer & devotion & haveing a vocation to dedicate her selfe to God in Religion shee came to this our Convent.”57 Alexia (Margaret) Grey (professed 1631, d. 1640) of Ghent experienced an even more striking spur to religious life. Enjoying herself “in all kind of Recreation, Balls, Maskes and the Like,” Grey dreamed of being called before God’s tribunal and receiving damnation for her frivolous life.58 Grey was momentarily shaken by this dream, but she carried on as before until God intervened during a ball: “Allmighty God, out of his infinite mercy whilst she

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was actually dancing, even in one of the turns of the same dance turn’d her heart wholy towards him Calling her efficatiously to religion, making no Delay, having her former vision, or Dream as she Call[ed] it a fresh represented to her memory, she presently prepar’d for her Journey and Came to Ghent.”59 As in the case of Vaughan, God directly calls Grey to religious life by touching her heart. This remarkable obituary shows that God persisted in addressing Grey and used different mediums, first a vision and then a ball. When the memory of her vision resurfaced at the ball, the ordinary became extraordinary, as the punning repetition of “turns” and “turn’d” indicates. Grey leaves behind the secular beaux of the ball for a divine spouse who moves her previously untouched heart with spiritual love. In other instances, nuns experienced God’s call through various forms of mediation. Quite often, these vocations arose out of the humdrum minutiae of everyday life, much as Buber theorizes: “One should beware al­ together of understanding the conversation with God . . . as something that occurs merely apart from or above the everyday. God’s address to man penetrates the events in all our lives and all the events in the world around us.”60 Benedictine nuns perceived other people and even objects as sources of such divine addresses. Ursula Trevillian (professed 1667, d. 1690) of Paris, for example, found her vocation through books and conversation: “she could finde noe repose in Soule; tell she mett with Reverend fathar Peter Salvin one of our holy order and had Ben our Confessor . . . he gave her the Booke called the Kingdom of God in the Soule.”61 Likewise, Mary Magdalen (Mary) Hugginson (professed 1723, d. 1739) of Pontoise experienced a double call to two overlapping religious communities, first to Catholicism and then to monasticism: “her parents were Quakers but she by Conversing with Catholicks & reading was Converted.”62 Sometimes these divine invitations directed souls to even more specific communities. Gertrude (Anne) Hanne (professed 1677, d. 1701) of Paris discerned her vocation after reading books by Gertrude More and Augustine Baker: “she layd out all ways she could to be received into some Religious house where they follow’d those heavenly instructions.”63 Even apparently mundane events could therefore serve as vehicles for the address of the divine You to the soul. Other nuns received their vocation through the intervention of supernatural intercessors, a phenomenon of special interest to the writers of Ghent’s obituaries. Like Huggerson, Teresa (Jane) Gardiner (professed 1642, d. 1650) was first called to Catholicism and then to monastic life. Struggling over her faith, she asked the Virgin to send her “a Clear Light to Discern the true religion”: “She had no sooner said this, but Casting up her eyes again, she saw a most excellent and beautifull Lady in the midst of the rome, which as soon as she beheld ’twas Given her Clearly to und[er] stand that it was the



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mother of God, but with all perceiving by the turning away of her Countenance, that she was displeas’d at her making as it were instantly towards the door. At which she Immediatly leapt out of her bed, following her, whilst suddenly the Glorious Virgin Disappear’d the door still remaining fast shutt.”64 Perceiving this vision as evidence that Catholicism was the true faith, Gardiner converted. Later on, Gardiner’s husband died on the feast of the Presentation of the Virgin (November 21), and Gardiner immediately announced her plan to become a nun. Noting the timing, her friend speculated that the Virgin Mary was the source of her vocation: “the other struck with Joyfull admiration, told her that her Ladiship had Chosen a blessed Day to fix upon so Good a resolution, and amongst other Good discourses said Sure madam our blessed lady has had a Chief hand in this vocation of yours, adding pray tell me Confidently madam has she not? my Lady Gardiner reply’d the truth of it is, our blessed Lady has been very Good to me.”65 Since Gardiner professed at Ghent, which was dedicated specially to the Immaculate Conception of Mary, the Virgin was an appropriate intermediary for God’s call. Cecily (Jane) Price (d. 1630), who professed in 1604 at Brussels and then joined Ghent, experienced an even more striking form of divine intercession while she walked in the garden: “suddenly appear some six Glorious and most beautiful virgins in the habit of benedictines and in a Courtious Gracious manner they told her they Came to make her a visit, Desiring to know of her, if for the Love of God she would voluntarily l[e]ave the world and all those fortunes she might enjoy, and that they Came to assure her in behalf of Eternal Truth, that if she would forsake, and become a poor religious woman of their Order, she should experience the promise of Chris[t] Jesus their spouse.”66 These virgins articulate their intercessory role by asking Price to enter into monastic life “for the Love of God” and by conveying the promises of Christ. Although Price did not recognize their order, she traveled to the Continent and visited convents until she arrived at Brussels and saw the same habit. In effect, the Benedictine order itself invited her to join its religious communion. Death notices also illustrate God’s role as a builder of monastic community by chronicling how God facilitated entrance into the cloister. In many cases, would-­be nuns faced substantial obstacles as they sought to answer the call of the divine You. Buber’s theory of the It-­world offers one way of understanding the tension caused by a vocation. Buber proposes two corollaries that help to distinguish the It-­world from the You-­world of God: “The It-­world hangs together in space and time. The You-­world does not hang together in space and time.”67 Through this concrete manifestation in “space and time,” the It-­world offers “stimulations and excitements” that serve as a distraction from the otherworldly realm of You.68 While the physical monastery is also part of the It-­world, religious imagined community allows

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professed religious to commune with inhabitants of the celestial You-­world (e.g., God, saints, the pious dead). Benedictine death notices represent God as a liberator who enables chosen souls to enter into this monastic communion. Quite often, nuns attributed broken engagements to divine intervention, as in the case of Catherine Sheldon (professed 1642, d. 1650) of Cambrai: “shee might have had a very considerable portion in the world if shee would have stayed with her parants who design’d to have setled her in it very advantagiously, but Allmighty God who designed her wholy for himselfe permitted that all the treaties made by her parants to engage her in the world were strangly & sometimes surpriseingly broaken of[f] & came to nothing.”69 God thwarts the marriage plans of Sheldon’s parents by choosing her for his own spouse, fulfilling his divine “design” through an uncanny influence (“strangly,” “surpriseingly”). Some women experienced serious opposition from their friends and family. Abbess Magdalen Lucy’s death chapter for Teresa (Maria Joanna) Martins (professed 1729, d. 1755) of Ghent, a Flemish woman, chronicles one such example: “All here knows, or has heard, of the great opposition our dear deceased Dame met with from her secular friends, upon her pious intentions of being religious, and much more so when they found the choice of place determined among strangers [i.e., Englishwomen]. But the all-­powerful hand of God, that called her to this state strengthend her to slight all the usual baits a wealthy inheritance could suggest.”70 Lucy praises Martins’s scorn for the “baits” of the secular world, but from a Buberian perspective the enticements of “a wealthy inheritance” function as the material comforts of the It-­world, which Martins resists through “the all-­powerful hand of God.” Sometimes divine mediation entailed even more dramatic situations, as shown by a circular bill for Scholastica (Helen) Higginson (professed 1671, d. 1730) of Pontoise: “she was converted from a Presbyterian to the Catholick Religion in her tender years, & suffer’d much on that account from her Parents, who seeing they cou’d not shake her constancy put her out of Doors in a cold frosty night, but Providence who neglects not those who combats by it placed her in a Pious family where it gave her as a Pledge of future recompence, a vocation to a Religious state.”71 Drawn first to Catholicism and then to monastic life, Higginson follows the paternal guidance of “Providence” as she leaves her hostile biological kindred for a “Pious family” and then for the religious sisterhood of the cloister. By recording God’s assistance in helping previous members achieve their vocations, death notices invited current nuns to view themselves as part of a community built by God over decades and, eventually, over centuries. From a communal perspective, these vocations served as evidence of God’s protective care for the community God had created. On her deathbed, Teresa (Catherine) Matlock (professed 1624, d.  1650) of Ghent, known for



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making ingenious silk-­work flowers, gave voice to this perspective. Another nun expressed hope that God would let her live: “we Cannot Spare you[.] who shall Do the silk work when you’re Dead. You know what a help it is in those hard times for Supplys to the Community.”72 Matlock responded with a reminder that God would compensate for her loss with new vocations: “God Allmighty never letts there be a want of any, but when he was pleas’d to take any away of the religious out of this world he rais’d up some other to supply their place, & be as usefull to the Common Good.”73 Given precarious convent finances, providential events that ensured the continued existence of these institutions served as evidence of divine favor, as the second half of this chapter will demonstrate.74 A particularly interesting example of this attitude toward vocations occurs in the obituary for Maria (Mary) Appleby (professed 1667, d. 1704) of Paris. She was the niece of Prioress Justina Gascoigne, who depended so completely on providence that she took the following motto: “It is good for me to adhear to God: And put my hope in him.”75 Before Appleby’s profession, the Paris nuns were deeply in debt with little expectation of freeing themselves from this encumbrance: they stil owed much for this hous we are now in, and had no prospect of getting wherewith to pay it, which made her Reverence [Gascoigne] and the rest of our Reverend Mothers Beginers to look upon it as a singular providence of God, that her Neece who was like to have a great fortune and seemed to be of a fine Religious spirit should make choice of our poor Monastery preferable to any other, and that which stil augmented their comfort was to find her so firmly settled in such her resolution that it could not be shaken even by her Maid who in other things had great power with her, for she had not been long in the hous but perceiving the Religious to be in a low condition had a mind to go to some other Monastery . . . she was not in that able to prevaile any thing upon her; which gave our said Reverend Mothers to confide that as Almighty God had directed her to us, he would conduct al to a happy end, and so wholy casting al their care and concearns into the hands of divine providince, they proceeded . . . And the event made appeare how agreable to his divine Majesty such their dependance on his Paternall Providence was unto him, as wel by his sending a sicknes to Sister Bridgit Swales which in three weaks space carry’d her away; as in giving to Mother Maria so great a fervor.76

Appleby brought the Paris house an unusually large portion of 2,500 pounds sterling, allowing Gascoigne to repay its considerable debts. This obituary demonstrates how one vocation could affect the community at large. God’s

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providence flows along several different vectors. First, God directs Appleby to join the Paris cloister, thereby benefiting her soul. Second, God provides financial support to the community, then “poor” and “low,” through her sizable dowry. Finally, God removes an obstacle to Appleby’s profession by allowing her maid to die. Swales had professed in 1665 on her deathbed, and her noticeably short obituary foregrounds her vocation: “our Blessed Saviour was pleased to cast his eyes of compassion upon her drawing her both out of the darknes of heresi into the catholic church. and also conducted her unto the happy estate of a Religious Life.”77 The obituary makes no mention of Swales’s desire to leave the house without professing, which reveals how the writers of death notices shaped the imagined community of their house. Swales is recuperated as a generic example of monastic piety, even though she had scorned the house and threatened its survival. More important, in Appleby’s obituary the Paris nuns showed a praiseworthy reliance on the “Paternall Providence” that sustained their convent by “wholy casting al their care and concearns into the hands of divine providence.” Enshrined in the shared history of the Paris convent through obituaries for Appleby and Gascoigne, this incident became a foundational part of the nuns’ religious imagined community. Death notices in turn position the convent as part of a larger religious community through their memorialization of nuns’ interactions with various intercessors. By identifying with and petitioning particular saints, cloistered women bridged the gap between their terrestrial community and the celestial society of heaven. Abbess Mary Roper of Ghent encouraged members of her convent to view themselves as part of the imagined community of the Benedictine order: “she much exhorted all new beginners to indeavour by earnest prayer to gett a Constant & affectionate devotion to our holy father and his blessed Children in heaven; that by their intercession, they might be true observers of his holy rule.”78 Personal devotion to patron saints also established a transcendent form of religious imagined community. Appearing in a dream to Matlock, St. Augustine taught her to create silk replicas of leaves: “she found her self in a Garden full of all sorts of Curious plants & flowers, beholding likewise there a Comly venerable and Gratious old Man, And she presently understood it was her Great patron St Augustin he addressing towards her, to her that to fullfill her earnest wish and Desire, he would teach her ho[w] to Imprint those leaves in Silkwork, Instantly Derecting her in all perticulars.”79 As in a typical patron-­client relationship, Augustine rewards Matlock’s devotion to him by taking a personal interest in advancing her talent for silk work and, through that, the financial welfare of her convent. Much like saints, deceased nuns could serve as intercessors for their monastic families on earth, further cementing the bonds that



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joined the physical monastery to the intangible space of heaven. Indeed, the Cambrai Constitutions and Paris Constitutions stipulate that the register of the dead should contain “all such things as happened in their lives, at their death, or after their death, worthy of note and memorie.”80 The obituary for Catherine (Elizabeth) Conyers (professed 1665, d.  1703) of Paris thus attributes the convent’s enjoyment of good health to her intercession, citing her deathbed prayers that the community would not be infected by her sickness: “she hoped in Sweet Jesus that the harm wou’d only be to herself; and accordingly it prov’d, for both al the time of her ilnes and several months after her Death we enjoy’d better health than the Community had done of some years before .  .  . we have just cause to beleeve she .  .  . wil now more then ever be a powerful Soliciter for us unto Almighty God, that we may al happily arrive where I trust in sweet Jesus, she is arrived.”81 These references to the intercession of saintly figures indicate that the cloistered community exists simultaneously in the visible realm of the It-­world and the hidden celestial plane of the You-­world. Through the religious imagined community of the cloister, Benedictine nuns gained entrance into this fellowship while still on earth and prepared to join it permanently in death, thus achieving the ultimate purpose of their vocation.

A Material Analysis of Death Notices and Imagined Community In both their composition and circulation, death notices reveal the ways that English Benedictine convents positioned themselves within these various imagined communities. Most death notices were likely written on loose sheets of paper, much like chapter speeches. The Ghent death-­chapter speeches survived into the nineteenth century in this format, and the bifolium would have been a convenient medium for producing and distributing multiple copies of a circular bill.82 Obituaries likewise seem to have been first written in one copy on loose sheets. If this exemplar was damaged or mislaid, the result was an unfillable lacuna in the community’s imagined history, as shown by a truncated obituary for Cecily Price of Brussels and Ghent. Partway through a relation of an incident involving Price and a Brussels novice, the copyist from Ghent stopped abruptly, crossed out what she had written of this tale, and added this remark: “The Latter part of this Holy Religious woman’s life was unluckily lost by some Seculars who for their edification Desir’d the reading of it.”83 This loss must have occurred at some point after Tobie Matthew composed his Life of Lady Lucy Knatchbull (1652), which relates the full narrative of Price and the novice on the basis of her obituary. The misplacement of Price’s obituary reveals the importance of keeping these essential documents safe within the cloister. Indeed, the Paris Constitutions specify that the convent’s obituaries “shall bee kept in Depositum.”84

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A chest with three keys held separately by the prioress and two depositaries, the “Depositum” was also the repository for the house’s financial and legal documents. This location consequently signaled the foundational nature of the Paris obituaries. In their initial format, then, death notices presented a paradox, as these essential texts were extant in an ephemeral medium that required special preservation. Nuns responded to this conundrum by copying death notices into the more durable form of the codex. The Ghent obituaries survive in one eighteenth-­century copy, written by a scribe who was working from damaged or occasionally illegible originals. The obituary for Mary Digby (professed 1637, d. 1641) is only one of several containing blank spaces that represent missing words: “She had given a kind of a Gracious [blank] to all.”85 Intriguingly, the accounts of Lucy Knatchbull, Eugenia (Jane) Poulton (professed at Brussels 1605, d. 1646), and Magdalen (Elizabeth) Digby (professed at Brussels 1611, d.  1659) all refer to Matthew’s Life of Lady Lucy Knatchbull (1652) by page numbers that agree with the convent’s manuscript copy of this work. Furthermore, Matthew’s Life is referenced as Our Foundations, the title inscribed on the manuscript’s cover, as in this example from Knatchbull’s obituary: “the Rest you may please to read out of our Records in the book of our foundation. page.  152. 153. 154. and so on.”86 Since Knatchbull and Poulton died well before Matthew penned his biography and much of the material in Knatchbull’s obituary derives from Matthew’s text, it seems that either the Ghent house composed its obituaries long after the nun’s decease or that someone (perhaps the scribe) revised earlier texts. This internal evidence suggests that death notices could be the product of a complex negotiation of communal history, as viewed by not just the nuns themselves but also outsiders. Demonstrating a similar view of death notices as only one of several genres that constituted a collective monastic past, other nuns transcribed obituaries or circular bills into compendia of key records. The Cambrai obituaries, for example, constitute only part of the manuscript in which they appear. Read right-­side-­up, the first two-­thirds of the manuscript contains a catalog of professions and boarders, financial accounts (later cut out), and a list of graves. To read the obituaries, one must flip the manuscript upside-­ down and read from the back cover. This manuscript was transcribed sometime around 1725, which is the last recorded date for both burials and the arrival of boarders. Although the copyist only included fifteen obituaries, she meant to continue onward, as she concludes with an apparently cryptic date, “the 18 of february 1654.”87 The final obituary is for Cecilia Hall (professed 1648, d.  1651), whose death was followed by that of Viviana (Mary) Yaxley (professed at Brussels 1621) on February 18, 1654. Since the obverse of



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the next leaf contains the last entries of graves, perhaps the copyist stopped here in the realization that she had nearly run out of room. The circular bills from Pontoise are largely extant in a similarly miscellaneous manuscript begun in the hand of Anne Neville, the community’s fourth abbess. In 1678, nearly thirty years after the convent’s founding, Neville created a register of the house in a manuscript that starts with her transcription of financial and liturgical information (alms received, prayers due to benefactors, liturgical customs, and a rosary pardon confirmed by Rome). After these records, Neville devoted a page or more to each member of the convent, in chronological order based on their date of entrance. In addition to including circular bills for those who died before and during her abbacy, Neville composed short entries for each living nun by providing their parentage and profession dates. While her successor Elizabeth Dabridgecourt added in death dates for many of the nuns who died while she was abbess, she did not always transcribe their circular bills. An eighteenth-­century abbess eventually followed Neville’s model by adding death notices for these entries. In this case, the changing handwriting—from Neville to Dabridgecourt to succeeding abbesses—reflects the larger historical arc of the convent’s imagined community, as later nuns joined their predecessors in a shared act of collective commemoration. The circumstances of the Paris obituaries offer further insight into the need to construct imagined community through the genre of death notices. English Benedictine monasteries were not formally obliged to follow their statutes and constitutions to the letter, and sometimes composition of death notices fell by the wayside. The Paris Benedictines, for example, did not begin composing obituaries until almost fifty years after their foundation in 1652. As previously noted, most of the Paris obituaries were composed jointly by Prioress Agnes of the Infant Jesus Temple and two members of the council responsible for governance: Elizabeth of the Blessed Lady Cook and her biological sister Teresa of the Infant Jesus Cook. Transcribed by Teresa Cook, this manuscript dates from around 1699 since the final entry in Cook’s hand is an obituary for lay sister Benedicta Pease (professed 1670, d. 1699). A second set of obituaries in a different hand covers the years 1701 to 1704. After that point, the manuscript offers only a terse register of death dates. Fifteen nuns died between 1705 and Temple’s death in 1726, so it seems as though even Temple herself was unable to maintain a consistent practice of writing obituaries. Yet as the preface signed by Temple and the Cook sisters indicates, the convent understood obituaries as an important means of preserving communal memories for future generations: “if we neclected the doeing this in our Times who had the knowledg of them. It could not be Expected from others that follow us to doe it, knowing little or nothing of them.”88 Although the text is signed only by Temple and the Cook sisters, its

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production resulted from a collective effort, as demonstrated by a marginal note placed beside a miraculous spiritual cure attributed to Prioress Bridget More: “we did not intend to write Miracles . . . but by importunity of Mother Wenefride Curtis who was the Novis here mentioned & to whom it hapned made us put in the say’d passage.”89 Since the obituary itself does not name the novice, Cook probably inserted this clarification after Curtis’s own death in 1710. This comment indicates that the Paris obituaries were based on the memories of the whole house. As the first generation of Paris nuns passed away, the convent used obituaries to establish a transhistorical imagined community that could unite its past and present members. A closer inspection of the formal and material characteristics of Benedictine death notices reveals how these texts actively sought to create imagined community. Each of the Paris obituaries concludes with a formulaic call for communal prayer, as in the obituary for Gertrude (Elizabeth) Hodson (professed 1650, d. 1652), the first to die: “Let us offer up our prayers for her resyting the de pro[f]undis, this being her Anniversary day. Requiescat in pace Amen.”90 The use of the first-­person plural (“us”) encourages the convent to view itself as a collective entity connected to the dead through prayer. Other examples offer insights into how convents incorporated death notices into their daily lives. The Ghent obituaries are all extremely long examples of the genre, perhaps prohibitively so for reading aloud. Each entry begins with a concise summary of the deceased nun’s virtues, and the community may have heard these thumbnail sketches rather than the entire obituary, as in this example: “Anno Domini 1635 On the 22 of July Dame Hieronima Waldegrave Changed this Transitory for a better in the 8 year of her profession. her most notable virtues was Great Zeal, Punctuality in observances & Prudence.”91 While the longer version was available for consultation, this pithy description of Waldegrave’s “Great Zeal, Punctuality in observances & Prudence” gave the community an exemplar to imitate and allowed them to identify Waldegrave as part of their monastic family. A second copy of the Pontoise circular bills (Book of the Anniversarys and Bills) offers an even more interesting example of how one convent attempted to facilitate annual remembrance of its past members.92 Neville noted on the front pastedown of her register that it should be kept by the abbess or her secretary (also known as her chaplain). While Neville’s register did not circulate in the convent, Book of the Anniversarys seems to have been produced for communal reading. Begun around 1715, this manuscript was turned over to the archdiocese at the time of the house’s dissolution in 1786. In addition to providing slightly altered versions of the circular bills found in Neville’s register, this manuscript contains additional notices from 1739 through 1785. The copyist has arranged her materials in a format that could easily be incorporated into the



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house’s liturgical calendar. While Neville had recorded death notices by the chronological order of profession dates, the transcriber of Book of the Anniversarys followed the monthly calendar. The nun in charge of reading that day’s entry could easily use the month-­by-­month index at the front of the manuscript to locate the relevant circular bills. One marginal note added by the original transcriber indicates that she intended the manuscript to be used for this purpose. The circular bill for Mary Roper (professed 1659, d. 1690) is accompanied by this note: “turn to Sister Martha one the same day.”93 Lay sister Martha Hardwike (professed 1666) had died on the same day in 1703, so this note reminds the reader that she must read a second circular bill. Through both their adaptation of existing death notices and their formulaic evocation of imagined community, English Benedictines created a transhistorical communal memory based on the reading of death notices. Circular bills, whether printed or manuscript, also addressed several broader imagined communities outside of the particular cloister. The five houses that observed the Brussels Statutes (Brussels, Dunkirk, Ghent, Pontoise, Ypres) exchanged death notices with one another, strengthening the imagined community of their congregation. Some printed bills are accompanied by information about provenance that offers glimpses of how this circulation operated. The Irish Benedictines at Ypres were spared the trauma of losing their library and papers during the French Revolution, and they were consequently able to provide English Benedictine houses with copies of several printed bills. Mary Placida Selby, abbess of the Teignmouth Benedictines from 1812 to 1869, enterprisingly sought out death notices from her community’s years at Dunkirk. The resulting collection bears a note stating that its contents include “copies of mortuary-­bills lately sent us from Ipres.”94 The Oulton Benedictines, who were the spiritual descendants of the Ghent foundation, likewise benefited from the kindness of the Ypres community, which later moved to Kylemore, Ireland. A printed death bill for Paula (Margaret) Knatchbull (professed 1627, d. 1691) bears the following comment in blue ballpoint pen from a nun at Oulton: “Found in an old library Book at Kylemore & sent to us by Lady Abbess, in June 1957.”95 Printed death notices also circulated beyond the confines of a particular congregation, as shown by a note added by Mary Justina Rumsey of Teignmouth to a partial death notice for Maria Anna Joseph (Anne Joseph) Wells (professed 1752, d. 1792) from Dunkirk: “This death-­bill was sent us in 1900 by our Augustinian Sisters at Abbotsleigh, who found it in its present condition among their papers.”96 The Abbotsleigh community descended from the English Augustinians at Louvain, suggesting that the Dunkirk nuns sent death notices to other English houses, irrespective of their order. Such circular bills may also have been intended for local Catholic circles. In transcribing her copy of the circular bill

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for Abbess Catherine (Elizabeth) Wigmore (professed at Ghent 1626, d. 1656) of Pontoise, Anne Neville specifically identified the intended recipient as the congregation of Benedictine monasteries following the Brussels Statutes: “The circuler bill made at her death and sent to the monasteryes of our Congregation.”97 The writer of the Ghent house’s obituary for Wigmore includes a short excerpt from this bill, noting, “Her most sad and Good Children put out a bill Contain[in]g those worthy Incomiums verbatim, translated out of french, the insuing is part of it.”98 The use of French, a language not spoken universally within English Benedictine convents, suggests that the Pontoise convent addressed a broader community of Catholics in France. Much like the Paris obituaries, circular bills followed a generic format that encouraged the readers or listeners to see themselves as part of an imagined community involving the deceased nun and her convent. The circular bill for Abbess Christina (Anne) Forster (professed at Ghent 1641, d. 1661) of Pontoise concludes by asking for prayers to help purge Forster’s soul of impurities: “wee Earnestly Request all faithfull Christians that shall Read this Righting to assist her with the holy sacrifice of the Mass and other pyous prayers and exercyses.”99 While the Paris obituaries spoke to the composer’s community by eliciting prayers from “us,” with this death bill the Pontoise convent (“wee”) addresses an outside audience (“all faithfull Christians that shall Read this Righting”). In doing so, the Pontoise house positions Forster and itself as part of the imagined community of the Catholic Church, both in heaven and on earth. Printed death bills in Latin also elicited prayers from this community, using a shared sacred language as a marker of belonging. The printed death bill for Abbess Mary Baptist (Elizabeth) Phillips (professed 1731, d. 1781) of Ghent offers a representative example of this subgenre: “Ne quid tamen terrenae labis adhuc ei adhaerescentis, & nondum expiatae, iter eius ad perennis gloriae possessionem ret[a]rdet, eam vestris sacrificiis & precibus enixe commendamus [Yet lest some earthly spot still adhering to her, and not yet expiated, may impede her Journey to the possession of eternal glory, we earnestly commend her to your sacrifices and prayers].”100 As in Forster’s death bill, the text expresses the plural voice of the Ghent monastery (commendamus, “we commend”), whose members speak as one as they entreat the prayers of plural outside readers (vestris, “your”). Although many readers would never see or know the nuns in these communities, circular bills offered a textual means of establishing an imagined community on the basis of a congregation, nationality, or confessional identity. English Benedictine nuns carefully calibrated death notices for these different audiences and thus regulated their participation in these imagined communities, as shown by comparison of death notices that exist in multiple versions. Alterations to death notices produced for in-­house reading



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indicate that perceptions of imagined community could change over time even within the cloister. In Pontoise’s Book of the Anniversarys, someone has heavily crossed out the following lines from the bill for lay sister Anne Solloman (professed 1660, d. 1708): “what providence sent her of monys, she with leave spent it for her health or for necessarys & what she had at her death, left it to superiours disposall, not mentioning one Mass to be sayd for her which shew’d her great esteem of poverty.”101 These lines remain intact in the register begun by Neville, which was not intended for general consumption within the convent. Clearly a later officer thought better of this passage, probably because this reservation of “monys” for personal needs was at odds with the Benedictine Rule’s prohibition of individual property. Read in this light, Solloman’s notice hardly demonstrated “esteem of poverty.” As this alteration and the previously referenced obituary for Bridget Swales of Paris indicate, English Benedictines took great care to make sure that death notices fostered an imagined community that fulfilled the ideals of Benedictine piety and could guide current members toward acquiring proper monastic virtues. Convents also regulated their participation in these imagined communities by tailoring circular bills to particular audiences, a phenomenon illustrated by several circular bills from Pontoise. When lay sister Margaret Chaddock died in 1745, the house circulated a preprinted death notice in French, filling in her name, age, date of death, and number of years professed. This notice has been pasted toward the end of the register begun by Neville, which does not otherwise contain an entry for Chaddock.102 Book of the Anniversarys, however, supplies a personalized circular bill in English that is typical of other bills from Pontoise.103 Before the Pontoise nuns turned to preprinted circular bills, they deployed a French template to similar effect, as shown by two death notices for lay sister Anne Xaveria (Anne) Berington (professed 1670, d. 1690) that address different audiences. The first bill was probably composed by Abbess Elizabeth Dabridgecourt, although it does not survive in her handwriting: Anno Domini 1690 the 31 of October in this our monastery of Grace-­dieu att Pontoise, dedicatted to the Imaculate conception of the glorious virgin Mary Mother of God, of the holy order of St Benedict, is happily deceas’d strength’d with the Sacrements of holy church; our belov’d sister Sister Anne Xaveria Berington Convers at the age of 89 and 20 of profession; her coming to Religion att the ninth howre is no hindrance, for her receaving Equall pay with those that came att the first; she suplying by her inflam’d love to God, what her age permitted her not to perform, of the greatest labours; yett was she ever Imploy’d, in the service of the Community, & for 20 years has most diligently rung the rise-­ing bell att 5 a clock, & comply’d

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with other obediences, with soe much exactnes & Zeal, that Gods devine love appear’d in all her proceedings, in a most Eminent degree, & even to the last moment of her life, breathing forth her soul by an act of love to her creator, & bearing with patience a long & sharp sicknes: ever resign’d to Gods devine will, by which she has given suficient grownds to hope she now Enjoys thos Etternall blessings which God has prepar’d for those that love him, yett least any spott remaine to be purify’d we most humbly & Earnestly beg the assistance of your holy sacrefices & prayers for the repose of her soule.104

Written in a first-­person-­plural voice (“our,” “we”) that addresses a second-­ person audience (“your”), this death notice was likely distributed to the congregation. Entering at the unusually advanced age of sixty-­nine, Berington provided an ideal model of monastic “exactnes & Zeal” in her religious observances. Taking Berington as her example, Dabridgecourt produced a second death notice that was intended to function as a model for circular bills sent to readers beyond the congregation. Entitled “The Bill, that is generally sent about, for all that dyes, & is writ by the chapline, or Secretary,” this template is written in Dabridgecourt’s own hand on the second page of Neville’s register: “Le 31: D’octobre mil six cens Quatre-­vingt-­dix, Dans L’Abbaye de Grace-­Dieu, dediée á Limmaculée Conception de Notre-­Dame, de L’ordre de saint Benoist, est decedée munie de tous les sacremens de l’eglise, la soeur Anne Xavier Berington, soeur converse, (la trés Reverende Dame, Dame Nom Nom Dame de choeur;) de la dite Abbaye, agée de 80 ans, dans la vingtieme année de sa Profession, dont elle s’est acquittée avec un pieté exemplaire, nous vous demandons par charité le secours de vos priers, pour le Repos de son ame; Requiescat in Pac[e] [The 31st of October, 1690, in the Abbey of Grace-­Dieu, dedicated to the Immaculate Conception of Our Lady, of the order of St. Benedict, is deceased, furnished with all the sacraments of the church, Sister Anne Xavier Berington, converse sister, [the very Reverend Dame, Dame Name Name, choir nun] of the said abbey, aged 80 years, in the twentieth year of her Profession, of which she acquitted herself with exemplary piety. We ask you, in charity, for the aid of your prayers for the repose of her soul. May she rest in peace].”105 Dabridgecourt’s title gives further insight into the mechanics of how these texts were produced by specifying that the abbess’s chaplain (a nun who acted as a secretary) would serve as copyist. The inclusion of a bracketed alternative for choir nuns reveals that such terse death notices were used for most members of the community rather than reserved for converse sisters, who occupied a hierarchically lower position than choir nuns. Her use of French and the qualifier “generally” gestures toward the broad audience envisaged for this formulaic bill. As



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with later preprinted bills, only the most basic information is provided about the deceased. The variant bills for Chaddock and Berington addressed different audiences and thus served discrete functions. Members of the Pontoise community and their congregation could benefit from hearing the longer, individualized version and its description of the deceased nun’s virtues. Secular readers, in contrast, were not expected to imitate the deceased and thus did not require such details. The standardized and terse content of the preprinted notice or formulaic manuscript bill was more appropriate to this audience, especially as these features reflected Benedictine conceptions of verbal restraint. At the same time, the easy production of this second kind of circular bill facilitated wider dissemination among local French Catholics.

“The Hand of God”: Historical Writing and Providentialism From the medieval period onward, historical writing has traditionally been one of the most important genres produced by nuns.106 Whether writing annals, chronicles, or shorter histories of particular events, these cloistered historians expressed a similar desire: to document the past for the benefit of future generations. Historical texts thus presented natural opportunities for readers to participate in an imagined religious community that transcended time and space. As Pope Francis has noted in his Letter to All Consecrated People, such transhistorical identification with previous monks and nuns is essential for maintaining the continuity of monastic life itself, past and present: “Recounting our history is essential for preserving our identity, for strengthening our unity as a family and our common sense of belonging. More than an exercise in archaeology or the cultivation of mere nostalgia, it calls for following in the footsteps of past generations in order to grasp the high ideals, and the vision and values which inspired them, beginning with the founders and foundresses and the first communities.”107 By preserving and extending the “vision and values” of “past generations,” history allows for a cross-­temporal identification that facilitates the “unity” of a family based on spirituality rather than biology. In its statement on fraternal life, the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life offers further insight into how important it is for monastic communities to form a collective identity that spans time: “To live in community is to live the will of God together, in accordance with the orientation of the charismatic gift received by the founder from God and transmitted to his or her disciples and followers.”108 As a genre, history can be easily adapted to transmit the “charismatic gift,” or particular spirituality, of a cloister’s founders and other pious exemplars, thereby allowing readers to view themselves as

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part of a broader community assembled by God for the purpose of sharing in this communal piety. As the following discussion will demonstrate, convent histories also reveal the nuns’ sense that God accomplished this aim by nurturing and supporting the communities God had formed through vocation. In their providentialism, these writings indicate that cloistered life is a constant dialog between God and the collective membership of a given convent, a conversation discernible only through the past and present events that befall the imagined community of the monastery. Viewed from a philosophical perspective, Benedictine histories provide a basis for extending the Buberian paradigm from the I-­You dynamic to an encounter between the We of a spiritual community and the divine You. Buber himself contended that human beings could establish a We by entering into I-­You relationships with one another that would activate a communal voice: “By We I mean a community of several independent persons, who have reached a self and self-­responsibility, the community resting on the basis of this self and self-­responsibility, and being made possible by them. The special character of the We is shown in the essential relation existing, or arising temporarily, between its members; that is, in the holding sway within the We of an ontic directness which is the decisive presupposition of the I-­Thou relation. The We includes the Thou potentially. Only men who are capable of truly saying Thou to one another can truly say We with one another.”109 While this need for “ontic directness” might seem to suggest that the We can only exist within face-­to-­face communal relations, elsewhere Buber explains that this collective identity is not bounded by the limits of time: the element from which the We receives its life is speech, the communal speaking that begins in the midst of speaking to one another. Speech in its ontological sense was at all times present wherever men regarded one another in the mutuality of I and Thou; wherever one showed the other something in the world in such a way that from then on he began really to perceive it . . . wherever one communicated to the other his own experience in such a way that it penetrated the other’s circle of experience and supplemented it as from within, so that from now on his perceptions were set within a world as they had not been before. All this flowing ever again into a great stream of reciprocal sharing of knowledge—thus came to be and thus is the living We, the genuine We, which, where it fulfills itself, embraces the dead who once took part in colloquy and now take part in it through what they have handed down to posterity.110

The Buberian We thus requires a “colloquy” between human beings (whether living or dead), who must “say We with one another” and participate in a



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“communal speaking” that enables a “sharing of knowledge.” In its emphasis on the communication of transhistorical forms of knowledge and identity, the monastery naturally facilitates the emergence of this We and is thus an excellent site for rethinking the Buberian model. As Buber himself observes, “The essential We has hitherto been all too little recognized, both in history and in the present, because it is rare.”111 Perhaps because of this rarity, the We does not figure prominently within Buberian philosophy, and, rather surprisingly, Buber does not explore the possibility that the divine You might address a We rather than an I. This chapter’s analysis of Benedictine historical writings further develops the Buberian We by revealing the nuns’ sense that God was indeed speaking directly to their communities in a manner resembling a We-­You dynamic.112

A Philosophical Analysis of Benedictine Histories and the We-­You Dynamic Taking up a communal perspective with striking parallels to a We-­You paradigm, Benedictine writers composed histories that met monastic needs rather than the new standards being developed by contemporary secular historians. During the early modern period, historical writing underwent a revolution as historians moved away from medieval annals by using antiquarian research as a basis for a more scientific approach to history.113 While some Benedictine nuns were familiar with these methods, monastic history itself remained closer to medieval models, particularly in terms of its emphasis on providentialism.114 For medieval historians, an Augustinian framework supplied a providential lens for understanding the world and its events, as F. Smith Fussner comments: “One had to believe—not only that Christ was the centre of history, but that history’s meaning was revealed in every divine-­human encounter .  .  . secular history could have no ultimate meaning without reference to divine providence.”115 Providentialism, particularly in concert with predestination, was an important component of Protestant histories during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, although it eventually ceded to more secular and scientific frameworks.116 Convent histories, however, continued to rely on providence as a means of understanding the house’s collective experiences. For these writers, history itself was still a documentation of “divine-­human encounter[s],” or, in Buberian terms, the address of the divine You to the collective We of the monastery. Indeed, Abbess Mary Knatchbull of Ghent observes in one historical text that all events function as a medium for God’s communications to humanity: “This Providence is that mighty stronge voice, by which our Heavenly father calls unto him all his children, and there are none so stupid as not to heare him speaking in all creatures, by their hiden causes, manifest

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and strange effects, and by that invisible working, wherby wee find all things to be wrought and maintained in their due seasons and proportions, yett amoungst miserable mankind, how few are there that know or follow this voice on which alone eternall happiness dependeth.”117 From this viewpoint, which anticipates Buber’s theory of the divine call, “all creatures” and all events (“all things to be wrought”) constitute the means by which God speaks to the house through his ineffable, “invisible working.” Since Knatchbull presents God as addressing all of humanity in this way, the difficulty lies in perceiving when and how God communicates. Providence in convent histories thus takes on a role parallel to that of vocation in house obituaries: both require an awareness of God’s ability to make overtures to the soul, collective or individual, through various earthly instruments. Speaking of English society more broadly, Alexandra Walsham has observed that “providentialism played a pivotal role in forging a collective Protestant consciousness.”118 Providentialism served a similar function within English convents. Already adept at recognizing God’s call in their own personal lives, nuns learned to see events in their own experience and in the history of their cloisters as the divine You’s collective address to the entire community. By its nature, convent history is an account of communal life, and monastic historians acknowledge God’s role as the builder of monastic community by paying special attention to providential moments that fostered or threatened this collective existence. In her history of the English Benedictines, Abbess Anne Neville of Pontoise provides a memorable architectural metaphor that neatly illustrates these two major providential narratives: “when ons difficultyes arise within doars and with out; it is impossible; it shold not distroy the strongest building and unless our Lord builds the hows he labours in vayn that builds it; And evin when it is built, yet unless our lord keepes the hows he labours in vayn that keeps it; so often times Allmighty God carryeth on our endavours for his service; with a probable prosperity, and yet when we think the work well advaunst, he is pleasd to let it fall to the grawnd that we may learn to love and serve him as well in adversity as prosperity, and to know all things depends more uppon his will and providence, than any humayn industry.”119 While “prosperity” reveals God’s support for the community, “adversity” reflects God’s glory as the sole sustainer of monastic existence. In keeping with Buberian theories of communal formation, God alone “builds” and “keepes” the “hows,” itself a metonymy for the spiritual community of the cloister. All human efforts are consequently “in vayn” without this sustaining force. Providentialism thus provided a flexible means of accounting for all occurrences within cloistered life even as it offered a basis for understanding God as both the creator and protector of the religious imagined community of the monastery.



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Foundation narratives dominate extant historical writing from the English Benedictine cloisters, and these texts preserve the charism of the convent’s foundresses while also emphasizing God’s role as the establisher of monastic community. Facing a severe financial crisis at her house in Ghent, Mary Knatchbull decided to found an offshoot at Boulogne after receiving inspiration from God during prayer: “I have Gods (not possible to be failed) promiss, that if I seeke his Glory and Kingdome, all these humaine things shall be given in a nescessary proportion.”120 Drawing a clear line between God’s infallible “promiss” and unreliable “humaine things,” Knatchbull undertakes this foundation without any clear source of financial support. Her reliance on God to provide the necessary monies reflects the attitudes of the original foundresses of the Ghent house itself, who, according to Neville’s history, left the Brussels Benedictines “with out on[e] penny in theyr pockets they intirly depending on providence.”121 Like these mother-­beginners, Knatchbull finds that God sends alms that sustain both the Ghent house and its Boulogne filiation. When everyone else was prepared to abandon the venture due to a lack of funds, Knatchbull states with evident relish, “God had other thoughts and failed not by that hand of divine Providence wherewith he had hitherto conducted the affaire, to carry it still on in a way of mercy and mervaile.”122 A nobleman offered the house a permanent loan of 100 pounds, which Knatchbull perceived as a direct response from God to the financial difficulties at Boulogne and Ghent: “I accepted this offer as a speciall providence from Allmighty God, both for that place and this which were att that time in equall distress.”123 Both Knatchbull and the anonymous nobleman serve as agents to carry out God’s plan of forming a new cloister in Boulogne, revealing God as the ultimate founder of the Boulogne cloister and the ongoing sustainer of both this new filiation and its mother house. In this sense, God is the engineer of religious imagined community, first envisioning the community and then providing the resources to bring it to life and maintain it over the years. In their dependence upon providence, founders of communities acknowledged God’s role as the creator and center of their communal existence. Like the Boulogne and Ghent houses, the Benedictine cloister in Paris began without a secure financial foundation. Experiencing great economic distress, the Cambrai Benedictines decided to send some of their members to Paris in order to determine whether an offshoot could be established there. The chronicle of the Paris convent places great emphasis on God’s role as the instigator of this priory, citing a remark by foundress Clementia Cary that “Divine Providence is a firm Foundation, that can never fail, upon which this Monastery was Founded.”124 Indeed, in a document from 1653 that was incorporated into the house history, Cary herself claimed that the endeavor’s

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success could only be understood through a providentialist lens: “For coming hither without any humane hopes to rely on, but casting our selves wholy upon his Providence, in a time of so great misery in this Contrey, that it was look’d upon by most, as a desperate Entreprise: His Divine Majesty hath bin pleased so to move the hearts of many Charitable people to take compassion of Us, that contrary to the expectation of every one, we have bin enabled to subsist till now, without any charge to our Monastery of Cambray, which hath appear’d so strange to all, that some of the most considerable of those that had chiefly doubted of the Success thereof, have since acknowledged that they plainly see the hand of God in it.”125 Although many onlookers predicted that the Paris filiation would fail, the nuns themselves, much like Knatchbull, did not rely on “humane hopes” but rather on God’s “Providence.” By inspiring Catholics to provide alms that sustained the house, God serves as the true founder of the convent. In addition to showing how providence overcomes human obstacles, Cary’s remarks teach readers how to analyze the convent’s collective history as the result of providential intervention. Even those most opposed to the convent’s foundation admitted that “the hand of God” was at work in its foundation, showing that human events revealed a divine plan to form and support this religious community. In Benedictine historical writings, such narratives of almsgiving offer one of the most frequent and tangible signs of God’s role as the facilitator of community life, but monastic historians identified other forms of human assistance as evidence of providence at work. Priests often provided logistical aid for communities at crucial moments, and writers of monastic history naturally viewed these men as agents of the divine. As Neville comments in regard to the Brussels house, “Gods providence raysed great frends to this Community in theyr beginning and . . . cheefely by the mediation and assistance of the fathers of the Society of Jesus.”126 The tale of how the Paris convent found its home on Rue du Champ de l’Alouette offers an even more detailed example of how nuns discerned providence operating through the intercession of priests. The third chapter of the Paris chronicle contains Teresa Cook’s account of this process, which foregrounds the role of providence even in its title: “Of the Extraordinary Providence, & wonderfull manner of our Settlement in this place, where we now remaine.”127 Without the funds to purchase property, the Paris convent spent its first few years moving among rented houses. When the monks of Port-­Royal helped the nuns locate suitable premises and one of the community’s patrons provided the necessary funds, the nuns gave credit to providence rather than to their human benefactors: “we were much Transported with Joy, at the Infinite Providence & goodnesse of Almighty God, in so mercifully providing us a house of our own, & Inspiring those Charitable Persons, thus liberally to



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help & assist us in this our great Necessity.”128 Viewed through Cook’s providentialist lens, the convent’s backers are merely instruments used by God as a means of supporting the community that he has built and, now, housed as well. Vocations likewise could be interpreted as signs of God’s providence, as previously mentioned. After the Ghent house received professions of women with portions that helped pay off its debts completely, Neville records that “in acknowledgment and thanksgiving to Allmighty God for this great mercy and bounty from his fatherly providence; the whole Community mett in the chappell of Loretto ther to sing a Te Deum.”129 The profession of these women builds the community in two different ways: first, their dowries offer vital financial assistance; second, their entry into the convent assists the community by adding to its membership. By recording such moments of good fortune, monastic historians sought to preserve evidence of God’s continued aid for a community that God had built and preserved throughout the years. As previously noted, however, monastic historians also cited providence as an explanation for events that threatened the survival of a community. Such tribulations helped communities center themselves even more strongly on God, reinforcing his role as the focal point of communal religious experience. As Prioress Teresa Joseph of the Holy Ghost (Mary Ann) Johnson (professed 1777, d. 1807) of the Paris Benedictines remarks in her history of the house’s experiences during the French Revolution (1799), the nuns turned to God alone for help on their return to England: “we threw ourselves Entirely into the Armes of Providence, not knowing what was to become of us, but Confidently following its Guidance, and we ever Since had Just reason to Say that it is Good to hope in God, for we were no Sooner in England but it Seemd as if every thing was done to our hands, and we had no further pains nor Care.”130 This complete abandonment to God’s will (“threw ourselves”) once again conveys the nuns’ reliance on God as the sole prop of their communities during times of difficulty. Monastic historians also emphasized the spiritual good that was occasioned by trouble. Johnson, for example, comments on how the nuns’ extreme penury during their imprisonment helped them achieve Benedictine ideals: “how Good God is who Supplies all himself when he is pleased to deprive us of all human helps and Consolations, for here he was pleased to let us tast the Poverty we have all promised to observe.”131 Although the house endures great trials, it reaps spiritual benefits by observing total poverty. Similarly, the Boulogne nuns found the local bishop opposed to their venture and praised providence for causing this obstacle: “Blessed be God wee are now by his holy Providence lett downe into the Lyons Denn and invironed on all sides with fluds of tribulation, which in full tide rusheth in upon us.”132 This comment might seem counterintuitive, but Mary Knatchbull remarks that these foundresses received spiritual gifts that

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allowed them to persevere: “they undertook not their business in jest, but that as Allmighty God had designed them for greate workes of Glory to his holy Name, so had he fournished them with a measure of Grace and Courage.”133 Thus, whether in times of joy or sorrow, English Benedictine nuns turned to providence as a means of understanding their collective experiences and of reminding themselves of God’s role as the creator and sustainer of their communities.

A Material Analysis of Histories and Providentialism As intertextual and material analysis of the Paris chronicle reveals, these histories encouraged readers to enter into imagined religious communities that were marked by the charism of the founders. Among the Paris Benedictines, the genre of history itself was viewed as uniquely qualified for detailing the role of providence. Toward the close of the Paris chronicle (c. 1695), its compilers observe that their purpose was simply to remind the house of its historic reliance on providence: “Our design having only bin to put us in mind, to give Almighty God daily thanks for his Extraordinary Providence towards us.”134 A century later, this providentialist framework had a strong influence on Teresa Johnson’s understanding of history as a genre and on her composition of a history of the French Revolution. Citing the intention of the house’s chronicle, Johnson composes her history so that “posterity may be able to see by what Means Providence has preserved it [the community], and what Instruments he has made use of to assist us in the time of our greatest distress when totally Abandond into his hands without any knowledge what would become of us.”135 The intertextual relationship between these two histories reveals that this genre could successfully preserve the charism of a house’s founders, particularly since the original chronicle displays such a marked interest in witnessing the role of providence over the first fifty years of the house’s existence. As this shared focus on providence indicates, histories played a vital role in helping to create an imagined religious community that exceeded temporal limits. Attention to the material characteristics of the Paris chronicle offers further evidence of how one particular reader used the text in order to take part in a religious imagined community based on providentialism. This unknown reader inserted five manicules within the text at moments involving providence.136 By drawing these pointing hands in the manuscript’s margins, the reader simultaneously offered a graphic and visual representation of the hand of God and signaled her own participation in the community’s shared devotion to providence. Three of these manicules draw attention to incidents where providence could be viewed as intervening to help the house. Most dramatically, a manicule points to a passage where the compilers note that



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the community was spared death after it moved out of a house that flooded shortly thereafter: “by a particular Providence of God . . . we escaped drowning; for soon after our going out, the house was overflow’d by the breaking in of the River Seine upon it.”137 Two more manicules accompany gifts of exemplary alms. After the archbishop of Paris permitted a citywide announcement of the house’s dire financial straits, “a poor Boy, that had got for his Work that day 15 solz came with it” as his donation.138 Along similar lines, one day the house gave away all of its ready money to “a poor man,” when “presently comes a Person, rings the Bell, & brings us a Charity of Ten Crowns, we not knowing from whence it came.”139 While the chronicle contains many such examples of God using patrons as instruments for the convent’s good, the circumstances of these particular bequests were exceptional. The boy’s donation could be viewed as suggesting that God can use even the humblest as a means of showing his favor, and the second, anonymous donation directly remedies the convent’s self-­impoverishment through charity. Even more interestingly, two manicules draw attention to moments where the house takes part in a broader imagined community of English Catholics. The preface to the history tells the story of English Catholicism through the seventeenth century, and the text’s first manicule accompanies an account of Gregory the Great’s decision to evangelize England after “accidentally seeing the Beauty & comlinesse of some English Youths.”140 The second highlights a passage claiming that penal laws in England only inflamed Catholic sentiments: “like Branches of the Palm, the more they are oppress’d by weight, still rise the Higher.”141 All of these moments could be read as evidence of God’s special care for the communities that God had created and nurtured: first, English Catholics as a whole, a community marked by nationality and religion; second, the Paris Benedictines, a subset of the first set apart by God through the gift of their vocation.

Conclusions As French soldiers advanced toward Brussels in 1794, the English Benedictines of that city fled their convent for England. Abbess Mary Phillippa Eccles noted in a short historical account of their journey that their boat had a very auspicious name: “we took shipping in a merchant’s ship bound for London, the Providence.”142 Nevertheless, the community began their journey with some trepidation: “The captain and all on board were very civil, kind, and compassionate to us, although we had been rather alarmed by the information we had received, that he did not bear a good character; there was, however, no other ship to be had, so we put our trust in Divine Providence, considering the name of the vessel to be a good omen.”143 Eccles’s easy

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association between the ship Providence and “Divine Providence” illustrates the Buberian nature of convent life as a community centered on God. In this memorable example, the very name of the ship served as a communication between God and the community, a “good omen” symbolizing the care of “Divine Providence” over the group as they sought safe harbor in their native country. Putting their “trust” in this “good omen” and throwing themselves upon God’s providence in the good ship Providence, the nuns find that they have received faulty information about the captain, who successfully helps them evade the French Revolution. Eccles’s account demonstrates a key mechanism in the obituaries and historical writings produced in English Benedictine convents: the ongoing call from the divine You to the I of the individual and the We of the community, which is the basis of religious life. As the divine You pierces the soul’s armor again and again, God emerges as the architect and sustainer of cloistered community. Such addresses did not cease once a nun followed her vocation, joined a religious community, and (ideally) subsumed her identity within a collective entity. Rather, God communicated providentially with the entire convent as one We. By learning to discern this call and obey it, English Benedictine nuns saw themselves as cooperating with the divine in a shared project to dedicate their lives to God. In their portrayal of God’s addresses to the convent and its members, English Benedictine death notices and historical writings offer an opportunity for reconsidering women’s writing, rethinking early modern spiritual communities, and expanding on Buber’s notions of the I-­You dynamic. This chapter has analyzed two subgenres that were particular to the cloister: the death notice and the monastic history. In doing so, it broadens our knowledge of the texts that women composed and the ways that women’s textual production responded to specific communal needs. At the same time, this chapter supplies a model for understanding other early modern communities whose membership experienced a divine call to pious fellowship, such as the dissenting Protestant sects who self-­identified as the elect, or chosen, of God.144 To what extent do life writings and histories by these authors demonstrate the existence of an imagined religious community, particularly involving groups with international aspirations, such as the Quakers? If providentialism was central to early modern Protestant culture, as Walsham has shown, what localized forms of this phenomenon flourished within specific religious communities and fellowships? A philosophical approach to Benedictine death notices and histories also suggests potential refinements to Buber’s philosophy of God-­centered community. While Buber imagined a face-­to-­face community grounded in quotidian experiences, writing facilitates the development of transhistorical and transnational communities that unite the living and the dead, span time



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and place, and join heaven and earth. These boundary-­crossing communities reflect the omnipresent, omnipotent, and omnitemporal nature of the Judeo-­Christian God. As death notices and histories demonstrate, imagined communities of this sort can play an important role in forging a collective religious identity in the present that is rooted in perceptions of a community’s shared past. Finally, Benedictine historical writing reveals that God might address not a single individual, but a plural We, such as a convent, a congregation, or a parish. When the individual is called into monastic communion through God’s personal address, she ideally sublimates herself within the collective We of the monastery, as outlined in the Benedictine Rule and the community’s statutes. Individual addresses continued within the cloister, but the nuns also perceived God as speaking to them communally, creating a We-­You dynamic. Viewing earthly happenings as the means by which God’s ongoing addresses manifested themselves, monastic historians in turn placed this We-­You relationship at the center of history itself. From this cloistered perspective, all of history becomes a dialog between the divine You and the We of the convent, thereby offering a fresh twist on Buber’s classic I-­You formulation.

Four

From the Convent to the Counterpublic Controversial Works and Rival Spiritual Communities

I

n 1632, Alexia Grey of the Ghent Benedictines shepherded to press two volumes that were of great importance to the English Benedictine communities on the Continent: the Rule of St. Benedict and the Statutes observed at Brussels and Ghent (and later at Dunkirk and Pontoise). She dedicated the Rule to Abbess Eugenia Poulton, with an elaborate metaphor comparing the Rule to the sun: Never doe the newe risinge sunne spreede forth his beames, without a newe comfort to the behoulders; neither doth the splendours yealded to so many dayes, yeares, and ages, any whitt deminish the accustomed solace taken by the newe Spectatours. And can I doubt this glorious sunne, our Rule, a bright beame of divine light, newely raised to shine in this place, by your lady shipps predicessour and your indeavour, bringe lesse them wonted joy to the injoyers, and though itt hath illustrated the worlde, for many dayes, yeares, and ages . . . Can I (as I say) yet doubt, that the vigour ther of, is any whitt deminshed, butt rather as an experienced and an eye wittnesse can I avere, newe comfort, joy, and solace, raysed in the mindes, and har[t]es, of the newe Embracers, who under your ladyshipps goverment, happely doe a newe injoy the splendour of that light.1

Grey carefully connects the Benedictine Rule (c.  530) with the relatively new foundation at Ghent (“this place”), which had been founded in 1624 by four nuns from the Brussels Benedictines, including Poulton and Abbess Lucy Knatchbull, referred to by Grey as “your lady shipps predicessour.” This metaphor shows the durability of the Rule, which continues to shine with “divine light” despite being centuries old. At the same time, it advertises the Ghent house as the latest manifestation of Benedictine life, a utopian place where the Rule’s adherents can find “newe comfort, joy, and solace” under Poulton’s wise “goverment.” Grey’s privileged role as an “eye



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wittnesse” of Ghent’s spiritual prowess enhances her credibility in making these remarks. To all intents and purposes, this dedicatory preface and its praise of Poulton seem to be completely conventional. Yet, as I have argued elsewhere, Grey’s dedicatory preface and the entire publication intervene in old and new controversies at the Brussels house.2 Knatchbull and the other Ghent foundresses had established their new cloister in the wake of serious discord at the Brussels convent over the issue of spiritual confessors. Taking offense at a young secular priest’s inexperience and encroachment on the spiritual territory of the Jesuits, Knatchbull in particular had spread accusations that the priest was seducing a young nun.3 The controversy subsided after the priest was ejected and the four nuns left to found the Ghent cloister. Yet the flame of factionalism was rekindled in 1628 when the archbishop appointed Anthony Champney, a foe of Jesuit priests, as confessor. Half of the house eventually lodged a lawsuit against their abbess, Mary Percy (professed 1600, d. 1642), and Champney, and the resulting trial was in process during 1632, the very year of the Rule’s publication. This dissension scandalized English Catholics everywhere, and Grey’s edition took advantage of that situation by publicizing Ghent as an alternative to its mother house, a place whose sanctity was assured by its devotion to the Rule. Indeed, it associated Ghent with the Rule and Statutes so strongly that Grey later became identified as their translator even though both texts had been in manuscript circulation at Brussels for two decades. Like other Benedictine works that passed beyond the limits of enclosure, whether in manuscript or print, Grey’s 1632 edition cultivated a public audience in order to advance a highly polemical intent. By implicitly asking English Catholic readers to judge the relative merits of Benedictinism as practiced at Brussels and Ghent, Alexia Grey’s edition of the Rule and Statutes provides an excellent example of the ways that monastic polemic sought to establish alternatives to cloistered forms of community. While previous chapters have analyzed how English Benedictine nuns aspired to the ideals envisaged by their founder, in what follows I use the theoretical framework of the counterpublic advanced by Nancy Fraser and Michael Warner in order to explore how controversial writing emerged from and responded to irretrievable breakdowns in monastic community. In its examination of the English Catholic counterpublic evoked by Benedictine nuns’ polemics, this chapter reveals that monastic writers compensated for the loss of religious communion by fashioning imagined communities that included secular readers as well as monastic factions. In addition to shedding light on the interpersonal difficulties involved in convent life, controversial writing by nuns can broaden our understanding of the ways that early modern women engaged in polemical discourse for religious purposes.

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During the Interregnum in particular, many Englishwomen used their self-­ proclaimed credentials as prophets in order to authorize religious polemics that challenged the political and religious status quo. Indeed, the relationship between women’s prophecies and polemics is foregrounded in the title of Hilary Hinds’s contribution to a field-­defining edited collection, The Cambridge Companion to Early Modern Women’s Writing (2009): “Prophecy and Religious Polemic.”4 Through writings that were both prophetic and polemical, dissenters like Mary Cary, Eleanor Davies, and Anna Trapnel cultivated a form of political agency that was associated with their individual persons, based on their particularized readings of the Bible, and legitimated by the visions granted to them by God.5 For secular women, then, prophecy and religious polemic often went hand in hand, sharing common roots in the activity of “biblical explication.”6 Most monastic polemicists, however, staked their cultural authority not upon prophecy, but rather upon the texts’ ability to speak in the communal voice of the cloister.7 Drawing upon the institutional framework of the convent itself, these writings offer new insights into the ways that early modern women approached the genre of controversial writing. This chapter analyzes the nuns’ controversial writings through historical, material, and philosophical lenses in order to sketch the alternative forms of spiritual communion that arose when these communities ceased to orient themselves around God. As I argue, Benedictine nuns responded to breakdowns in monastic order by creating imagined communities that substituted a virtual communion with the English Catholic counterpublic for the spiritual fellowship of the cloister. In these attempts to compensate for the failure of monastic community, the English Benedictine nuns’ polemical texts also provide a basis for rethinking Buberian philosophy by exploring the complex relationship between God-­centered communities and the public sphere.

Candles to Light the Church: Controversial Writing and the English Catholic Counterpublic While much monastic writing addressed an internal audience, the controversial writings produced by convents spoke to a broader public readership of English Catholics. As a result, polemical texts provide an unusual opportunity to think about the Buberian dynamics of cloistered communities in relationship to the secular world. Although the members of the monastery leave earthly society permanently upon professing, the convent itself maintains a public role as an emblem of religious communion. As the Sacred Congregation for Religious and for Secular Institutes has observed, “Experts in



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communion, religious are, therefore, called to be an ecclesial community in the Church and in the world, witnesses and architects of the plan for unity which is the crowning point of human history in God’s design.”8 Pope Francis has expressed the same sentiment in blunter terms: “we are called to offer a concrete model of community which . . . makes it possible to live as brothers and sisters.”9 From its earliest days, the Benedictine Order was aware of the way that the monastery could serve as a public beacon for the Roman Catholic Church. St. Gregory the Great, for example, compared St. Benedict to a “candle set upon a candlestick [that] might shine, and give light to the whole church of God.”10 In the early modern period, English Benedictine monasteries gained a heightened prominence in the secular sphere due to their ability to symbolize the political and religious resurgence of English Catholicism. In 1603, Richard Verstegan dedicated a translation of Pietro da Lucca to Abbess Joanna (Joanne) Berkeley (professed at Rheims 1581, d. 1616) of the Brussels Benedictines, expressing his hope that her convent might help convert England to Catholicism just as medieval Benedictines had long ago evangelized the nation: “To your good Ladiship I dedicate the same: unto you the first Abbesse of your holy order revyved in our nation, whose posteritie by the divine providence may come to brighten our country with their shyning sanctitie as your predecessors heretofore have donne.”11 As Verstegan’s dedication suggests, the very existence of the Brussels community symbolically threatened the political and religious order of England. Meanwhile, the English Benedictine Congregation, which was also founded during the seventeenth century, took on an explicitly missionary role that shapes its understanding of monastic communion even today: “The fraternal communion (koinonia) of a monastery is also generative for the wider Church and for the world through mission, which by its nature extends beyond the monastery.”12 Viewed externally, the monastic community offers a template for religious fellowship more generally and thus takes on an important role within the Catholic public sphere. This public profile was essential to the survival of the convents in exile, which relied on English Catholics to provide alms, logistical support, and novices. Benedictine cloisters consequently produced controversial writings when internal or external debates became public knowledge and, in turn, threatened their reputation among English Catholics. As the previous chapters have outlined, Martin Buber’s theory of religious community provides a useful framework for understanding how monastic community ideally operates, and his ideas likewise shed light on the function of controversy within the convent. According to Buber, a “spirit of turning” informs the creation of religious community: “Men who long for community long for God. All craving for real relationship points to God; and all craving for God points to real community. But craving God is not the

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same as willing God. Men search for God but cannot find Him, for He is ‘not there.’ Men want to possess God, but God does not give Himself to them, for He does not wish to be possessed but to be realized. Only when men want God to be will they practice community. The ultimate plight calls for a will for God; for the spirit of turning.”13 This “spirit of turning” is twofold, for it implies that the members of a community turn to God and that God turns to them as well. God is thus literally the “spirit of turning,” who allows the I-­You dynamic of unmediated dialog between God and the individual believer to become submerged within the We of religious community. As the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life notes, “Religious community is the place where the daily and patient passage from ‘me’ to ‘us’ takes place.”14 When a monastery is governed by this “spirit of turning,” an external catastrophe can unify the community around God in a heightened way that crystallizes its adherence to a common core. Speaking of a “community in progress” (one that is in the process of cohering), Buber states, “It is there when a group of people . . . experiences a communal moment together in a catastrophically [sic] and transforming way, in the way of a most unsettling and serious decision, and responds to this moment with a communal attitude and communal action.”15 An external controversy thus provides an opening for the We of the monastery to emerge and speak with an amplified, public voice. Yet what happens when the I fails to cohere into the We? That is, what occurs when the “spirit of turning” does not succeed in creating a community unified around God as a shared center? As Buber himself warns, the We “does not have the comparative constancy and continuity that the I has. As potentiality it lies at the base of all history of spirit and deed; it actualizes itself and is no longer there.”16 Further developing the ramifications of this lack of “constancy and continuity,” Paul Mendes-­Flohr has commented in regard to this passage, “The essential We must forever be renewed.”17 This study has already shown that Gemeinschaft, liturgical rites, and imagined communities enable the creation and revitalization of the monastic We over time. Nevertheless, even these mechanisms fail if the members of a religious institution are not uniformly committed to the project of sustaining a God-­ centered community. Speaking of the We, Buber notes that “in religious groups we find it among those who strive for an unemphatic and sacrificial realization of faith in life.”18 The significance of this remark lies in the “unemphatic” and “sacrificial” nature of such a “realization,” as each member of the community must be prepared to dispense with their own personal needs in order to participate in a communal We. As Buber continues, “it is enough to prevent the We arising, or being preserved, if a single man is accepted, who is greedy of power and uses others as means to his own end, or who



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craves for importance and makes a show of himself.”19 The We cannot exist if the members of a community indulge their own egos by seeking “power” or “importance,” an observation that translates easily to the Benedictine monastery and its emphasis on humility and subordination of self. Such ego-­driven behavior can in turn lead to internal controversies, particularly when men and women desire God but seek the divine in ways that are incompatible with each other, or when the “spirit of turning” identified by Buber appears to direct them to turn away from one another.20 Divisions of this kind are a natural part of community life, as Pope Francis notes: “At times religious communities are fraught with tensions, and risk becoming individualistic and scattered, whereas what is needed is deep communication and authentic relationships.”21 For Buber, individualism not only prevents the emergence of the We but also keeps religious community itself from becoming a reality, despite the hopes of those involved: “only those who are capable of community and who totally devote their lives to the community can experience community with each other, that is, only if they turn toward the nameless or named ‘middle’ around which this community has gathered or has been gathered . . . People who have not been transformed, who are not capable of community, who do not know of the ‘middle,’ can neither establish nor renew community. Good intentions alone cannot make community happen but create only a communal illusion.”22 This “communal illusion” occurs when people live together with “good intentions” yet fail to cohere around God as their common center. In these cases, the monastery is merely a collective group of individual people rather than an authentic community as defined by Buber: “Collectivity is not a binding but a bundling together: with only as much life from man to man as will inflame the marching step. But community, growing community . . . is the being no longer side by side but with one another of a multitude of persons.”23 Because collectivity “bundl[es] together” individual lives rather than “binding” them into a whole, fractured communities respond to internal debates with multiples of We that represent different factions rather than with the amplified We of genuine religious communion. When directed outside of the early modern Benedictine cloister, this We, whether fractured or whole, addressed a specific audience: the counterpublic of English Catholicism. As Nancy Fraser theorized in a highly influential article, counterpublics arise when minority social groups form discrete public spaces of their own through discourses that are opposed to mainstream culture: “the revisionist historiography of the public sphere . . . records that members of subordinated social groups—women, workers, peoples of color, and gays and lesbians—have repeatedly found it advantageous to constitute alternative publics. I propose to call these subaltern counterpublics in order to

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signal that they are parallel discursive arenas where members of subordinated social groups invent and circulate counterdiscourses, which in turn permit them to formulate oppositional interpretations of their identities, interests, and needs.”24 Michael Warner has since usefully qualified Fraser’s definition by observing that a counterpublic “maintains . . . an awareness of its subordinate status. The cultural horizon against which it marks itself off is not just a general or wider public but a dominant one.”25 In the early modern period, English Catholics constituted just such a counterpublic, one of “a series of public spheres” based on oppositional religious identity that sprang into existence after the English Reformation.26 Unable to practice their religion openly and subject to fines and penal legislation, English Catholics occupied a subordinate position within dominant English culture. Scribal publication and print played an important role in sustaining this subculture, allowing English Catholics to “invent and circulate counterdiscourses” that carved out and supported a religious identity at odds with the “dominant” public sphere linked to the Church of England. The contours of this discursive space are most obviously traceable today within A. F. Allison and D. M. Rogers’s pioneering two-­volume bibliography of printed English Catholic writings, which contains nearly a thousand entries written in the English language alone.27 As that catalog suggests, English Catholics enthusiastically participated in a confessional counterpublic by reading and writing texts that fostered an oppositional discursive stance. Despite their physical removal from their nation, English nuns on the Continent contributed to this Catholic counterpublic by sponsoring publications and circulating manuscripts aimed at a broader readership than the cloister. Abbess Lucy Knatchbull of the Ghent Benedictines, for example, encouraged Tobie Matthew to translate and publish Alfonso Rodriguez’s Treatise of Mentall Prayer (1627) in order to popularize the Ignatian form of mysticism practiced at Ghent. More important, public spheres, including counterpublics, are by nature discursive spaces, and controversial genres allowed English Benedictine nuns to participate in polemic, one of the most dialogic forms of writing associated with public spheres. As Warner comments on controversial writing, “The usual way of imagining the interactive character of public discourse is through metaphors of conversation, answering, talking back. Argument and polemic, as manifestly dialogic genres, continue to have a privileged role in the self-­understanding of publics.”28 It is therefore fitting that English Benedictine nuns’ most public texts fall into this category, which can further be divided into two types. First, nuns coopted apparently neutral genres, such as meditation, for polemical purposes. As chapter 2 of this study has shown, devotional texts allowed English Benedictine nuns to use the religious communion of the convent as a springboard



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for contemplative union with God. By transforming this genre into a vehicle for politicized commentary, nuns sought to forestall any objection to their entry into the public sphere. Second, nuns composed polemics that directly advanced their faction’s point of view. Speaking of polemical writing, Warner notes, “In public argument or polemic, the principal act is that of projecting the field of argument itself—its genre, its range of circulation, its stakes, its idiom, its repertoire of agencies. Any position is reflexive, not only asserting itself but characterizing its relation to other positions up to limits that are the imagined scene of circulation.”29 Following this reflexive logic, convent polemics often define the authors’ position by evoking the stance of their opponents within the cloister, thus replicating and spreading the dissent that led to the texts’ composition. Both approaches served the same purpose: to shape public opinion of the monastery and its debates by arousing sympathy for the entire convent or a faction within it. Drawing on both philosophical and material methodologies, the rest of this chapter will analyze the textual strategies that English Benedictine convents used to participate in the English Catholic counterpublic. When the religious fellowship of the physical cloister broke down irretrievably, Benedictine nuns employed controversial writings that invited this counterpublic to join in textual forms of communion intended to supplement or even supersede monastic community.

Broadcasting the Monastic We: Controversy, Print, and the Cambrai and Paris Benedictines The English convents on the Continent served as patrons for a number of books published in the seventeenth century, yet Benedictine nuns themselves saw to press only a few volumes during this period. As previously mentioned, Alexia Grey of the Ghent Benedictines readied the Benedictine Rule and Brussels Statutes for publication in 1632, while Mary Percy of Brussels and Potentiana (Elizabeth) Deacon (professed at Brussels 1608, d. 1645) of Cambrai published English translations of French devotional texts. Editing and translating might seem to be relatively uncontroversial forms of literary activity, but all three of these publications responded to monastic turmoil. Printed at the height of the scandals among the Brussels Benedictines discussed later in this chapter, Grey’s edition positioned Ghent as the leading Benedictine convent on the Continent and thus furthered the ongoing spiritual rivalry between Ghent and its mother house. Although both Percy and Deacon published their translations quasi-­anonymously, these works likewise sought to shape public opinion about the English convents on the Continent. Percy’s translation of Isabella Berinzaga and Achille Gagliardi’s An Abridgment of Christian Perfection (1612) offered readers a template for

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monastic piety that was based on Ignatian spirituality, responding to recent strife in her convent over the role of Jesuit priests.30 Attributed only to a nun from Cambrai, Deacon’s translation of François de Sales’s Delicious Entertainments of the Soul (1632) attempted to publicly distance her house from its association with the divisive mysticism of Augustine Baker.31 As these examples indicate, Benedictine publications coopted traditional cloistered genres— rules, statutes, and spiritual treatises—for controversial purposes, introducing these texts to the English Catholic counterpublic in order to influence readers’ perceptions of specific convents and monasticism more broadly. Print could reach a wider audience than manuscript polemics, offering nuns a more public platform for the Buberian We of the convent to mend its battered image by speaking as one to the Catholic counterpublic. The paratextual material accompanying the publications of Deacon, Grey, and Percy provides a useful overview of the different readerships that Benedictine nuns cultivated. Grey’s edition evokes only one reader: its dedicatee, Abbess Eugenia Poulton of Ghent. Thus, while Grey takes a particularly bold public stance by attaching her name to the edition, she nonetheless appears to address a very limited, cloistered audience: Poulton and, by extension, the Ghent house. In contrast, Deacon and Percy aimed to reach a much broader readership, taking on greater public visibility that in turn required heightened authorial modesty. Mary Percy’s translation, which she signs only with her reversed initials, opens with a preface to “the religious of our nation” as well as “all such as desire to attayne to the eminent estate of Christian Perfection.”32 Percy reiterates this double audience in the preface itself, addressing her work to those who “have entred, or resolved to enter the pathes of Perfection”—that is, English Catholic readers who are either already professed religious or are inclined toward a religious vocation.33 Deacon’s dedicatory preface to the “Christian and Religious Reader” similarly invokes a twofold readership that is both general (“Christian”) and monastic (“Religious”). Deacon emphasizes the work’s value for this dual audience by noting that de Sales’s treatise has been “exceedingly praised, prized, & practiced; not onely by Religious persons, but also by the best seculars.”34 Intriguingly, she acknowledges that the general readership of her text may even include Protestants, directly appealing to the “illwillers of Catholike religion, & illwishers of a religious vocation.”35 While Deacon envisages the widest possible audience for her writing, she also assumes the strictest form of verbal circumscription by identifying herself only as a member of the Cambrai community. As these examples indicate, nuns could confidently address the English Catholic counterpublic or select constituencies within it so long as they displayed an appropriate level of modesty that reflected Benedictine humility and monastic enclosure.



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In doing so, these women took on a representative function as public avatars of their convents, which allowed their texts to address the English Catholic counterpublic from the position of the Buberian We of the cloister.36 Grey’s dedicatory letter to Poulton explicitly portrays the author as a member of the convent who has benefited from the abbess’s dedication to the Rule. As previously noted, Grey uses an elaborate metaphor, comparing the Rule to a “glorious sunne” whose rays are renewed daily without any lessening of their force, and draws on her own experience as a witness of Poulton’s governance to praise her devotion to the Rule.37 It seems as though Grey composed the dedication on the day of her profession or final vows, as she concludes by mentioning that she “desires to remaine as she this day is become Your Ladishipps Professed and vowed child.”38 By publicly identifying herself as a “Professed” member of the Ghent Benedictines, Grey becomes a spokesperson for the convent’s uniform dedication to the ideals of its order and, in turn, helps to burnish its reputation as the foremost English Benedictine cloister. Along similar lines, Deacon’s self-­identification on the title page of her translation as “a Dame of our Ladies of comfort of the order of S. Bennet in Cambray” positioned her as an anonymous and generalized representative of the Cambrai Benedictines. Although this translation actually reflected the views of the minority faction in the convent, anonymity allowed Deacon to appear to speak for the majority and in turn to publicly convey her views of monastic piety at a time when the Cambrai house’s reputation was under siege due to Baker’s controversial teachings. Print thus transformed these individualized exemplars into the monastic We of the (apparently) unified cloister, allowing its corporate voice to be transmitted from one nun’s cell into the wider world.

A Historical and Material Analysis of Controversial Texts and Competing Spiritual Authorities Between 1657 and 1658, the English Benedictines made an unusually concerted effort to exploit the polemical nature of print in order to rehabilitate the tattered reputations of Augustine Baker, the Cambrai convent, and its Paris filiation. In 1657, Serenus (Hugh) Cressy published his abridgment of Baker’s voluminous writings, Sancta Sophia or Directions for the Prayer of Contemplation. Around the same time, the Parisian press of Louis de la Fosse issued two related works: The Holy Practises of a Devine Lover or the Sainctly Ideots Devotions (1657) and The Spiritual Exercises of the Most Vertuous and Religious D. Gertrude More (1658). At first glance, these texts might seem to be relatively neutral choices for publication: each was a devotional treatise that had been composed several decades earlier either by or for the Cambrai Benedictines. Yet these works served as a public defense of Baker and the Cambrai nuns,

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who had suddenly come under attack within the English Benedictine Congregation in 1655, even as Cressy prepared Sancta Sophia for publication.39 As Cressy notes, in 1653 the General Chapter of the English Benedictine Congregation unanimously agreed on the following resolution in recognition of the success that Baker’s manuscripts had enjoyed in promoting spiritual growth at Cambrai as well as among secular priests and the laity: “That a Methodicall Abridgment of the Spirituall Instructions dispersed through the numerous Treatises of the late Venerable Father Augustin Baker should for the good and benefit of soules be exposed to the Publick.”40 The Cambrai nuns supported this venture by providing Cressy with Baker’s original manuscripts. Based on paratextual materials included in Sancta Sophia, Cressy probably consulted these works at the Cambrai convent. Cressy printed a letter that Abbess Catherine Gascoigne sent him on July 7, 1657, in which she comments on the pains he took in reading all of Baker’s writings “severall times.”41 Gascoigne and the convent must have observed this laborious process firsthand as Cressy worked with the convent’s own copies of Baker, a suspicion confirmed by the postscript. Here Cressy alludes to the infamous controversy over Baker’s writings that occurred in 1632 after Francis Hull, the official confessor at Cambrai, accused Baker of anti-­authoritarianism and heresy.42 Between 1629 and 1634, Leander à Sancto Martino and Rudesind Barlow examined all of Baker’s writings at the convent and added approbations proclaiming them fit to be used by the nuns. Cressy includes a selection of these approbations in order to establish Baker’s orthodoxy, noting that they were “taken from the Originalls extant at Cambray in the Approvers owne hand-­ writing.”43 Sancta Sophia thus resulted from a close collaboration between Cambrai and the English Benedictine Congregation that was intended to reshape the English Catholic counterpublic’s perception of Baker. Yet the compilation of this text also led to a resurgence of anti-­Baker sentiment that placed the Cambrai Benedictines at odds with key figures within the English Benedictine Congregation. A cache of letters seized by Oliver Cromwell’s spymaster John Thurloe offers a striking glimpse into this controversy. By December 22, 1654, Cressy had completed a full draft of Sancta Sophia, then known simply as “the Epitome,” and a group of monks was deputized to compare his abridgment with the original texts. Claude (William) White, the president of the English Benedictine Congregation, requested that the Cambrai nuns send Baker’s manuscripts to him in order to facilitate this evaluation. Despite the authority that White held as their superior, the Cambrai nuns hesitated to comply with his demand. Both Anselm (Arthur) Crowther (alias Pierre Vanderhaghen), the nun’s London agent, and Augustine Conyers warned Gascoigne on January 19 that White might use this opportunity to say that the nuns had relinquished their rights



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to the manuscripts.44 They proposed a compromise to which White seemed amenable: that White would have six months to review the manuscripts, as long as he offered written assurance that he would return them to the house. As Crowther explained to Gascoigne in a letter dated January 26, 1655, White’s position was strengthened by the nuns’ apparent acquiescence to a prior request for the manuscripts: “you have now condescended to deliver the originalls unto the Deputies hands to compare the Epitome [Sancta Sophia] with them, but your ordinary [White] is alsoe one of the Deputies, and therefore cannot be denyed the priviledg of using the originalls in his perusall of the Epitome.”45 As the convent’s superior and one of the deputies delegated to examine Sancta Sophia, White would seem to have an ironclad argument for taking Baker’s manuscripts from Cambrai. Instead of accepting this compromise, the convent unanimously petitioned the General Chapter to defer any decision about the manuscripts until its next meeting in 1657. In a visit to the house over the weekend of February 27, 1655, White not only refused to accept their petition but also conveyed his displeasure with their failure to obey his request. As Gascoigne reported to Conyers on March 3, “the Bookes are declared to containe poysonous, pernicious & diabolicall Doctrine, My selfe in a damnable way running to perdition, & Mr Walgrave [the house’s confessor] to maintaine a faction.”46 While loudly haranguing the convent at length that Saturday, White again demanded the books, now for the purpose of censoring them: “he meant not to alienat any thing from our convent but to purge the Bookes that we might not feed upon poisnous doctrine, and he repeated many passages of our petition interpreting them in a strange sense, and said that to persist in it was absolut disobedience, with many other terrifieing speeches.”47 As Gascoigne noted to Crowther on March 4, this plan to censor Baker’s manuscripts went far beyond the intention of the 1653 General Chapter: “I hope you will perceive of how great importance the altering of the originalls is which Master Whit professes he will himselfe do, though the commission given by Generall Chapter [to] the deputies extends only to the correction of the Epitome a thing of much Lesse consequence as we apprehend.”48 White then attempted to drive a wedge among the nuns by demanding that everyone publicly declare whether or not she supported the petition. In a letter to Conyers on March 3, confessor William Waldegrave compared the resulting discord to the recent “bussle . . . at Bruxelles,” observing that White’s “threats and speaches hath terrifyed some [of] the most orderly at which the disorderly and officious placebos do hugg themselves with content and are become much engratiated with superior persons.”49 Although called away unexpectedly from Cambrai, White planned to return after Easter and take the books whether the convent agreed or

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not. At this point, the letters break off, making it impossible to know how the controversy was settled. This dispute between the Cambrai nuns and White hinged on the question of obedience to superiors—an essential component of monastic life, as shown in chapter  1 of this book.50 In his letter to Conyers, Waldegrave obliquely cites one individual as responsible for White’s concerns about the manuscripts: “our old grandsir is crafty and crewell, god forgive him, he it is that is secretly the motor, and promotor of all these turbulent affayres to effect his owne designes.”51 Members of Stanbrook Abbey, the spiritual descendants of the Cambrai Benedictines, later identified this “grandsir” as Rudesind Barlow, who had become an implacable foe of Baker after Baker penned a scathingly satirical account of Barlow.52 According to this interpretation, Barlow sought to collect all of Baker’s manuscripts in order to destroy every copy of this thinly veiled portrait. Yet White’s contention that the Cambrai nuns were demonstrating “absolut disobedience” offers another way to understand the disagreement. As Crowther had pointed out back in January, the nuns were obliged to obey White. It seems very possible that their refusal allowed old concerns about Baker’s teachings to resurface. In 1632, Hull had alleged that Baker encouraged the nuns to reject obedience to certain superiors: “They have this Doctrin amongst them, that so much respect and Obedience is not to be given to Vicarius, Abbesse, or other Superior, that is not a Contemplative person.”53 Whether or not Barlow was behind White’s agenda to censor Baker’s writings, it is conceivable that White himself would have remembered the previous controversy and viewed the nuns’ intransigence as a result of Baker’s spiritual doctrine. If that was the case, then the nuns’ own desire to safeguard Baker’s manuscripts by retaining them on the convent’s premises may have led White to deem the texts themselves suspect. Whatever the precise origin of the controversy, its stakes were extremely high, as both sides sought to determine the level of autonomy that the convent possessed in relation to the English Benedictine Congregation. White exerted tremendous pressure on the nuns in his attempt to force the nuns to obey his demand. In addition to threatening to withhold the Congregation’s annual financial subsidy from the house, White refused to allow their three postulants to profess and banned the convent from hearing Mass.54 Unbowed by these harsh measures, the nuns ingeniously pursued stratagems that implied that their obedience to the Congregation was conditional rather than absolute. The convent’s letters from March 3 and 4 reveal that the nuns sought to pressure White to back down by asking for help from friendly monks (Conyers, Crowther, Paul [Robert] Robinson), as well as from their own relatives. More ominously, Gascoigne suggested to White himself, as well as to other monks, that the house might withdraw from the jurisdiction



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of the Congregation and submit itself to the local archbishop, who had offered to serve as superior at the time of the convent’s foundation. Since their Paris daughter house was similarly seeking to leave the Congregation (for unrelated reasons), this proposal threatened to leave the Congregation without a single convent and thus to weaken its spiritual prestige among English Catholics. Finally, the house mooted a plan for an agent to send the books to Paris so that they could be kept safe from White’s clutches: “you shall carry them to Paris to our Nunnes if they be out of the Congregation or otherwise to Master [Francis] Gascoigne and then you may bring home Dame Maria [Mary Cary] which may bee your pretence for going thither.”55 In the end, such drastic measures appear not to have been necessary. White died on October 14, 1655, and Barlow on September 19, 1656. The publication of Sancta Sophia and Holy Practices followed in 1657, the same year that Paul Robinson, an ally of the Cambrai nuns, became president of the Congregation. However, the controversy over Baker’s manuscripts had already seriously damaged the convent’s reputation within the English Catholic counterpublic. As Claire Walker notes, the number of new entrants plunged after 1655, not to recover until about ten years later.56 With the publication of Sancta Sophia in 1657, the English Benedictine Congregation attempted to reshape public views of the disputes involving the Cambrai convent by asserting a communal voice that parallels the Buberian We of religious community. The text is accompanied by warmly worded approbations from three leading members of the Congregation: Laurence (Clement) Reyner (the president), Benedict (Gregory) Stapleton (a definitor), and Leander à St. Augustine Pritchard (a professor at the Benedictine college of St. Vedast, Douai). Stapleton’s approbation, for example, praises the outstanding piety of both the author and the volume: “Testor etiam nihil in hoc libro contineri praeter regulas & praecepta ad vitae Contemplativae Perfectionem ducentia: Ea vero tantâ doctrinae soliditate, perspicuitate, tamque insigni methodo tractari, ut non solum piissimi Authoris Sanctitas, & in conductu animarum ad Perfectionis apicem peritia, nec non ipsius Collectoris diligentia & stili nitor abundè comprobentur; verum etiam summo cum perfectioris vitae studiosorum fructu in lucem emittendum nullo modo dubitem [I also testify that nothing is contained in this book except for rules and precepts leading to the perfection of the contemplative life: truly these things are treated with such solidity and perspicuity of doctrine and such an outstanding method that not only the most pious author’s sanctity and skill in the conduct of souls to the apex of perfection but moreover the diligence of the compiler himself and the splendor of his style should be abundantly approved; but also by no means do I doubt that this book must be brought into the light with the highest fruit of those who are desirous of a more perfect life].”57 Although Catherine Gascoigne was not

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in a position to provide an official approbation, Cressy concludes this section of the text with her previously mentioned letter. His prefatory remarks make it clear that the abbess’s epistle functions as a supplement to the approbations of Reyner, Stapleton, and Pritchard: “To the foregoing Approbations I esteemed it much for my advantage to adjoyne the following Testimony of my sincerity and faithfullnes in delivering the Doctrine of our Venerable Authour.”58 The paratexts to Sancta Sophia consequently suggest that members of key institutions within the English Benedictine Congregation had unanimously approved of the work’s publication. By papering over the disputes about Baker’s doctrine that had divided the Congregation only two years earlier, Sancta Sophia sought to influence the English Catholic counterpublic’s perception of the English Benedictine Congregation and its key institutions. At around the same time, two more publications related to Baker and Cambrai appeared in Paris, both issuing from the press of Louis de la Fosse. By sponsoring these polemical works, the Paris Benedictines sought to advance their own views of Baker’s controversial style of mysticism and to repair the reputation of their mother house within the English Catholic counterpublic. In 1657, De la Fosse printed The Holy Practises of a Devine Lover or the Sainctly Ideots Devotions, an anonymous treatise that has traditionally been attributed to Gertrude More of the Cambrai Benedictines.59 However, the text itself identifies Augustine Baker as the author in an entry in its catalogue of books for contemplative spirits: “All the Venerable Father Augustine Bakers Manuscripts of the Holye Order of St Benedict of the English Congregation, which are kept as Pretious treasures (as indeed they are) in the English Monasterie of Comfort of [t]he same Order, and Congregation at Cambraye. And all that is in this Summarie, Directions, Exercises, and what else is in this treatise is taken out of these Manuscripts.”60 Holy Practises concludes with a dedicatory epistle to Catherine Gascoigne that further associates the work with Baker and Cambrai by noting that its contents are “yours by the Venerable Authors owne guift, yours by Possession, but above all yours in the highest degree of practise.”61 While White and Gascoigne may have disagreed about who owned Baker’s manuscripts, the anonymous compiler of Holy Practises comes down firmly on the side of the Cambrai convent. Furthermore, the collator rebuts the idea that Baker’s writings deserve a secular audience, which was one of the key assertions made by Sancta Sophia: “truely they belonge to such, and none but such as de facto & indeed practise them. All others may looke on them, and perchance hardly censure them, but they have noe right, and title to them.”62 This stance suggests that the work originated among the Cambrai house’s sympathizers rather than within the English Benedictine Congregation itself, making this publication an unsanctioned rival to Sancta Sophia. Its unauthorized nature is evident in two



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ways. First, Holy Practises lacks any approbations, in contrast with the fulsome ones from the Congregation found in Sancta Sophia. Second, the text does not advertise Baker’s authorship, deferring any mention of his name until page 34 and placing the dedicatory preface at the rear of the volume instead of the front. By licensing the publication of Cressy’s synopsis of Baker’s writings and not the actual texts themselves, the Congregation asserted its ownership of Baker’s writings and spirituality. Holy Practises advanced a radically different view in which the Cambrai cloister retained its primacy as the guardian of Baker’s contemplative legacy, thereby supporting the Cambrai nuns’ position against the English Benedictine Congregation. It seems very likely that the Paris Benedictines were responsible for this implicit rebuke of Sancta Sophia. Both the preface and dedicatory epistle are written in the singular voice of an anonymous collator who indicates that a religious community is the true force behind the work’s compilation and publication. The initial preface addresses “my most dearelie beloved Friends in Christ Jesus,” identifying these “Friends” as the instigators of this publication: “I have accordinge to your holy injunction, & desire . . . published those directions, & exercises through which by true practise .  .  . you have reapt such greate Comfort, & Benefitt.”63 This comment suggests that the compiler’s “Friends” are a religious community that already practices Baker’s contemplative methods, an impression underscored by a later observation that this group is “the choise of His [God’s] flocke feedinge, & graisinge in the pleasant deserts of interne Recollection.”64 The Paris Benedictines, who possessed copies of Baker’s manuscripts and were located only two kilometers away from De la Fosse’s print shop, are the most obvious candidate for these “Friends.” This suspicion is confirmed by the compiler’s dedicatory preface to Gascoigne, which suggests a special relationship between these “Friends” and the Cambrai convent: “Accept of Him [Baker] then: and as hitherto lett him be ever familiar, and gratefull unto your Ladyship which they wish from their harts who are: and hee hartyly by whom they make this humble adresse, Madame, Your Ladyships, most devoted, humble, and obliged servants.”65 The Paris Benedictines had been founded in 1651 as an offshoot of the Cambrai house, and its earliest members had all experienced Gascoigne’s governance as abbess. As a result, this expression of spiritual humility may reflect their dependent position as Gascoigne’s former subjects. Holy Practises discreetly offers an alternative to the Buberian We cultivated by Sancta Sophia, substituting a contemplative spirituality common to the Cambrai and Paris convents for the largely masculine aegis of the English Benedictine Congregation. In doing so, Holy Practises provided the English Catholic counterpublic with a version of English Benedictinism that rivaled the spiritual identity promoted by the monks of their order.

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In 1658, De la Fosse published a second text that publicized the ties between the Cambrai and Paris convents even more overtly: The Spiritual Exercises of the Most Vertuous and Religious D. Gertrude More of the Holy Order of S. Bennet and English Congregation of Our Ladies of Comfort in Cambray. In addition to positioning Gertrude More as a public representative of the Cambrai convent’s spirituality, the title page drew further attention to the house’s unique brand of contemplation by describing “the Venerable Father Baker” as her “only Spiritual Father and Directour.” Francis Gascoigne, editor of The Spiritual Exercises and brother to Catherine Gascoigne, dedicated the work to Prioress Bridget More of the Paris Benedictines, the author’s sister by blood, thereby further gesturing toward the close ties between the Cambrai and Paris houses. Francis Gascoigne underscores the spiritual and biological proximity between the volume’s author and its dedicatee by opening his epistle with a sentence suggesting that both convents are informed by the same spirituality: “This devout Book comes to you of right being your natural sisters excellent Goods, and there is no other heire left to it but your deserving self besids I know few or none do any way pretend to it, but you and your Religious flock who exactly trace by true practice . . . the same holy paths this booke treats of.”66 As the dedication also makes clear, the publication of More’s Spiritual Exercises furthered the Paris nuns’ goal of defending Baker’s spiritual practices. Gascoigne refers to an otherwise unknown controversy surrounding the publication of Holy Practises a year earlier: “If it [this book] chance to fal into the hands of any such as may reject, or cry it down: (as some few did the Ideots Devotions of the same Spirit lately set forth) it wil (as that did) but receive the greater luster thereby.”67 This favorable allusion to Holy Practises reveals Francis Gascoigne’s personal support for Baker’s spirituality, and it seems very likely that he was chosen as an editor because he endorsed the Paris nuns’ broader agenda. A secular priest and confessor at Douai College who followed Baker’s methods, Francis Gascoigne had previously written a manuscript apology defending Baker after he found himself under censure around 1653 because some of his superiors deemed contemplative practices “improper and unfitte” for a college with a missionary purpose.68 William Waldegrave, who had served as confessor at Cambrai during the controversy with White, likewise assisted the nuns’ cause by providing a glowing approbation for the Spiritual Exercises, stating that More’s work “needs no Approbation but a serious recommendation to al such as desire a true pattern to attain to the perfect love of God by affective prayer.”69 Spiritual Exercises thus resulted from a targeted campaign to generate the support of the English Catholic counterpublic for the mysticism associated with Baker and his adherents at Cambrai and Paris.



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As a number of scholars have already outlined, much of the content within the Spiritual Exercises is explicitly polemical due to its origins in the 1632 controversy over Baker’s mysticism.70 Feminist critics in particular have made much of More’s defense of the soul’s spiritual liberty, drawing attention to her lengthy commentary on monastic obedience in the prefatory Apology for Herself, and her Spiritual Guide, and Director, the Venerable Father Augustin Baker.71 Yet as chapter 2 of this book has shown, the Confessiones amantis and miscellaneous writings that form the bulk of the volume were not necessarily written with a polemical purpose. As More observes, she had a much more immediate and personal aim: “To harten, and inco[u]radg my soul by speaking, and writing thus to thee, was the caus why these things have been written by me, which I read, when I cannot . . . otherwise think upon thee.”72 Gascoigne politicizes the Confessiones amantis and the rest of the volume by adding manicules and italics, as he notes in the dedicatory preface: “it hath some hands set in the margin, and divers characters in many places to point out certain matters and make them more remarkable.”73 Kitty Scoular Datta has contended that “the passages marked . . . by a small pointer-­hand are the most radical.”74 Gascoigne’s marginalia, which identify More’s third-­person references to Augustine Baker and Rudesind Barlow, often perform a similar function. Yet these editorial interventions do much more than simply highlight the controversial aspects of the text: they also cultivate More’s posthumous role as a public representative of the piety associated with the Cambrai and Paris convents. Through minor and major alterations to More’s writings, Gascoigne represents More as an exemplary devotee of Baker’s spirituality who can assuage any doubts about his orthodoxy that may linger within the English Catholic counterpublic. Gertrude More’s synecdochal ability to speak for the Buberian We of the convent in turn allowed Cambrai and its filiation at Paris to repair the damage to their joint spiritual reputation that had occurred during White’s attacks on Baker and the Cambrai house. Gascoigne’s editorial interventions meticulously position More as an exemplary representative of Baker’s spirituality and its effects. By adding italics and manicules to More’s text, Gascoigne indicates that Baker’s “way of love” allows nuns to attain monastic virtues such as obedience, thereby indirectly rebutting claims that the Cambrai nuns were anti-­authoritarian. For example, Gascoigne uses italics to underscore More’s distinction between true and false obedience in the Apology: “their is no way but by Obedience to come to God, and no vertue without Obedience is pleasing to God. But it is an Obedience that regardeth God, and that doth what he would: And not a foolish pretended Obedience which is in the letter, and not in the spirit.”75 By repeatedly italicizing key words (obedience, God, spirit), Gascoigne emphasizes

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More’s point even as he suggests that her knowledge of true obedience stems from her own mystic encounters with the divine “spirit.” Gascoigne follows a similar approach when More attempts to define the pure form of love that allows the mystic to see God, a passage that is also marked with a manicule: “Nothing can bring us to this sight [God], but love. But what love must it be? Not a sensible love only, a childish love, a love which seeketh it-­self, more then the beloved. No, but it must be an ardent love, a pure love, a couradgious love, a love of Charity, an humble love, and a constant love.”76 Through a careful pattern of italics, Gascoigne furthers her delineation between divinely inspired love and other forms of this emotion. Since Baker’s method was known as the “way of love,” this painstaking set of italicizations also subtly suggests that his guidance had allowed her to experience this mystic form of love and thus to attain the monastic goal of contemplative union with the divine. By positioning More as a model devotee of Baker’s methods, these minor changes invite the reader, and by extension the English Catholic counterpublic, to view the Spiritual Exercises as a polemical response to past and recent controversies over Baker. Gascoigne also appropriates More’s Confessiones amantis for this polemical agenda by inserting fragments from her poetry within her prose confessions. More’s seventh confession cites a lengthy passage from Thomas à Kempis’s Imitatio Christi that concludes: “my Hart cannot rest, nor be fully contented unlesse itt rest in Thee, and transcend all guifts, and Creatures whatsoever.”77 Gascoigne frames this citation with an editorial note claiming that More frequently meditated on this passage: “No instruction did she so much regard, so frequently reflect on, or more volve, and revolve in her mind, nor more delighted in, then this that followeth, being meerly of her own finding, and observing in the said book.”78 After the conclusion of the citation from Kempis, the text in Gascoigne’s edition moves into a series of stanzas from More’s lengthy poem “Amor ordinem nescit [Love Knows No Order].” Not only do these verses appear to offer the fruit of More’s frequent meditations upon Kempis, but they also contain material that could be read as supporting the Cambrai convent’s view that allegiance to God surpassed earthly duties: And lett me rather death embrace, Then thee my God offend, Or in my hart to give thy place To any other freind.79

At the same time, the verse contains insights gleaned from More’s contemplative experiences, including a proto-­Buberian declaration of how the soul can attain mystic union with God:



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If we would dy unto our selves And all things ells but thee, It would be naturall to our soules For to ascend, and be United to our Center deare.80

At the end of the poem, More’s prose resumes in a passage marked with a manicule: “These are his words my Lord God, which whosever practiseth, shall find a Spirituall internall life so easy, sweet, secure, and void of all questions, that they will walk (even in this bannishment, where our life is tearmed, and that most justly, a continuall warrefare) with a heavenly peace, and security.”81 More’s verse does not appear in the manuscript version, making it clear that the phrase “These are his words” refers to More’s citation of Kempis.82 The print version, however, suggests that the poem itself captures the “words” of Kempis, who thus seems to support More’s contention that souls should turn to God in “the closett of [the] hart” rather than to superiors.83 By inserting More’s poetry into the seventh confession, Gascoigne politicizes her meditation upon the Imitatio Christi while strongly implying that Baker’s method agrees with the doctrine of the Catholic Church as personified by Kempis. Even more strikingly, the first confession in Gascoigne’s edition includes stanzas from another long poem by More entitled “Of Suffering and Bearing the Crosse,” which Baker elsewhere described as her “swannes song” because she wrote it at the end of her life.84 The manuscript copy of Confessiones amantis does not include these lines, and the placement of this later poem in the first confession obviously muddles the chronology of More’s writings. Once again, a polemical purpose informs this editorial intervention, which seems to suggest that More’s poetry emerges spontaneously out of her contemplative insights. Just before the poem, More beseeches God in prayer: “lett those who have dedicated themselves to thee, cease to desire any thing out of thee; Send them meanes to know how sweet it is to have no friend but thee, and to be neglected by all but thy sweet mercy.”85 Because the verse begins directly after this point, it appears that God answers her plea by sending her a “meanes” in the form of a divinely inspired poem, which contains a clear defense of Baker’s contemplative methods: For God doth this procure, That thou maist seeke himselfe alone, And putt thy trust in him, And not in any creatures living, How good so ere they seeme.86

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When More resumes her prose meditation, she appears to refer to the poem: “In this is such and so great comfort, and peace, that well may the soule be tearmed to receave a hundred folde in this life, who despiseth it-­self, and all other things that it may finde thee.”87 “This” has no clear referent, but the passage’s focus on despising the world reveals that More is continuing her previous train of thought by celebrating the heavenly rewards that await those who have “no friend” except God. By interpolating these verses, Gascoigne’s edition seems to present More in the act of contemplation, demonstrating her direct reliance on inspiration from God rather than the mandates of human confessors. The poem’s placement furthermore suggests that God himself has sanctioned this approach, adding to the polemical thrust of the passage. Gascoigne’s handling of More’s verse thus complements his use of italics and manicules, presenting More to the English Catholic counterpublic as both a defender of the Cambrai house and a paragon of Baker’s methods.

A Philosophical Analysis of Controversial Texts and the Buberian We More’s position as a synecdochal representative of the Cambrai convent allowed her text to be read retrospectively as voicing the unified We of the cloister to the English Catholic counterpublic, thereby permitting the Cambrai and Paris houses to defend themselves from charges of unorthodoxy. Throughout her meditations, More represents God as the ideal focus of the individual soul, in keeping with the divinely centered nature of monastic piety. Gascoigne draws the reader’s attention to one such proto-­Buberian passage with a manicule in the margin: “we must remember that it is a good, and happy thing for Brethren to dwel in One, or rather (by true love and charity) in that One Which is truly necessary, to wit, in God.”88 Read within the polemical context of the debates over Baker’s methods, this expression of the community’s shared orientation toward God implicitly defends Baker by suggesting that his spirituality is compatible with the communal aims of monastic life. At the same time, from a Buberian perspective, it is this shared “dwel[ling] in One” center that allows the We of the cloister to emerge within More’s writings, which seem to exhibit a “spirit of turning” in their use of the first-­person-­plural voice. In the Apology, More consciously takes on a synecdochal role as she speaks on behalf of the Cambrai convent, representing this communal We. For instance, she presents herself as a counterexample to Hull’s accusations that the house’s members were antihierarchical: “we sleight, neglect and contemne al books, and instructions but Father Bakers; (Which is as God knows) quite otherwise . . . I am far from sleighting other instructions; but hold they are very good for them for whom they may be proper.”89 In the Confessiones amantis, she uses the first-­person plural to petition God on behalf of Baker’s followers: “grant that we, who have, or shall



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find benefit by these most happy Instructions, may be as faithfull to thee, as it is possible for soules loaden with flesh, and bloud.”90 In these moments, More gives voice to the Buberian We of the Cambrai Benedictines, presenting her house as a unified group of women who have furthered their spiritual practice and attained a God-­centered community through Baker’s methods. In other cases, More’s use of “we” seems to stretch beyond the cloister walls to speak for professed religious more generally, thereby inviting religious readers to join an imagined community of Baker’s supporters. For example, she identifies herself as a member of a broader group of religious while ruminating on obedience in the Apology: “If we live so retiredly as he [God] wil enable us, we shal easily perceive what he doth require, and exact of us in every thing: for we being Religious are by Obedien[c]e, and necessity for the most part disposed of.”91 While More was initially addressing the limited audience of the Cambrai Benedictines, the publication of her work opened up new interpretive possibilities for this “we.” Indeed, it seems quite possible that More envisioned herself as speaking to and for a wider counterpublic of religious readers, as another passage from the Confessiones amantis suggests: “Come al ye that have vowed your bodies, and souls to our Lord, Come let us love . . . Let us not only love, but be wholy transformed into the Divine love.”92 In one instance, Francis Gascoigne even uses an editorial note to reinforce this enhanced understanding of the We that appears within the text. More prays God to avert any imposition of a forced spiritual course on the Cambrai Benedictines: “from this house . . . I beseech thee for thy own sake, keepe this misery, which of all other is the greatest that I can comprehend or imagin.”93 Gascoigne adds a remark clarifying that More was referring to the Cambrai convent as well as its Paris filiation, despite the fact that the Paris house was not founded until well after More’s death: “To witt of the Benedictine Nunns at Cambray. The same she meanes for Paris issued thence, and where her natural Sister of the same Spirit Governes at present.” The transition of More’s writings from manuscript to print thus permitted her to speak to the English Catholic counterpublic on behalf of the Paris Benedictines and potentially other religious communities through a Buberian We that originated in her physical cloister but extended well beyond the enclosure’s walls. Most intriguingly, in certain instances the Spiritual Exercises seems to encourage the English Catholic counterpublic to view itself as part of the textual community evoked by More’s use of the first-­person plural. For example, More adopts a generalized “we” when speaking of the love a soul experiences for God: “there is no comparison able to expresse the love which is between a faithfull soule, and thee. For the more we love thee, the more pure and quiet becometh the soule by this thy heavenly charity.”94 While More likely had a

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convent audience in mind here, the publication of her Confessiones amantis opens up the possibility that secular and monastic readers might both qualify as “faithfull soule[s].” In a similar manner, More’s exhortations to the reader often seem to invite members of the English Catholic counterpublic to join in the convent’s distinctive spirituality: “let us take the greatest heed that can be of lessening the worthy estimation of the divine cal[l] that in it-­ self is the prime verity, or divine way proceeding from it. Let us extol and commend it as we would do God him-­self; and dispose us, and al others as much as we are able that in al things it may be observed, and fulfilled by us al.”95 Inclusive pronouns and phrases such as “us,” “al others,” and “us al” further the idea that More is speaking to a general reader, not merely a cloistered audience. In doing so, the text incites lay readers to share in the “spirit of turning” particular to Cambrai by regarding God’s call above all other things. Gascoigne’s edition thus appropriates More’s use of a proto-­Buberian We, which is simultaneously apologetical and polemical, for a twofold purpose. Even as More appears to defend the reputations of the Cambrai and Paris convents by championing Baker’s methods, so too she seems to invite the English Catholic counterpublic to experience Baker’s “way of love” for itself by joining in the Buberian We of the Cambrai and Paris Benedictines.

Indifferent Readers: Monastic Polemics from the Brussels Benedictines Polemic, an outward-­facing and explicitly controversial genre, was a relatively rare form of writing for English nuns in exile. Only four polemics produced by these convents survive: three from the Brussels Benedictines and one from the Lisbon Bridgettines. Both of these institutions faced a substantial challenge to their existence after rumors threatened to weaken their reputation within England.96 Using scribal publication rather than print as a means of reaching the counterpublic of English Catholic readers, these texts openly sought to shape public opinion about their authors’ institutions. As Jenna Lay has observed in relation to the Lisbon Bridgettines’ polemic, its authors “transformed controversialist language into the basis for self-­ representation.”97 Capitalizing on the public status of polemic as a genre, both houses turned to controversial writing as a means of self-­preservation through self-­definition. Yet there is a major difference between the two convents: while the Lisbon Bridgettines faced an external threat, the Brussels Benedictines were endangered by internal discord. As Lay observes, the Lisbon Bridgettines manipulate the conventions of anonymity to speak as a corporate group, which in turn parallels the unified We of the idealized Buberian community.98 In contrast, the three polemics from the Brussels



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community reveal the competition for representation that ensued when the community failed to cohere around a shared core. As the We of the monastery fractured into an Us-­Them dynamic, it became impossible for the Brussels cloister to reach the monastic ideals associated with Benedict and Buber outlined in earlier chapters of this book.

A Historical and Philosophical Analysis of Polemic and Spiritual Rivalry The Brussels Benedictines experienced an extraordinary series of intramural quarrels that destroyed the house’s communal spirituality and seriously damaged its reputation within the English Catholic counterpublic and beyond. As the first convent founded on the Continent specifically for Englishwomen, the Brussels monastery attained a great deal of prestige among English Catholics during its earliest days. Its close ties with the Jesuit order furnished another source of cultural cachet. In addition to providing financial, logistical, and spiritual assistance, the Jesuits encouraged a steady stream of novices to join the convent. As a result, many of the Brussels nuns were strongly devoted to Ignatian spirituality. Yet shortly after Mary Percy became abbess in 1616, the house began to experience its first divisions over Jesuit influence, causing the most ardent supporters of the Jesuits to found a new convent at Ghent in 1624, as previously mentioned. In 1628, a more serious crisis over spiritual direction erupted when Archbishop Jacobus Boonen appointed Anthony Champney, a known foe of Jesuit priests, as the house’s confessor. Within months after Champney’s appointment, pro-­Jesuit nuns began refusing to confess to Champney and petitioned the archbishop for his dismissal from the office of confessor. Both parties, the pro-­Percy and pro-­Jesuit nuns, appealed to Rome for aid. In 1630, the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, a group of cardinals responsible for mission countries such as England, barred the Jesuits from the convent in a measure obviously intended to support Champney, Percy, and Boonen. In response, the pro-­Jesuit nuns, or Appellants, filed a lawsuit that accused Champney of heresy, schism, and licentious speech, and Percy of misgovernance, financial abuse, and murder. As the dispute dragged on, Percy and her supporters sought to limit the Appellants’ power within the convent by depriving them of their monastic offices and voting rights, and the Appellants, in order to maintain their rights, resorted to violent measures, such as forcibly occupying the house’s sacristy. Ecclesiastical authorities removed the Appellants from the convent in April 1632, causing the Appellants to appeal again to Rome. This time the Appellants were eventually successful. They returned to the convent in 1637 and became fully integrated within the house in 1639. Nevertheless, the Brussels Benedictines

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did not experience true peace until Mary Vavasour, a leading Appellant, became abbess in 1650. As their house was engulfed by a crisis of international dimensions involving laity and ecclesiastical authorities in England, the Low Countries, and Italy, both parties sought to influence how English Catholics viewed the conflict. Within a year after Champney’s appointment, Catholics in England were already well apprised of the house’s quarrels despite their physical distance from the monastery and the strict monastic regulation of all contact with the outside world. All outgoing correspondence was supposed to be seen and approved by the abbess, according to the Brussels Statutes: “What writings letters, or Tokens soever they are to send lett them deliver to the Abbesse and lett them leave it to her judgment, whether shee will send them or noe.”99 Since Percy would not have approved of letters airing the house’s grievances, her opponents found other means to spread their views among English Catholics. Some may have shared their concerns at the parlor grate, while others circulated written complaints through more creative means. In a letter sent to the archbishop on September 22, 1629, Percy complained that Robert Wintour, brother to one of the Appellants, “vient quasie tous les soirs pour se proumener dans le cour de nostre maison sous les fenestres, et qu’on l’a veu hier au soir recevoir des letres par les fenestres de l’infirmarye [comes practically every evening to walk in the courtyard of our house under the windows, and that yesterday evening he was seen to receive some letters through the infirmary windows].”100 The Appellants themselves admitted to sending letters to their relatives to plead their case. According to their lawsuit, “scripserant duodecin domicellae ad parentes suos in A[n]gliam [twelve dames wrote to their relatives in England],” but they were foiled by another letter: “contraria in angliam litera transmissa est, qua dictas domicellas sic depinxerunt ut nihil ulterius ad indignationem et odium parentum illis conciliandum aptius effingi posset [a contrary letter was sent to England, in which they so depicted the said dames that nothing further could be more aptly fashioned to procure the displeasure and hatred of their relatives toward them].”101 As these examples indicate, both sides attempted to take charge of the rumors circulating within the English Catholic counterpublic. Polemic offered an especially useful means of advancing each party’s narrative of the quarrels, and during the course of these conflicts members of the Brussels Benedictines produced at least three texts of this kind for circulation among the English Catholic counterpublic. The first was written by Mary Percy in December 1629 in an attempt to get ahead of the controversy as it began to spiral out of control. As the full title reveals, Percy aimed to speak to a counterpublic of English Catholics: An Apologeticall Letter Written by the Lady Abbesse at Bruxells to the Catholiks of England 18 December



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1629. More specifically, Percy addressed those readers who had a stake in the monastery’s well-­being: “To the right Honorable right worshipfull and truly beloved freinds in Christ Jesus whos either children or kindred [are] under my charge, or are otherwise friend unto me or my monestarie.”102 A sense of the text’s circulation can be gathered from a series of subscriptions on the back of the only extant copy, which was preserved in the State Papers: “William Walgraves,” “a Jesuitt grey the mesenger,” “Robert Davison that keeper of the new prison & the Clinke,” “Richard weynwright that pursuevant.”103 In 1631, William Waldegrave, who would later join the Benedictines and serve as confessor to the Cambrai convent, was a secular priest incarcerated in the New Prison.104 Apparently, a Jesuit priest named “Grey” (possibly Michael Gray, who was in England by 1632) passed the text along to Waldegrave.105 Once Davison intercepted the communication in his capacity as keeper of the New Prison, he sent it via the pursuivant Richard Wainwright to the appropriate authorities, who filed away the treatise in the archives that would become the State Papers. As this transmission history suggests, Percy’s Apologeticall Letter circulated widely among English Catholics, including readers who were likely to be inimical to her position, such as Jesuit priests. The text itself offers an intriguing glimpse of Percy’s polemical activity within the convent. Despite the singularity of genre implied by its title, this manuscript consists of four items: (1) Percy’s letter to English Catholics; (2) secret instructions given to the Appellants by John Port, SJ, with Percy’s point-­by-­point rebuttal; (3) portions of a chapter speech delivered to the convent by Percy on November 6, 1629; (4) a written communication circulated within the convent by Percy on November 30, 1629.106 Percy claimed to have found “a paper scattered” in the convent that contained Port’s secret communication to the Appellants, in which Port absolved the nuns of participation in an upcoming visitation and justified their opposition to Percy by stating that she had broken the house’s statutes.107 Showing a natural inclination to polemical writing, Percy wrote a detailed rebuttal of Port’s main contentions in the argumentative style typical of early modern polemic. She represented this text, however, as an expression of her maternal care for the house’s spiritual health: “which paper comeing to my notice I could not dissemble but lett you know my judgment thereof as being your Mother.”108 Percy also demonstrated concern for her own piety by asking her opponents to identify the statutes that she had supposedly broken. Such pious framing was further enhanced by Percy’s decision to read her polemic aloud to the convent during chapter on November 6, a setting that emphasized her spiritual authority within the cloister. At the same time, Percy provided written copies for her opponents. In the face of the pro-­Jesuit nuns’ silence, Percy shared another writing with the house on November 30. In this short missive, she

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again encouraged her foes to specify which statutes she had violated, while also taking the opportunity to elaborate on how the anti-­Champney nuns had infringed on the statutes. As this overview suggests, Percy circulated her polemic within the house in order to reinforce her authority as the official spiritual leader of the Brussels convent. While it is remarkable enough that an internal polemic addressed to a cloistered audience has survived, it is truly extraordinary that Percy chose to disseminate these writings to an outside audience. Yet as Percy observes within the Apologeticall Letter, the English Catholic counterpublic was already abuzz with the news of the convent’s quarrels: “The rumors of our domesticall disunions and jarres, are so great there with you, that they rebound hether to us with a strong Eccho, as divers of your letters to my selfe do wittnes.”109 To Percy’s great distress, these “rumors” identified her as the source of the convent’s discord: “I am deepely taxed as one cheife, if not the sole cause and Author of the saied jarres.”110 She attempts to neutralize this threat to her authority by making internal documents public and by asking members of the English Catholic counterpublic to judge the situation: “The question therefore being which partie goeth about to overthrowe our holy constitutions or are breakers thereof, I remitt it wholy to your Judgmentes uppon the view and due considerations of that which followeth heareafter, whether I and myne, or that the adverse partie are in fault.”111 Although Percy admits that she has no real obligation to explain her actions to this readership, she is nonetheless eager to hear their advice, as the readers are “freinds (for soe I esteeme you).”112 Furthermore, she indicates that English Catholics can help resolve the situation by acting as counselors, either to Percy herself or to the dissident nuns: “if you finde your Children or freinds to be blameable admonish them thereof, and lett them know that you neithe[r] approve nor will countenaunce them in theire quarrells against theire lawfull Superiours, If you shall thinke mee in fault Lett mee know the reason why you judge mee so to bee, and I promise you heere faithfully that I will either yeald to your Judgment, and amend that which is amisse, or give you such reasons to the contrary as you shall say are not unreasonable.”113 While the laity held no official authority within the convent, they could nonetheless exert indirect pressure on Percy’s opponents by sending letters, as they had already done with Percy. Aware that her reputation was already being tried in the court of public opinion, Percy made a highly unusual decision to grant secular readers a glimpse into the enclosed life of the convent in order to solidify her own monastic authority as abbess. The unprecedented nature of this step indicates that the crisis at Brussels had reached a tipping point: the controversy could no longer be concealed from the English Catholic counterpublic.



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The Apologeticall Letter casts Port and Percy’s opponents as the originators of the convent’s dissension with rhetorical strategies that can be productively read through a Buberian lens. As chapter 1 of this book demonstrated, monastic life is ideally based on a Gemeinschaft that prioritizes collective daily experience predicated on God. Percy contends that the dissident nuns and their supporters operate in a clandestine manner that diverges from this cloistered ideal of communal living. She describes Port’s paper as “instructions geiven in secrett to my Children,” and in her chapter speech she directly accuses her opponents of underhanded behavior: “you onely make use of your pretence of the breach of Statutes to cover and cloake your owne unquiett proceedinges from such as I saye had not Eyes to see them; and couler of right to mayntayne your Statutes [to] continewe your libertie in keepinge your secrett conferrences consultations and meetinges within, and your intelligences with others abroade to the disturbaunce of the peace and quiett of those who desire to live in peace to the offence of God in breakeinge the observances and discipline prescribed unto us in our Statutes, and to the infamie and dishonor not onely of our house and famelye, but of our Nation.”114 The “infamie and dishonor” of the monastery and the English “Nation” spring directly from the dissident nuns’ desire to maintain their “secrett conferences consultations and meetinges.” Percy draws attention to her opponents’ supposed penchant for covert dealings by using the imagery of blindness (“had not Eyes”) and darkness (“to cover and cloake”). In contrast with such underhanded machinations, Percy presents herself as a model of plain dealing throughout the Apologeticall Letter. She reads aloud her polemic in the chapter and freely shares copies of it with the convent. Likewise, her written communication from November 30 is “sett up in the Ordinary publike place, where it may bee seene, read, and copied out by whosoever shall desire it.”115 Percy also provides the general public with copies of Port’s instructions as well as her rebuttal, chapter speech, and written communication so that readers may judge for themselves who is at fault. Percy’s emphasis on such transparency is in keeping with the Buberian ideal in which religious community springs from a common life together. Indeed, the dissident nuns’ secretive behavior strikes at the heart of monastic Gemeinschaft: the statutes that regulated everyday experiences at the Brussels convent. Percy, for example, contends that Port’s covert instructions reveal that her opponents “have other maisters and directors then either our Statutes allowe of or wilbe profitable for to follow.”116 According to the Brussels Statutes, the nuns were forbidden to ask for counsel from priests who were not approved by the abbess: “None shall seeke for any spirituall advise or receave any such directions, but from those which the Abbesse shall approve neither shall shee receave any Instructions for that purpose without

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the expresse consent of her sayd Superiour.”117 From both a Benedictine and Buberian perspective, the confessor and abbess serve as important guides to the convent’s shared center. By approaching Port instead of Champney, the dissident nuns turned their backs on two representatives of God, their confessor and their abbess, and thereby sought another route toward the divine. Not only did such an act put Percy’s foes at odds with their fellow nuns, but it also suggested that they were orienting themselves around a different center than the rest of the convent. In a particularly pungent attack on Port’s contention that a visitation would breach the statutes, Percy suggests that her opponents are actually the children of Satan rather than God: “Can you thinke deare Children that this Maister truly intendeth to make you in love with the observation of your Statutes, who allureth . . . you to the breach of them by conveing unto you underhand his secrett instructions, so directly against the Statutes: If he were a Child of light and had confidence in the doctrine he would goe to our Superiors who are to visitt, and advertise them of the default if there were any; But his intent is like his, that when the Seeds man was a sleepe sowed cockle where the saide Seeds man had sowed good seed before, and to breede discord and dislike betwixt you and your Superiors, such as we see to much of, by the endeavours of such Maisters.”118 In this passage, Percy references the parable of the cockle of the field to devastating effect. As Christ explains, “He that soweth the good seed, is the Son of man. And the field, is the world. And the good seed are the children of the kingdom. And the cockle, are the children of the wicked one. And the enemy that sowed them is the devil” (Matthew 13:37–39). By analogy, Port is a representative of the devil and bears the ultimate responsibility for sowing division within the monastery. While convent life was ideally grounded in constitutions and a Rule that helped nuns fulfill their vocation of finding God, Port has distracted the dissident nuns from this divine call by giving them an alternate code of conduct. The divisions among the Brussels Benedictines also illustrate the dangers posed by the “communal illusion,” in Buberian terms, that takes place when lives are “bundl[ed] together” rather than bound together.119 One of the most important disagreements between Percy and Port revolved around the definition of the convent itself. According to Port, the dissident nuns constitute the convent since the other part are “fewer.”120 He counts twenty in the anti-­Champney party versus sixteen or seventeen who support Percy.121 Yet as Percy responds, the monastery is an institution where power resides in the abbess, not a democracy based on numbers: “If there were three times more persons in any Commu[n]itie seperated from the head of the same, then there are united thereunto, they could never be the body, but onely mutenous members impugning the body, and soe it would be in your



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Convent, were you twice as many as you are; Looke therfore to it in time dear Children, and be not seduced by such Arguments to the eternall hurt and ruine of your owne soules.”122 Drawing on the common early modern political metaphor in which the corporal body represents the body politic, Percy vividly illustrates the pitfalls of a religious community divided into factions. Like “mutenous members,” the nuns in the pro-­Jesuit faction seek to reject Percy, their “head” within the monastery, thereby “impugning” and assailing the same “body” that gives them life. Such factionalism implicitly rejects the idea of a shared, common life that is central to both Benedictinism and Buberian philosophy. True religious community and the salvation that it facilitates are not possible unless Percy’s foes reject “such Arguments” and work with their superiors to restore the Gemeinschaft of common monastic life. In sharing these arguments with the English Catholic counterpublic, Percy hoped to bolster support for her faction within her nation and thus exert pressure on the dissident nuns to comply with her understanding of religious discipline. As the controversy progressed, both factions within the Brussels house produced additional polemics that addressed the English Catholic counterpublic for purposes similar to those of Percy’s Apologeticall Letter. While some of these texts are no longer extant, two surviving tracts offer a further glimpse into the philosophical stakes of these infamous quarrels. In June 1632, Percy sent a manuscript relation (now lost) to England, probably with the intention of explaining the circumstances that had led to the Appellants’ forced departure from the house in April of that year. A few months later the Appellants responded with their own manuscript account, A Briefe and Sincere Relation of the Beginnings, Grounds, and Issue of the Late Controversy betwixt the Lady Mary Percy Abbesse and her Religious. In January 1634, the current members of the convent issued a detailed rebuttal of the Appellants’ Relation, entitled Innocency Justified and Insolency Repressed or a Round yet Modest Answere, to an Immodest and Slaunderous Libell. In the typical manner of early modern polemics, this manuscript reproduces the Briefe and Sincere Relation in whole, rebutting each section point by point so that the reader can examine both polemics at once. Percy is often identified as the author of Innocency Justified, and she was very likely one of its principal contributors. However, both polemics employ a first-­person-­plural voice that speaks on behalf of the entire group, whether the Appellants or the pro-­Percy nuns. On a rhetorical level, this use of “we” is an effective strategy for defending Percy against the charges made in the Appellants’ Relation. For example, the Appellants accuse Percy of styling herself the foundress of the monastery, to which Innocency Justified replies, “That she pretendeth thereby the title of foundresse wee never perceived that in her.”123 Representing the unified voice of the

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pro-­Percy nuns and consequently of the Brussels monastery as it was constituted at that time, this “we” offers a powerful denial of the claims made against Percy. From a Buberian perspective, however, the dueling first-­ person-­plural voices of these polemics reveal the factions that ensue when the We of monastic communion has devolved into Us-­Them. Since each group of nuns sought to lay claim to being the true We of the convent, polemic supplied an opportunity for them to try their case in the court of public opinion. Notably, their dispute had already reached a legal conclusion with the agreement that had led to the Appellants’ removal from the physical enclosure of the Brussels Benedictines. As the preface to Innocency Justified strikingly observes, readers might then justifiably wonder why the house had taken up their pen: “The thing it self being such as were better buried under ground like unto rotten carcases, then layd open to the offence of others.”124 Yet the authors note that the English Catholic counterpublic is already well aware of the controversy: “the evill is both soe publique, and also so farr spread, that our answere can neither make it more publique, or yet carry it further abroad.”125 Because their internal strife had become such a “publique” matter, the pro-­Percy nuns faced the pressing task of salvaging their reputation among English Catholics: “wee could not without doing so much wrong to our selves as to give away our good names which are worthily dearer then life, lett passe soe false & slaunderous a Libell as it is, without answere.”126 The Appellants likewise sought to use polemic as a means of influencing English Catholic views of their behavior, entreating their “freindes” to help clear their name: “wee begg of our freindes . . . that they wilbee pleased duly to weigh every Circumstance of this Relation, and . . . wee make noe doubt but it will make good the favorable Censure which wee desire and deserve to blott out of mens mynds and mouthes those fowle aspersions which the Adverse party hath laboured to cast upon us.”127 Since each community relied heavily on England for alms and novices, such addresses to the English Catholic counterpublic were of the utmost importance in determining which group of nuns would survive. Much like the Apologeticall Letter, both polemics situate their readership as the ultimate arbiter of the controversy. As the first clause of A Relation states, the Appellants have composed the text with the express purpose of eliciting the reader’s judgment of their actions in the controversy: “wee most humbly entreat all those who shall come to the sight of this paper, or otherwise heare of the miserie[s] and afflictions which wee have endured, first to weigh the groundes whereon wee have proceeded, and then wee make noe doubt but the justice of our cause wilbee soe cleare, that it will drawe a favorable Censure in our behalf.”128 Similarly, the pro-­Percy nuns observe in the preface to Innocency Justified that they have written this pamphlet so



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that those who seek the truth “may bee able to judge betwixt the faulty, and the Innocent, and lay the blame where it is due, leaving the others free.”129 Both polemics address a specific audience, the indifferent reader who has not yet made up their mind about the disputes. Innocency Justified, for instance, frequently gestures toward this figure as the supreme evaluator of the nuns’ conduct during the controversy: “wee will willingly remitt it to the Indifferent Reader to Judge whether you or wee were or are in the right.”130 The Appellants’ Relation also invokes the impartial reader as a neutral judge of their conduct: “any indifferent man can but approve as by that which followeth will appeare.”131 The dialogical relationship between Mary Percy’s lost account, the Appellants’ Relation, and Innocency Justified reflects the argumentative dynamic within the cloister itself. The genre of polemic in turn allows these conversations to become triangulated through the specter of the reader-­as-­judge, who remains above the fray. In appealing to this figure, both parties recognized that the English Catholic counterpublic’s views of the conflict had real-­world consequences for their communities. This need to bring in a secular outsider to arbitrate the debates reveals that the idealized We of religious community has irreversibly broken down. The writers of these polemics may “turn together,” to use a Buberian phrase, but they turn toward the English Catholic counterpublic as judge rather than toward God as the center of a shared life. While both polemics employ various strategies to discredit their opponents, one of the more striking aspects of their attacks, from a Buberian perspective, is an emphasis on transparency as central to monastic life. Continuing the tack used in Percy’s Apologeticall Letter, Innocency Justified represents the Appellants as shrouding their proceedings in a secrecy at odds with a monastic Gemeinschaft based on plain dealing. For example, Innocency Justified complains that the Appellants used devious measures to slander Champney: “to what purpose is it for such as professe themselves Religious woemen, or yet any other in their behalf to spread abroad by writing under hand and in secret such shamefull untruethes of a Priest.”132 Such “under hand” and “secret” methods are clearly at odds with the honesty expected of “Religious woemen.” Innocency Justified also attacks the limited circulation of the Appellants’ Response, noting that Percy’s supporters could not obtain a copy of the tract until November 1633, more than a year after its composition: “it being conveyed underhand only to such as were thought would kee[p] it secrett. By which miserable corner creeping the authors made know[n] their owne guiltines to all that had notice of their diffidence in their owne defence.”133 Drawing a particularly memorable comparison, the authors of Innocency Justified liken the Relation to a bat: “wee cannot merveile why it should bee kept soe in the darke as loathing to looke uppon the light, like

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the nasty batt that flieth only by night, and fowleth whatsoever shee feedeth upon, for there is neither witt nor judgment in the Composition, truth or sincerity in the matter, ordinary civility or honesty in the wordes, much lesse religious modesty, wee can not therefore merveile that it lurked so long in the darke.”134 Like a “nasty batt,” the Relation must lurk in the dark because it reflects so poorly on its creators, lacking the “religious modesty” that nuns should possess, among other qualities. The pro-­Percy nuns juxtapose such nefarious “corner creeping” with their own attitude toward manuscript circulation: “our answere wee send to all as well Adversaries as friendes with the same confidence and playne meaning as our Reverend Lady Abbesse sent her narration, and her former Apology also not fearing the examine of whoe soever.”135 Read within a Buberian framework, this contrast between the bat lurking in darkness and the “playne” dealing of Percy and her party helps to explain the collapse of monastic order at the convent. If the Appellants by nature tend to conceal their actions from public scrutiny (whether that public is the limited one of the monastery or the broader counterpublic of English Catholics), then it is not possible for them to enter into the shared Gemeinschaft that makes up the essence of monastic life. Interestingly, the Relation also accuses the pro-­Percy faction of using secrecy to infringe on a key component of the monastery’s common life: chapter meetings (see chapter 1). Indeed, the Appellants’ complaints centered on the chapter as they contended in vain that the statutes gave this body the right to elect a confessor for the convent. The Appellants also alleged that Percy abused her power as abbess by manipulating chapter meetings in order to weaken the advisory role of the chapter. For example, Percy prevented the house from knowing how members voted on key proposals by refusing to announce her propositions in chapter: “she found meanes not to have things of importance proposed in Chapter publiquely to all togeather, but severally to every one in perticuler, and in privat, soe that it was impossible to knowe what most voices agreed on.”136 As this claim indicates, the Appellants viewed the monastery as a fundamentally democratic space, governed “publiquely” through the chapter. Without public verification of the votes during a chapter meeting, decisions made by the chapter held no validity. This situation became even more loaded in the period between the decision to remove the Appellants and their actual departure. Percy and her supporters made every effort to exclude the Appellants from chapter meetings since they were no longer part of the house: “Mother Prioresse labour[ed] what shee could to barr us from the weekely Chapters as strangers, and because wee refused to absent our selves, the Chapters were eithe[r] omitted or kept in my Ladyes privat chamber.”137 Percy likewise held chapter meetings in her cell when the house elected new officers to replace the Appellants:



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The Lady Abbesse proceeded to a new election upon the first of March 1632. And the Chapter being called to that purpose, wee alsoe went thither . . . wee did protest against the new election during our Appeale as unjust and against the holy Canons, beseeching her Ladyship not to proceede both in regard of the said unjusti[ce] and nullity of the election intended, as alsoe because in the yeare [16]31. my Lord Nuncio and my Lord Archbishop had commaunded that there should bee no change in respect of the suite betweene us which still depended, whereupon her Ladyship retired her selfe to her chamber, and therewith not more the[n] sixteene besides her selfe shee made a new election of Officers 20. of the lawfull Chapter being absent.138

In both cases, this retreat to Percy’s “privat chamber” is depicted as an abuse of power since it excludes supposedly legitimate members of the chapter. As the Appellants complained, the forfeiture of their voices in chapter symbolized their loss of place within the monastery, an outcome they bitterly contested: “if wee had yealded from our right to the Chapter, and to the quier and our dueties and offices there, by consequence wee had lost also our right to all the rest, namely to the Monastery, and the goodes thereof.”139 Just as Port had done in his secret communication of 1629, the Appellants suggest that this election was invalid by citing numbers (twenty Appellants versus sixteen supporters of Percy). In putting forward this democratic vision of the convent, the Appellants overlook the hierarchical structure in which the abbess governs the monastery as a representative of Christ. From a Buberian point of view, the nuns turn away from the abbess and from God by viewing the chapter as the most powerful entity within the cloister. Their decision to circulate a polemic among the English Catholic counterpublic provides additional evidence of their deviation from the spiritual community of the cloister as Percy’s opponents invest their readers, and not their abbess, with authority.

A Material Analysis of Polemic and Spiritual Rivalry While it is impossible to know how most members of the English Catholic counterpublic responded to these polemics, the sole copy of both contains alterations that reveal how one pro-­Percy reader sought to advance her party’s cause through textual emendation. Innocency Justified often employs vivid language that is surprisingly at odds with the verbal modesty expected of Benedictine nuns.140 To take just one example, the authors use a lively insult when undermining the Appellants’ claim that Boonen and Percy sought to avoid a trial of the case in a court of law: “It is as true that my Lord Archbishop and my Lady Abbesse laboured to drawe the matter out of the Lawe to a Composition as that you are soe many blew pigeons.”141 The reader attempts to modify the text’s most violent language, most notably by removing the

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potentially salacious word “tail” from the following passage and by adding material represented here with angle brackets: “the attestation of this auncient, grave, and Religious Dame, whoe out of the shewe of humility (which if wee may judge by her Actions never lodged in her breast,[)] subscribeth her selfe Soror Ursula [Sister Ursula Hewick] may well deserve to bee putt in the tayle , and not in the topp of your proofes if you have any worth the alleadging or reading which wee shall see hereafter.”142 While the revised version loses the alliterative play between “tayle” and “topp” by substituting “last” for “tayle,” a potential reference to genitalia is not in keeping with the modesty and chastity expected of nuns. Similarly, the reader takes care to modify language that might come across as especially harsh. They delete phrases that accuse the Appellants of lying, such as this example: “your mouthes ever runn over with lyes.”143 Elsewhere, the reader replaces “lies” with “untruths,” as in this passage: “you have not learned that lesson which sayth, that lyes must remember what they have sayd els they will quickly bee found to lye.”144 By inserting the softer word “untruths,” the reader lessens the intentionality behind the Appellants’ misrepresentations. Because most of the corrections leave the original text still legible, perhaps the reader was lightly revising this text for further scribal copying and circulation. In that case, the reader’s interventions demonstrate how one member of the English Catholic counterpublic took sides in the dispute. In addition to literally adding their voice to the literary “we” of the polemic, this reader participated in the religious We of the pro-­Percy nuns by endorsing that faction’s view of the controversy.

Conclusions On March 1, 1650, Barbara Constable of the Cambrai Benedictines finished transcribing the only extant copy of An Introduction or Preparative to a Treatise of the English Benedictine Mission, an apology written by Augustine Baker in order to defend his highly controversial Treatise of the English Mission. As previously mentioned, the latter text’s harshly satirical portrait of Rudesind Barlow may have sparked Claude White’s attempt to censor Baker’s voluminous manuscript corpus. Constable’s transcription of the Introduction opens with an anonymous “Preface to the Reader” that was likely composed by Abbess Catherine Gascoigne. Addressing the “Beloved reader,” this preface attempts to mitigate the provocative content of the Introduction by evoking the collective spiritual trauma experienced by Baker and his allies: doe not wonder or take scandall if thou findest some expressions that seemes not to be so verie charitable as thou wouldest expect from so spirituall &



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vertuous an Author, for I assure thee they proceeded from want of neither, but rather for an expression of reall trueths & a warning to others not to proceed really so unworthely & so uncharitably as some did upon those occurrences purely upon mistakes to the scandall & great prejudice of manie soules who were spectators of those matters then in agitation who being timorous & weaker then was necessarie in such storms fell as we may say to the ground, without daring to rise & goe on in their first good undertakings which yet they had found verie beneficiall to their soules had they not been frighted by the sight of such controversies as some affirmed to me.145

The anonymous author cultivates her authority with the reader as a representative of Baker’s devotees by emphasizing her firsthand knowledge of the spiritual discord caused to “manie soules” by opposition to his methods (“I assure thee,” “affirmed to me”). Much like Benedictine nuns who published controversial texts, she also maintains an anonymity that allows her to serve as a public representative of a spiritual community united by a common orientation toward God. This unattributed preface reveals how an anti-­Buberian “spirit of turning” animated convent polemics, which sought to redress the Us-­Them dynamic that accompanied the rupture of religious communion. As the members of a convent or a congregation ceased to center themselves upon God in a common manner, they turned outward to the English Catholic counterpublic as an arbiter of their disputes. In doing so, monastic polemicists invited secular readers to help restore their community by participating in a text-­based communion reflecting the authors’ understanding of monastic piety. The different forms of the monastic We expressed in the controversial writings associated with the Brussels, Cambrai, and Paris Benedictines can facilitate a reconsideration of the ways that women used the genre of polemic to navigate intramural religious debates. By examining how internal and external clashes over monastic authority either strengthened or fractured communal life within English Benedictine convents, this chapter provides a Buberian template for understanding the ways that religious dissenters responded to crises by using textual production to address counterpublics. When faced with external persecution, how did spiritual groups such as Baptists, Fifth Monarchists, Quakers, and other Independents appeal to counterpublics by penning works that projected a common voice? To what extent do overtly polemical texts by Independents, such as Susanna Parr and Anne Wentworth, reveal that internal dissension within specific congregations or religious groups resulted from a breakdown in the Buberian elements of community? A philosophical reading of the nuns’ controversial writings also offers

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opportunities for reflecting on Buber’s archetypal We. Lacking the collectivity envisaged by Benedict, the Brussels and Paris Benedictines supplemented the monastic We with the imagined community of the English Catholic counterpublic. Participation in the discursive regime of this counterpublic in turn allowed cloistered polemicists to create far-­flung communities based on textuality rather than the Gemeinschaft that is essential to the Benedictine and Buberian ideals. Yet the dissension at Brussels reveals that these virtual communities could not replace the failed We of the cloister. As manifestations of Gesellschaft (society), the public sphere and, by extension, the counterpublic are incompatible with the Buberian conception of community and its reliance on the genuine exchanges between individuals that arise within the I-­You paradigm. While the We of religious community may address members of the public as You and call them into communion with God, the We itself cannot exist within this realm because the public sphere lacks the immediacy of interpersonal relations that characterizes the Buberian model. As a result, the public can only serve as a medium for the establishment of the I-­You relationship, not as a space for its actual realization. Ultimately, then, the God-­centered community occupies a liminal position in relation to public society, functioning as a gateway between the It-­world of utilitarianism and the You-­world of relational experience. Much as Christ claimed that his kingdom was “not of this world” (John 18:36), God-­ centered communities are not fully part of the public sphere but point beyond the human plane of existence toward a divine presence that transcends comprehension.

Afterword

Thinking with the Dead Notes toward a Feminist Philosophical Turn I tooke the offrings, and upon the pit Bereft their lives. Out gusht the sable blood; And round about me, fled out of the flood, The Soules of the deceast. There cluster’d then, Youths, and their wives, much suffering aged men, Soft tender virgins, that but new came there, By timelesse death, and greene their sorrowes were. —H omer , T he O dyssey , trans . G eorge C hapman (1614) I began with the desire to speak with the dead. This desire is a familiar, if unvoiced, motive in literary studies, a motive organized, professionalized, buried beneath thick layers of bureaucratic decorum: literature professors are salaried, middle-­class shamans. —S tephen G reenblatt , S hakespearean N egotiations (1988)

T

his book began with a simple goal: to recover the largely forgotten voices of English Benedictine nuns who lived in exile on the Continent between 1600 and 1800. Much like Greenblatt’s literary shaman, I headed off to England on a Fulbright in the fall of 2013 with the express purpose of speaking with the dead by conducting the primary research for this project. Involving the discovery, cataloging, and analysis of more than one thousand texts in manuscript and print, the ensuing journey into the underworld of the archive bore some resemblance to the great epic motif of the katabasis (or the descent into the classical Underworld) evoked by Greenblatt, but with a twenty-­first-­century feminist twist: by engaging with the cloistered dead, I aimed to extend the feminist project of salvaging the lives and writings of early modern women. Yet my path to the archive lay through modern-­day convents and monasteries, where I encountered religious communities for whom the past was part of the present. These collective spaces and their archival holdings demanded the invention of a new critical framework for

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approaching works by early modern women, one in which scholars do not strive “to speak with the dead,” but rather attempt to think with the dead about the great existentialist quandaries of the human experience. Throughout, this book has attempted to outline one such model for thinking with the dead by reading early modern Benedictine texts through a Buberian lens. Grounded deeply in the methodologies of historicism, history of the book, and philosophy, Writing Habits has argued that cloistered writing offers valuable insights into the ways that the lived experiences of religious communities facilitate individual and collective encounters with the divine. In concluding this study, I would like to issue a call for a movement toward feminist philosophy in early modern studies more broadly. As outlined in the introduction to this book, the philosophical turn has been largely confined to scholarship on Shakespeare, a phenomenon that reflects both his prominence in the field of early modern literature and his high profile in contemporary culture as one of the most revered writers within the literary canon. At its heart, the philosophical approach assumes the perennial importance of past works that engage with the great questions of human existence, and no early modern author is more relevant to the contemporary reader than Shakespeare. With its many aporias, complexities, and profundities, Shakespearean drama thus provides a natural corpus for exploration of the philosophical dilemmas experienced by humanity. And yet, from a feminist perspective, there is something troubling about this tendency to limit philosophical analysis to Shakespeare. Just as Odysseus pursued the shade of Tiresias, just as Aeneas sought out the wraith of Anchises, and just as Greenblatt strove to speak with Shakespeare, so too the philosophical turn insinuates that only a certain class of the dead are worth the time of the living: famous men. What of the many other early modern authors who grappled with the philosophical complexities of life, whose works might provide novel insights into the foundational questions of the human experience? Or, to reframe this question in terms of the Homeric model of the katabasis, what of the nameless, indiscriminate masses of the deceased—male and female—who swarm around Odysseus after he slays the sacrificial offerings at the pit that marks the entry point to the Underworld? Such a crowd spoke to me from the depths of the Benedictine archive, in manuscripts and printed books that conveyed an initially disorienting and overwhelming array of voices. It might be tempting to write off such little-­known texts as being irrelevant to the modern world, but, as this book has argued, we should be wary of doing so. Writing Habits has demonstrated the philosophical significance of Benedictine nuns’ writings, and other early modern texts may likewise open up fresh vistas for understanding the multivalent nature of human existence within our current era. Indeed, Rod Dreher has published a manifesto attempting to popularize what he terms “the Benedict option”—a



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“strategic withdrawal” from mainstream life modeled on Benedictinism—as a template for revitalizing Christian community in the post-­Christian era of the twenty-­first century.1 Life in the Benedictine monastery may be more germane to contemporary experience than we might first assume. Bringing a feminist perspective to the philosophical turn in early modern literature presents a valuable opportunity for moving beyond Shakespeare and, in the process, for broadening and rejuvenating this particular critical approach. While it will be the task of future scholars to further develop and refine the nature of this emergent methodology, I would like to propose some basic tenets as a starting point, all of which have informed the philosophical sections of this study. A critical praxis grounded in feminist philosophy should seek to do the following: Recover the philosophical implications of early modern texts beyond Shakespearean drama, with special attention to women writers and other marginalized authors Approach early modern texts as documents with philosophical relevance to the contemporary world Think with early modern texts about philosophical ideas, rather than simply thinking about early modern texts as aesthetic, historical, and/or material objects Enter into a space of reciprocity with the early modern text, viewing its author as a philosophical equal who is engaged in exploring the existential nature of life

Taking up a feminist philosophical stance is a radical act, requiring an affirmation of the relevance of early modern writing to the present—meaning not just that the past informs our contemporary moment, but that present-­ day scholars and past writers are participants in the shared, never-­ending philosophical project of understanding the world in which we find ourselves. One close analog to this critical position is the concept of editorial empathy, which Susan Felch describes aphoristically in the collection Editing Early Modern Women (2016): “We read early modern texts with critical empathy, but we also need to allow them to read us.”2 As the editor allows herself to be “read” by the text that she edits, the editor and the text become involved in an act of critical interpretation premised on mutuality and sympathy. So too, the paradigm of feminist philosophy demands an uncompromising intellectual openness with respect to the work(s) analyzed, in which the critic and author(s) explore philosophical ideas together in ways that may provocatively challenge and fruitfully reframe the assumptions of both parties.

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This feminist philosophical lens will in turn shed new light on early modern literature and its relevance to modern life, particularly religious forms of writing that were crucial to the periods of the Reformation and Counter-­ Reformation. While religion remains a vital topic in early modern literary studies, this field is typically informed by historicist approaches that seek to situate religious works within the context of particular devotional practices, doctrinal stances, liturgical rites, and theological tenets. Such historical scholarship is essential to any understanding of how religious writing functioned in the early modern period, but it nonetheless presents these works as historical texts with little connection to the modern era. After all, most contemporary readers will have no personal stake in the finer points of the Elizabethan controversy about church vestments or Stuart debates over the orientation of altars. When viewed from a feminist philosophical perspective, however, early modern religious writings can offer precious insight into the ways that early modern believers understood and sought to engage with God, on both a personal and a collective level. What might we learn about the Levinasian concept of God as the ultimate Other from reading Donne’s Holy Sonnets through a philosophical lens? In its varied addresses to God, how might the Sidney Psalter be viewed as supplying a series of templates for an ethical response to that Other? Likewise, what might the collective readings and prayers contained in The Book of Common Prayer have to teach us about the relationship between this Other and religious communities? We know about the theological differences between various sects—Laudians and Puritans, Anabaptists and Baptists, Quakers and Fifth Monarchists—but to what extent did their specific doctrinal views influence their members’ perception of and interaction with God on an existential level? As a hotbed of religious ferment and innovation, post-­Reformation England supplies ample material for philosophical analysis that gestures toward the many ways humanity has attempted to know and access God, an existential quest that continues even today. Whether we identify as an atheist, an agnostic, a “none,” or a member of a particular faith tradition, we must all find our own answers to the philosophical question of God’s existence. The religious writings of early modern England furnish a diverse series of case studies that can allow us to explore the possible range of responses to that question and to consider our own views in the process. Finally, the development of a feminist philosophical approach to early modern literature has the potential to reshape the current field of early modern women writers in interesting ways. From its inception, this subfield has been defined by the methodologies of historicism and textual studies, which have allowed feminist scholars to recover, edit, and contextualize works by early modern women writers. As we continue to discover and integrate new



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authors and texts into the canon, these approaches will rightly continue to be of vital importance to ongoing work in this area, as the historicist and materialist strands of this book have shown. Yet now that critics have sketched out the basic contours of the field, it is time to complement our field’s traditional strengths in historicism and textual studies by engaging more intensively with literary theory. Of course, I do not mean to imply that scholarship on early modern women writers has been atheoretical up to this point. The basic imperative to locate and analyze texts by female authors is grounded in feminist theory. Likewise, critics have long turned to approaches such as queer theory in order to offer valuable insights into essential works by Margaret Cavendish, Katherine Philips, and others.3 Rather, I would argue that the corpus of early modern women’s writings provides an exciting basis for creating bespoke critical models with broader relevance to early modern literature. One such promising development is the recent emergence of feminist formalism, which draws attention to the interaction between gender and genre.4 Lara Dodds and Michelle M. Dowd argue convincingly that this approach can fruitfully be applied to texts by male writers as well as to those of their female contemporaries, allowing fresh insights into the ways that authors of this era experimented with generic and formal conventions.5 As this afterword has already attempted to demonstrate, feminist philosophy— which arises from this book’s analysis of the textual production of English Benedictine nuns—offers another paradigm with wider implications for the study of early modern literature. Taken together, feminist formalism and feminist philosophy gesture toward a possible future for the field of early modern women writers: one in which feminist scholars use their discoveries to generate new critical theories that alter our understanding of early modern textual production. Dodds and Dowd incisively observe that “the field of early modern women’s writing is . . . often temporally and critically out-­of-­sync with much of the rest of the discipline.”6 By embracing this critical asynchronicity, scholars working on early modern women writers can offer alternatives to the dominant paradigms in our discipline. Even as we continue to expand the canon by uncovering the neglected works of early modern women, let us also consciously strive to reshape the study of early modern literature itself through innovative theoretical perspectives that originate in the aesthetic, cultural, and textual priorities of those long-­marginalized writings. In doing so, we will reconfigure the relationship between the center and the periphery of the literary canon by demonstrating that women’s writing—still all too often relegated to the fringes of scholarship on the early modern period—provides a vital source of theoretical models for our profession’s critical encounters with the dead, no matter their fame or gender.

Appendix

Provisional Bibliography of English Benedictine Writings

T

his bibliography includes selected works by male authors that incorporate nuns’ texts and/or eyewitness accounts. It does not include nuns’ transcriptions, financial accounts, or other nonliterary forms of writing. In some cases I have noted authoritative modern editions of these texts. Material that I have not seen in person or via images is indicated with an asterisk (*).

Abbreviations A AAMB ACPF B BL BM C

Ampleforth Abbey, North Yorkshire Archdiocesan Archives of Mechelen-­Brussels, Mechelen Archives of the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, Rome Bodleian Library, Oxford British Library, London Bibliothèque Mazarine, Paris Colwich Abbey, Staffordshire Colwich Abbey recently merged with Stanbrook Abbey, and its archives have been transferred there.

Co CP D DA Du E G L N O

Canonesses of the Holy Sepulchre, Colchester Archives Départementales de Val d’Oise, Cergy-­Pontoise Downside Abbey, Somerset Douai Abbey, Berkshire Special Collections, Durham University Library, Durham, UK Special Collections Department, Edinburgh University Library Rijksarchief, Ghent Archives Départementales du Nord, Lille Newberry Library, Chicago Oulton Abbey, Staffordshire Oulton Abbey was recently dissolved. Its archives have been sent to Douai Abbey and cataloged under the heading BO.

S TNA

Stanbrook Abbey, North Yorkshire The National Archives, Kew

168 Appendix V WDA

Vatican Library, Rome Westminster Diocesan Archives, London

Administrative Writings Ceremonial Elizabeth D’Abridgecourt, Seremonys and Customs, Box T IV 1, DA Chapter Speeches Brussels 1 by Mary Percy, State Papers, 16/153, fols. 125v–29r, TNA Cambrai 1 by Catherine Gascoigne, MS 71A, pp. 230–33, C 5 by Christina Brent, MS 20 H 10, pp. 81–900, 907–8, L Selections from this manuscript appear in Caroline Bowden, ed., English Convents in Exile, 1600–1800, vol. 2: Spirituality, ed. Laurence Lux-­Sterritt (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2012), 477–90.

Ghent 1 by Cecilia Tyldesley, MS G 45Ai, O* 2 by Magdalen Lucy, MS G 45A, O 9 by Mary Baptist Phillips, MS G 45B, O 3 by Mary Magdalen Arden, MS G 45C, O 6 by Magdalen Lucy and 1 by anonymous abbess, Box T 1 Bc1, DA Paris 160 and 3 fragments by Justina Gascoigne, MS 71A and MS 71B, C Conduct Books Dunkirk Advice for superiors, Box T V 6, DA Pontoise Anne Neville, Conduct book, Box T IV 1, DA Selections from this manuscript appear in Caroline Bowden, ed., English Convents in Exile, 1600–1800, vol. 5: Convent Management, ed. James E. Kelly (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2013), 259–74.

Constitutions and Statutes Brussels Statutes (1612) Additional MS 6881, BL MS Rawlinson A 442, B Vault Case MS 4A 10, N Statutes Compyled for the Better Observation of the Holy Rule of the Most Glorious Father and Patriarch S. Benedict (Ghent, 1632) Brussels Great Statutes (1612) MS G 19, O Cambrai Constitutions (c. 1629–31) MS 20 H 1, L MS 20 H 3, L S Paris Constitutions (1657) MS P 2, C



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Controversial Writings Brussels Benedictines Innocency Justified (1634) and Briefe and Sincere Relation (1632), Harley MS 4275, BL Mary Percy, Apologeticall Letter (1629), State Papers, 16/153, fols. 115–31, TNA Cambrai Benedictines Gertrude More, The Spiritual Exercises of the Most Vertuous and Religious D. Gertrude More (Paris, 1658) Selections from this book appear in Caroline Bowden, ed., English Convents in Exile, 1600–1800, vol. 2: Spirituality, ed. Laurence Lux-­Sterritt (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2012), 476–75; and Gertrude More, Poems & Counsels on Prayer and Contemplation, ed. Jacob Riyeff (Leominster, UK: Gracewing, 2020).

Correspondence Brussels Benedictines Letters to the Old Chapter, c. 1630s Box YYG, WDA Box YYJ, WDA Letters to their visitor and the archbishop of Mechelen-­Brussels (c. 1600–1800) Amatus Coriache 15, AAMB Engelse Benedictinessen, 1–13, AAMB Selections from these manuscripts appear in Caroline Bowden, ed., English Convents in Exile, 1600–1800, vol. 5: Convent Management, ed. James E. Kelly (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2013), 401–7.

Letters to Francesco Barberini, 1631, 1639 Barberini Lat. MS 8619, fols. 174–78, V A. Pasture, “Documents concernant quelques monastères anglais aux Pays-­Bas au XVIIe siècle,” Bulletin de l’Institut Historique Belge de Rome 10 (1930): 155–223.

Letters to the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, 1630s Scritture Originali Riferite Nelle Congregazioni Generali, vol. 74, fols. 254–57, 260, 263–64, ACPF A. Pasture, “Documents concernant quelques monastères anglais aux Pays-­Bas au XVIIe siècle,” Bulletin de l’Institut Historique Belge de Rome 10 (1930): 155–223.

Scritture Originali Riferite Nelle Congregazioni Generali, vol. 100, fols. 169–71, 173, 178–82, ACPF A. Pasture, “Documents concernant quelques monastères anglais aux Pays-­Bas au XVIIe siècle,” Bulletin de l’Institut Historique Belge de Rome 10 (1930): 155–223.

Scritture Originali Riferite Nelle Congregazioni Generali, vol. 132, fols. 221–26, 233–34, ACPF A. Pasture, “Documents concernant quelques monastères anglais aux Pays-­Bas au XVIIe siècle,” Bulletin de l’Institut Historique Belge de Rome 10 (1930): 155–223.

Letters to various authorities (nineteenth-­century copies) Haslemere MS 3137, D Cambrai Benedictines Letters to the English Benedictine Congregation, eighteenth century MS 18 H 29, L MS 18 H 31, L

170 Appendix MS 18 H 39, L MS 18 H 41, L MS 18 H 65, L Letters to family and friends, 1655 MS Rawlinson A 36, B Selections from this manuscript appear in Caroline Bowden, ed., English Convents in Exile, 1600–1800, vol. 3: Life Writing I, ed. Nicky Hallett (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2012), 285–94.

Dunkirk Benedictines Letters to the Jacobite court, c. 1688–1757 Additional MS 28226, fols. 111, 113–40, BL Additional MS 28227, fols. 9, 163, 185, 316, BL Additional MS 28228, fols. 48, 53, 409, BL Additional MS 28229, fol. 119, BL Additional MS 28231, fols. 26, 48–49, 100, 315, BL Additional MS 28232, fol. 127, BL Additional MS 28237, fols. 27, 29, BL Ghent Benedictines Letters from abbesses to the bishop of Ghent, c. 1630–1800 Het Archief B, MS 2773/2, G Het Archief B, MS 2773/3, G Het Archief B, MS 2773/8, G Het Archief B, MS 2773/10, G Het Archief B, MS 2773/12, G Het Archief B, MS 2773/13, G Het Archief B, MS 2773/15, G Letters from Mary Knatchbull to the Duke of Ormonde during the Civil Wars MS Carte 30, fols. 541, 543, 664, B MS Carte 31, fols. 28, 157, 191, B MS Carte 213, fols. 494, 500, 512–13, 518, 663, 689, B MS Carte 214, fols. 23, 26, 171, B Letters from Mary Knatchbull to the court of James II Additional MS 21483, fol. 21, BL Additional MS 28225, fols. 126, 293, BL Letter from Mary Knatchbull to the town of Ghent MS G 11, O Paris Benedictines Letters from prioresses to the English Benedictine Congregation, eighteenth century MS 18 H 31, L MS 18 H 42, L Pontoise Benedictines Letter from Mary Ann Clavering to English Benedictine Congregation, 1785 MS 18 H 31, L

History Comparative Histories



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Claude Estiennot, Histoire des Monasteres de la Congregation des Dames Benedictines Angloises (1672) Haslemere MS 1880, D Box T IV 2, DA Anne Neville, The Beginning of the Congregation of the English Benedictin Dames, Box T IV 3 1, DA M. J. Rumsey, ed., “Abbess Neville’s Annals of Five Communities of English Benedictine Nuns in Flanders 1598–1687,” in Miscellanea V (London: Arden Press for Catholic Record Society, 1909), 1–72.

Ralph Weldon, Memorials of the English Benedictine Congregation, 5 vols. (1702– 11), DA House Histories Brussels Thomas Willis, House history (1761), Haslemere MS 1875 VI C, D Thomas Willis, House history (1762), Haslemere MS 1874 VI C, D Cambrai Christina Brent, A Discourse concerning Some Difficullties about . . . Augustine Baker, MS 20 H 10, pp. 901–7, L Christina Brent, “Discourse concerning Father Baker’s Doctrine,” in John Clark, ed., Francis Gascoigne, An Apologie for Myselfe about Fr. Baker’s Doctrine (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, 2011), 95–101.

Ann Teresa Partington, A Brief Narrative of the Seizure of the Benedictine Dames of Cambray, S Ann Teresa Partington, A Brief Narrative of the Seizure of the Benedictine Dames of Cambray, ed. Scholastica Jacob (Wass, UK: Stanbrook Abbey, 2016); Joseph Gillow, ed., “Records of the English Benedictine Nuns at Cambrai 1620–1793,” in Miscellanea VIII (London: Ballantyne, Hanson & Co. for Catholic Record Society, 1913), 20–35.

Ghent Mary Knatchbull, The Foundation of Bullogne, Box T IV 1, DA Selections from this manuscript appear in Caroline Bowden, ed., English Convents in Exile, 1600–1800, vol. 5: Convent Management, ed. James E. Kelly (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2013), 243–58.

Paris Teresa Hagan and Teresa Catherine Macdonald, Accounts of the French Revolution, MS P 9, C Elizabeth of the Blessed Lady Cook, Teresa of the Infant Jesus Cook, Bennet Nelson, and Agnes of the Infant Jesus Temple, The House History, MS R 1, C Historical Material Sent by English Benedictine Convents as Background for Charles Dodd’s Church History of England (1734–42) Brussels Old Brotherhood, Book III, MS 194, WDA Ghent Old Brotherhood, Book III, MS 196, WDA Paris Old Brotherhood, Book III, MSS 197, 198, 199, 201, WDA

172 Appendix Pontoise Old Brotherhood, Book III, MSS 202, 203, 204, WDA

Life Writing Brussels Benedictines Miraculous Cures from Brussels (Mary Vavasour, 1653, and Barbara Wilson, 1758), Haslemere MS 3116 VI C, D Cambrai Benedictines Magdalen Cary, Life of Lady Falkland, MS 20 H 9, L Elizabeth Cary, Life and Letters, ed. Heather Wolfe (Cambridge: RTM Publications, 2001); Elizabeth Cary, The Tragedy of Mariam, ed. Barry Weller and Margaret W. Ferguson (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994).

A Catalogue of the Names of the Religious Dames and Sisters Profes’d of this Convent of Our Blessed Lady of Consolation in Cambray Who Are Dead (15 obituaries), MS 20 H 7, L Joseph Gillow, ed., “Records of the English Benedictine Nuns at Cambrai 1620–1793,” in Miscellanea VIII (London: Ballantyne, Hanson & Co. for Catholic Record Society, 1913), 73–81.

Dunkirk Benedictines 18 printed circular bills, Box T 1 Bc2, DA Ghent Benedictines Tobie Matthew, A Relation of the Holy, and Happy Life, and Death, of the Lady Lucie Knatchbull (1652) Box O IV 1, DA Tobie Matthew, The Life of Lady Lucy Knatchbull (London: Sheed & Ward, 1931).

Box D1, Co Caroline Bowden, ed., English Convents in Exile, 1600–1800, vol. 3: Life Writing I, ed. Nicky Hallett (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2012), 159–217.

Miraculous cure of Mary Minshall (1661) Het Archief B, MS 3028, G The True Relation of the Miraculous Cure of an English Nun at Ghent (N.p., 1661), E* Caroline Bowden, ed., English Convents in Exile, 1600–1800, vol. 3: Life Writing I, ed. Nicky Hallett (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2012), 367–72.

An Account of the Miraculous Cure Wrought by the Intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the Person of Sister Jane Weardon (London: J. P. Coghlan, 1785), G 62, O Obituaries Death Chapters of the Ghent Benedictines (7 death chapters), Box T 1 Bc1, DA First Book of Death Bills 1627–1659 (37 obituaries), MS G 8, O “Obituary Notices of the Nuns of the English Benedictine Abbey of Ghent in Flanders 1627–1811,” in Miscellanea XI (London: J. Whitehead & Son for Catholic Record Society, 1917), 1–92.

Printed circular bills Paula Knatchbull, G 21, O Francisca Gostling, G 51A, O Maria Benedicta Williams, G 53, O



Provisional Bibliography of English Benedictine Writings

173

Mary Baptist Phillips, G 57, O Maria Teresa Hodgson, G 66, O Paris Benedictines Agnes of the Infant Jesus Temple, Teresa of the Infant Jesus Cook, and Elizabeth of the Blessed Lady Cook, Some Perticuler Remarkes of Our Venerable Mother Beginners (20 obituaries, 1 circular bill), MS R 3, C Joseph S. Hansom, ed., “The English Benedictine Nuns of the Convent of Our Blessed Lady of Good Hope in Paris,” in Miscellanea VII (London: Aberdeen University Press for Catholic Record Society, 1911), 334–413. This edition contains an additional twelve obituaries from a manuscript that I did not see.

Pontoise Benedictines Book of the Anniversarys and Bills of the Deceas’d Religious (109 circular bills), MS 68 H 4, CP Selections from this manuscript appear in Caroline Bowden, ed., English Convents in Exile, 1600–1800, vol. 3: Life Writing I, ed. Nicky Hallett (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2012), 235–38.

Register of the Pontoise Benedictines (87 circular bills), Box T IV 1, DA “Registers of the English Benedictine Nuns of Pontoise OSB,” in Miscellanea X (London: J. Whitehead & Son for Catholic Record Society, 1915), 248–326.

Miscellanies and Loose Papers Cambrai Benedictines MS 20 H 33, L MS 20 H 39, L MS 20 H 47, L MS 20 H 48, L MS 20 H 49, L MS 20 H 50, L Anselma Anne, S Barbara Constable, Advises for Confessors and Spirituall Directors (1650), MS 82146, D Barbara Constable, Considerations or Reflexions upon the Rule of . . . St Benedict (1655) MS 82144, D MS 61A, C [nineteenth-­century copy] Barbara Constable, Considerations for Preests (1653), MS 82145, D Barbara Constable, The Excellency of Prayer (1657), MS SS84, A Barbara Constable, Speculum superiorum (1650), MS 43, C Barbara Constable, A Spirituall Incense (1657), MS SS85C, A* Barbara Constable, Masses for Some Principall Festivities, MS SS85B, A* Dunkirk Benedictines Hayle Jesus interleaved with manuscript writings, Box T V 1, DA Book for the altar of the chapter house, Box T V 6, DA Miscellany, Box T V 6, DA 33 Devout Prayers interleaved with manuscript prayers, Box T V 5, DA Mary Gertrude Darrell, Box T V 6, DA Mary Winifred Englefield, Box T V 6, DA Gertrude Pulton, Box T V 5, DA

174 Appendix Constantia Savage, Box T VI 4, DA Catherine Sheldon, Box T V 6, DA Ghent Benedictines MS G 30, O MS G 63, O MS G 69, O Mary Meynell, MS G 10, O Paris Benedictines Vth Book of Collections, MS 9, C MS 18, C The XXIVth Book of Collections, MS 22, C XLth Book of Collections, MS 23, C MS 52, C MS 68, C MS Fragment 7, C MS 1202 iv, BM* Julia Bolton Holloway, ed., “Colections” by an English Nun in Exile: Bibliothèque Mazarine 1202 (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, 2006). Also see an excerpt in Caroline Bowden, ed., English Convents in Exile, 1600–1800, vol. 2: Spirituality, ed. Laurence Lux-­Sterritt (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2012), 461–66.

Mary Benedict Dalley, MS 32, C Placida Coesneau, MS 69, C Maura Wytham, MS 35, C Pontoise Benedictines Mary Scholastica Belasyse, Box T V 6, DA

Spiritual Writings Brussels Benedictines Agatha Wiseman, “Ad beatum patrem Benedictum Capucinum Anglum prosa,” La vie du reverend pere, P. Ange de Joyeuse (Paris, 1621), pp. 670–90 Jaime Goodrich, “A Newly Discovered Female Neo-­Latin Poet: An Analysis, Edition, and Translation of Agatha Wiseman’s Prosa on Benet of Canfield,” Studies in Philology 117, no. 2 (2020): 397–437.

Cambrai Benedictines Christina Brent, A Discourse of a Soule Incouraging Herselfe and Pious Reflexions when she was Novice, MS 20 H 10, pp. 767–841, L Barbara Constable, Gemitus peccatorum (1649) S MS 82143, D [eighteenth-­century copy] Catherine Gascoigne, Description of her prayer (c. 1632), MS 26589, D This text is also included in two miscellanies: MS 32, C; and MS 1202 iv, BM*.

Margaret Gascoigne, Devotions (1637) MS 68870, D MS 18, C Margaret Gascoigne, Devotions, in Augustine Baker, Letters and Translations from Thomas à Kempis in the Lille Archives and Elsewhere; The Devotions of Dame Margaret



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175

Gascoigne, ed. John Clark (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, 2007).

Gertrude More, Confessiones amantis (c. 1632), MS Rawlinson C 581, B John Clark, ed., Confessiones amantis: The Spiritual Exercises of the Most Vertuous and Religious Dame Gertrude More (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, 2007). A modernized version of selections from this manuscript may be found in Gertrude More, Poems & Counsels on Prayer and Contemplation, ed. Jacob Riyeff (Leominster, UK: Gracewing, 2020).

Paris Benedictines Clementia Cary, Dielodge betweene our Lord and a Soule, MS Fragment 4, C Mary Clare Joseph of Jesus Bond, Meditations, MS 65 and MS 66, C

Translations Brussels Benedictines Mary Percy, An Abridgement of Christian Perfection (St. Omer, 1612) Cambrai Benedictines Potentiana Deacon, Delicious Entertainments of the Soule (Douai, 1632) Potentiana Deacon, The Mantle of the Spouse MS 44, C MS 45, C [eighteenth-­century copy] MS 46, C [nineteenth-­century copy] Catherine Gascoigne, A Collection of Some Familiar Answers upon the Conduct of Soules in a Mistick Life (1659), MS 68812, D Agnes More, The Building of Divine Love (1691), MS 20 H 18, L Dorothy L. Latz, ed., The Building of Divine Love as Translated by Dame Agnes More (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, 1992).

Pontoise Benedictines Mary Scholastic Belasyse, A Method to Hear Mass after Communion, MS PCD 16, Du

Notes

Introduction 1. Francis, Vultum Dei Quaerere: Seeking the Face of God (London: Catholic Truth Society, 2016), 3. 2. Caroline Bowden, “The Abbess and Mrs. Brown: Lady Mary Knatchbull and Royalist Politics in Flanders in the Late 1650s,” Recusant History 24, no. 3 (1999): 288–308; Claire Walker, “Prayer, Patronage, and Political Conspiracy: English Nuns and the Restoration,” Historical Journal 43, no. 1 (2000): 1–23; Claire Walker, “‘Doe not Supose me a Well Mortifyed Nun Dead to the World’: Letter-­Writing in Early Modern English Convents,” in Early Modern Women’s Letter Writing, ed. James Daybell (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), 159–76; Frances E. Dolan, “Reading, Work, and Catholic Women’s Biographies,” English Literary Renaissance 33, no. 3 (2003): 328–57; Marion Wynne-­Davies, “Suicide at the Elephant and Castle, or Did the Lady Vanish? Alternative Endings for Early Modern Women Writers,” in Region, Religion, and Patronage: Lancastrian Shakespeare, ed. Richard Dutton, Alison Findlay, and Richard Wilson (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2004), 121–42; Claire Walker, “Loyal and Dutiful Subjects: English Nuns and Stuart Politics,” in Women and Politics in Early Modern England, ed. James Daybell (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2004), 228–42; Claire Walker, “Spiritual Property: The English Benedictine Nuns of Cambrai and the Dispute over the Baker Manuscripts,” in Women, Property, and the Letters of the Law in Early Modern England, ed. Nancy E. Wright, Margaret W. Ferguson, and A. R. Buck (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), 237–55; Caroline Bowden, “Collecting the Lives of Early Modern Women Religious: Obituary Writing and the Development of Collective Memory and Corporate Identity,” Women’s History Review 19, no. 1 (2010): 7–20; E. A. Jones and Alexandra Walsham, ed., Syon Abbey and Its Books: Reading, Writing, and Religion c. 1400–1700 (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell & Brewer, 2010); Caroline Bowden and James E. Kelly, ed., The English Convents in Exile, 1600–1800: Communities, Culture and Identity (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2013); Caroline Bowden, “Building Libraries in Exile: The English Convents and Their Book Collections in the Seventeenth Century,” British Catholic History 32, no. 3 (2015): 343–82. 3. Claire Walker, Gender and Politics in Early Modern Europe: English Convents in France and the Low Countries (Houndmills, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003); James E. Kelly, English Convents in Catholic Europe, c. 1600–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020). 4. Nicky Hallett, The Senses in Religious Communities, 1600–1800: Early Modern “Convents of Pleasure” (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2013); Laurence Lux-­Sterritt, English Benedictine Nuns in Exile in the Seventeenth Century: Living Spirituality (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2017).

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5. Nancy Bradley Warren, The Embodied Word: Female Spiritualities, Contested Orthodoxies, and English Religious Cultures, 1350–1700 (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010); Jenna Lay, Beyond the Cloister: Catholic Englishwomen and Early Modern Literary Culture (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016); Victoria Van Hyning, Convent Autobiography: Early Modern English Nuns in Exile (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019). 6. Dorothy L. Latz, “Glow-­Worm Light”: Writings of 17th Century English Recusant Women from Original Manuscripts (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, 1989); Elizabeth Cary, Elizabeth Cary, Lady Falkland: Life and Letters, ed. Heather Wolfe (Cambridge, UK: RTM Publications, 2001); Nicky Hallett, ed., Lives of Spirit: English Carmelite Self-­Writing of the Early Modern Period (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2007); Nicky Hallett, ed., Exorcism and the Politics of Possession in a Seventeenth-­Century Convent: “How Sister Ursula Was Once Bewitched and Sister Margaret Twice” (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2007); Caroline Bowden, ed., English Convents in Exile, 1600–1800, 6 vols. (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2012–13); Richard G. Williams, ed., Mannock Strickland 1683–1744: Agent to English Convents in Flanders: Letters and Accounts from Exile (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press for Catholic Record Society, 2016); Ann Teresa Partington, A Brief Narrative of the Seizure of the Benedictine Dames of Cambray, ed. Scholastica Jacob (Wass, UK: Stanbrook Abbey, 2016); Caroline Bowden, ed., The Chronicles of Nazareth (The English Convent), Bruges 1629–1793 (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press for Catholic Record Society, 2017); Who Were the Nuns? https://wwtn.history.qmul.ac.uk/ (accessed November 20, 2020). 7. Margaret J. M. Ezell, “Re-­Visioning the Restoration: Or, How to Stop Obscuring Early Women Writers,” in New Historical Literary Study: Essays on Reproducing Texts, Representing History, ed. Jeffrey N. Cox and Larry J. Reynolds (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), 136–50; and Ezell, Writing Women’s Literary History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993). 8. Jonathan Goldberg and Madhavi Menon, “Queering History,” PMLA 120, no. 5 (2005): 1608–17; Valerie Traub, “The New Unhistoricism in Queer Studies,” PMLA 128, no. 1 (2013): 21–39; Carla Freccero, Madhavi Menon, and Valerie Traub, “Forum,” PMLA 128, no. 3 (2013): 781–86. 9. Ken Jackson and Arthur F. Marotti, “The Turn to Religion in Early Modern English Studies,” Criticism 46, no. 1 (2004): 167–90. Also see Ken Jackson, “‘More Other than You Desire’ in The Merchant of Venice,” English Language Notes 44, no. 1 (2006): 151–56. 10. Jackson and Marotti, “Turn to Religion,” 169. 11. Ken Jackson and Arthur F. Marotti, “Introduction,” in Shakespeare and Religion: Early Modern and Postmodern Perspectives, ed. Ken Jackson and Arthur F. Marotti (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2011), 2. 12. Nevertheless, elsewhere Jackson laments “an unnecessary divide in Shakespeare studies between theory and historicism”: Ken Jackson, Shakespeare and Abraham (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2015), 18. 13. Arthur F. Marotti, Religious Ideology and Cultural Fantasy: Catholic and Anti-­ Catholic Discourses in Early Modern England (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005); Alice Dailey, The English Martyr from Reformation to Revolution (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012); Jaime Goodrich, Faithful Translators: Authorship, Gender, and Religion in Early Modern England (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2014); Brooke Conti, Confessions of Faith in Early Modern England (Philadelphia:



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University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014); Nandra Perry, Imitatio Christi: The Poetics of Piety in Early Modern England (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2014). 14. Julia Reinhard Lupton, Citizen-­Saints: Shakespeare and Political Theology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005); Lupton, Thinking with Shakespeare: Essays on Politics and Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011); Graham Hammill and Julia Reinhard Lupton, ed., Political Theology and Early Modernity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012); Jennifer R. Rust, The Body in Mystery: The Political Theology of the Corpus Mysticum in the Literature of Reformation England (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2013); Jennifer Ann Bates and Richard Wilson, ed., Shakespeare and Continental Philosophy (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014); Jackson, Shakespeare and Abraham. 15. Paula McQuade, Catechisms and Women’s Writing in Seventeenth-­Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017); Lay, Beyond the Cloister; Rachel Adcock, Baptist Women’s Writings in Revolutionary Culture, 1640–1680 (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2015); Femke Molekamp, Women and the Bible in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); Kimberly Anne Coles, Religion, Reform, and Women’s Writing in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). 16. David Sweeney Coombs and Danielle Coriale, “Introduction to V21 Forum on Strategic Presentism,” Victorian Studies 59, no. 1 (2016): 87. On strategic presentism, also see Wai Chee Dimock, “Historicism, Presentism, Futurism,” PMLA 133, no. 2 (2018): 257–63. 17. Emmanuel Levinas, “Martin Buber and the Theory of Knowledge,” in The Philosophy of Martin Buber, ed. Paul Arthur Schilpp and Maurice Friedman (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1967), 133–50; Emmanuel Levinas, “La pensée de Martin Buber et le judaïsme contemporain,” in Martin Buber: L’homme et le philosophe (Brussels: Institut de Sociologie de l’Université Libre de Bruxelles, 1968), 43–58; Peter Atterton, Matthew Calarco, and Maurice Friedman, ed., Levinas and Buber: Dialogue and Difference (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2004). 18. Julia Reinhard Lupton, “The Religious Turn (to Theory) in Shakespeare Studies,” English Language Notes 44, no. 1 (2006): 146. 19. Martin Buber, I and Thou, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Touchstone, 1996). 20. Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991), 43. 21. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 78. 22. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 75. 23. On the supposed rise of individualism in this period, see John Jeffries Martin, Myths of Renaissance Individualism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004). 24. Buber, I and Thou, 56. 25. Buber, I and Thou, 59. 26. Buber, I and Thou, 57. 27. Martin Buber, Between Man and Man, trans. Ronald Gregor Smith (Mansfield Centre, CT: Martino Publishing, 2014), 31, emphasis in the original. Also see his essays “Community” and “How Can Community Happen?” in The Martin Buber Reader: Essential Writings, ed. Asher D. Biemann (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 247–57. 28. Buber, I and Thou, 94. 29. Buber, I and Thou, 163.

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30. See, for example, Gabriel Marcel, Metaphysical Journal, trans. Bernard Wall (London: Rockliff Publishing, 1952), 156–57; Marcel, Being and Having, trans. A. Black and C. Black (London: Collins, 1965), 115–16; and Marcel, The Mystery of Being, vol. 1: Reflection and Mystery, trans. G. S. Fraser (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 1950), 177–79. Also see Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Christ the Center, trans. Edwin H. Robertson (New York: HarperOne, 1978), 60; and Bonhoeffer, Life Together; Prayerbook of the Bible, trans. Daniel W. Bloesch and James H. Burtness (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005), 31, 41–44, 75–76. 31. Francis, Encyclical Letter Lumen Fidei (June 29, 2013), 8, 39, http://w2.vatican.va /content/francesco/en/encyclicals.index.html#encyclicals (accessed June 17, 2020). 32. Francis, Vultum, 5. Also see Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, Rejoice! A Letter to Consecrated Men and Women: A Message from the Teachings of Pope Francis (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2014), 16. 33. Martin Buber, “Comments on the Idea of Community,” in A Believing Humanism, My Testament 1902–1965, trans. Maurice Friedman (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1967), 89–90. Also see Martin Buber, Paths in Utopia (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1996), 135. 34. Mark Barrett et al., To Prefer Nothing to Christ: The Monastic Mission of the English Benedictine Congregation (London: Catholic Truth Society, 2015), 21. 35. St. Benedict, The Rule of Our Most Holie Father S. Benedict, 2–3, in The Second Booke of the Dialogues of S. Gregorie (Douai, 1638). 36. Barrett et al., To Prefer Nothing, 21; see also Francis, Vultum, 4. 37. Benedict, Rule, 7, my emphasis. 38. Barrett et al., To Prefer Nothing, 24; see also Francis, Vultum, 13. 39. Francis, Vultum, 14. 40. Benedict, Rule, 18, 128. 41. Barrett et al., To Prefer Nothing, 23. 42. Hagar Lahav, “Postsecular Theology: Daly, Hampson, Buber, and Gordon,” Theology Today 72, no. 4 (2016): 429. Also see Judith Plaskow, The Coming of Lilith: Essays on Feminism, Judaism, and Sexual Ethics, 1972–2003, ed. Judith Plaskow with Donna Berman (Boston: Beacon Press, 2005), 67. 43. Rose Graf-­Taylor, “Philosophy of Dialogue and Feminist Psychology,” in Martin Buber and the Human Sciences, ed. Maurice Friedman (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996), 327–34; James W. Walters, Martin Buber and Feminist Ethics: The Priority of the Personal (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2003); Ulrike Vollmer, Seeing Film and Reading Feminist Theology: A Dialogue (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). 44. On Noddings and Buber, see Richard L. Johannesen, “Nel Noddings’s Uses of Martin Buber’s Philosophy of Dialogue,” Southern Communication Journal 65, nos. 2–3 (2000): 151–60. 45. Nel Noddings, Caring: A Relational Approach to Ethics and Moral Education, 2d ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013), 74. 46. Deirdre Butler, “Disturbing Boundaries: Developing Jewish Feminist Ethics with Buber, Levinas, and Fackenheim,” Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 10, no. 3 (2011): 331. 47. For an overview of the history of English Benedictine convents, see Peter Guilday, English Colleges and Convents in the Catholic Low Countries, vol. 1: The English Catholic Refugees on the Continent, 1558–1795 (London: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1914), 256–83.



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48. A History of the Benedictine Nuns of Dunkirk Now at St. Scholastica’s Abbey, Teignmouth, Devon (London: Burns & Oates, 1958), 120–21. 49. Benedictine Nuns of Dunkirk, 123. 50. In a Great Tradition: Tribute to Dame Laurentia McLachlan, Abbess of Stanbrook (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1956), 56; Joseph Gillow, ed., “Records of the English Benedictine Nuns at Cambrai, 1620–1793,” in Miscellanea VIII (London: Ballantyne, Hanson, & Co. for Catholic Record Society, 1913), 21. 51. J. T. Rhodes, “What the Benedictine Nuns of Cambrai Were Reading,” paper presented at “What Is Early Modern English Catholicism?” Ushaw College, Durham, June 29, 2013. 52. Annals of the English Benedictines of Ghent Now at St Mary’s Abbey, Oulton in Staffordshire (n.p., 1894), 79. 53. Quoted in Mary Thais English, Collections Illustrating the Annals of the English Benedictine Nuns of “Our Lady’s Cloister,” Brussels (1876), p. 338, Box T IV 3 1, Douai Abbey, Berkshire. 54. Statutes Compyled for the Better Observation of the Holy Rule of . . . S. Benedict (Ghent, 1632), §§1.12.7–8. 55. Joseph S. Hansom, ed., “The English Benedictines of the Convent of Our Blessed Lady of Good Hope in Paris,” in Miscellanea VII (London: Aberdeen University Press for Catholic Record Society, 1911), 398–99. 56. For an outstanding analysis of this aspect of convent writing within the setting of English Augustinian houses, see Van Hyning, Convent Autobiography. 57. On the “backward gaze” of the editor and critic, see Susan M. Felch, “The Backward Gaze: Editing Elizabeth Tyrwhit’s Prayerbook,” in Editing Early Modern Women, ed. Sarah C. E. Ross and Paul Salzman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 21. 58. Robert A. Orsi, Between Heaven and Earth: The Religious Worlds People Make and the Scholars Who Study Them (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 198. 59. For further discussion of such critical disorientation, see Orsi, Between Heaven and Earth, 174–75. 60. Catherine Gascoigne, Account of her Prayer, MS 26589, pp. 331–33, emphasis in the original, Downside Abbey, Somerset. 61. Gertrude More, The Spiritual Exercises (Paris, 1658), 244, emphasis in the original. 62. Augustine Baker, A Catalogue of Such English Bookes as Are in This House, Most Helping toward Contemplation, MS Osborn b 268, p. 252, Beinecke Library, Yale University, New Haven. 63. On Baker’s spirituality, see Liam Peter Temple, Mysticism in Early Modern England (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2019), 19–44; Walker, Gender and Politics, 143–47. 64. Gascoigne, Account, 344. Also see Mary Benedict Dalley, Miscellany, MS 32, pp. 224–25, Colwich Abbey, Staffordshire. 65. Gascoigne, Account; Miscellany, MS 1202 iv, pp. 382–97, Bibliothèque Mazarine, Paris; Dalley, Miscellany. 66. Robert A. Orsi, History and Presence (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2016), 58. 67. Jackson and Marotti, “Turn to Religion,” 168. 68. Lupton, “Religious Turn,” 146. 69. Jaime Goodrich, “A Poor Clare’s Legacy: Catherine Magdalen Evelyn and New

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Directions in Early Modern Women’s Literary History,” English Literary Renaissance 46, no. 1 (2016): 3–28. 70. Orsi, History and Presence, 251. 71. Who Were the Nuns? https://wwtn.history.qmul.ac.uk/; Bowden and Kelly, English Convents in Exile, 1600–1800; Kelly, English Convents in Catholic Europe. 72. Lay, Beyond the Cloister; Julie Crawford, Mediatrix: Women, Politics, and Literary Production in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). 73. Lupton, Thinking with Shakespeare, 23.

Chapter 1 1. Elizabeth Dabridgecourt, Seremonys and Customs, Through Out the Year, for All Feasts and Occations, Drawne from Our Seremoniall, in a Brife Maner (1692), Box T IV 1, Douai Abbey, Berkshire. 2. Dabridgecourt’s abbacy lasted from 1688 to 1710; she and her scribe updated the text numerous times between 1693 and 1709. Her successor Elizabeth Joseph (Elizabeth) Widdrington (professed 1680, d. 1730, abbess 1711–30) made revisions four times between 1711 and 1718. Marina Hunloke (professed 1721, d. 1753, abbess 1730–53) then emended the text ten times between 1732 and 1751. Two later abbesses, Anne Catherine (Jane) Haggerston (professed 1717, d. 1765, abbess 1753–65) and Mary Ann (Anne Barbara) Clavering (professed 1751, d. 1795, abbess 1765–86), each altered the text once during their abbacies. 3. Dabridgecourt, Seremonys, 69. 4. Dabridgecourt, Seremonys, 37. 5. For examples of nuns’ administrative writings, see Caroline Bowden, ed., English Convents in Exile, 1600–1800, vol. 5: Convent Management, ed. James E. Kelly (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2013). 6. Rachel Adcock, Baptist Women’s Writings in Revolutionary Culture, 1640–1680 (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2015), 96–103; Alasdair Raffe, “Female Authority and Lay Activism in Scottish Presbyterianism, 1660–1740,” in Religion and Women in Britain, c. 1660–1760, ed. Sarah Apetrei and Hannah Smith (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2014), 61–78; Phyllis Mack, Visionary Women: Ecstatic Prophecy in Seventeenth-­Century England (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 265–304. 7. Paula McQuade, Catechisms and Women’s Writing in Seventeenth-­Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017); Kate Narveson, Bible Readers and Lay Writers in Early Modern England: Gender and Self-­Definition in an Emergent Writing Culture (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2012); Jennifer Heller, The Mother’s Legacy in Early Modern England (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2011). 8. On the need for continual spiritual formation, see Mark Barrett et al., To Prefer Nothing to Christ: The Monastic Mission of the English Benedictine Congregation (London: Catholic Truth Society, 2015), 27; Francis, Vultum Dei Quaerere: Seeking the Face of God (London: Catholic Truth Society, 2016), 16; Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, Fraternal Life in Community (Boston: Pauline Books and Media, 1994), 53–58. 9. St. Benedict, The Rule of Our Most Holie Father S. Benedict, 7, in The Second Booke of the Dialogues of S. Gregorie (Douai, 1638). 10. Barrett et al., To Prefer Nothing to Christ, 42. On the importance of communion



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within contemplative communities, see Francis, Vultum Dei, 24–26; and Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life, Fraternal Life, 22–27. 11. Barrett et al., To Prefer Nothing to Christ, 42. 12. Martin Buber, “How Can Community Happen?” trans. Asher D. Biemann, in The Martin Buber Reader: Essential Writings, ed. Asher D. Biemann (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 253. 13. Martin Buber, I and Thou, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Touchstone, 1996), 98. 14. Buber, I and Thou, 163. 15. Paul Mendes-­Flohr, From Mysticism to Dialogue: Martin Buber’s Transformation of German Social Thought (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1989), 76–77. 16. Buber, “How Can Community Happen?” 253. 17. Ferdinand Tönnies, Community and Civil Society, ed. Jose Harris, trans. Jose Harris and Margaret Hollis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 17. 18. Tönnies, Community, 18. Tönnies may also have inspired Buber’s ideas of community as a circle. He states that “if we then picture a model of development in which a centre or core radiates spokes in different directions, that centre itself signifies the unity of the whole. The whole is held together by force of will, and such will must be particularly powerful in the centre” (Community, 38). 19. Tönnies, Community, 27, emphasis in the original. 20. Tönnies, Community, 36, emphasis in the original. 21. Tönnies, Community, 36, emphasis in the original. 22. Tönnies, Community, 19, 22. 23. Tönnies, Community, 34. 24. For profession documents from Ghent, see Het Archief B, MS 1326 and MS 2773/5, Gent Rijksarchief, Ghent; as well as MS G 55 and MS G 55A, Oulton Abbey, Staffordshire. For Pontoise, see MS 68 H 10, Archives Départementales de Val d’Oise, Cergy-­Pontoise. For Dunkirk, see Box T I Ba 2, Douai Abbey, Berkshire. 25. Constitutions Compiled for the Better Observation of the Holie Rule of . . . S. Bennet, MS 20 H 1, pp. 93–94, Archives Départementales du Nord, Lille. This work will hereafter be referred to as Cambrai Constitutions. For the Paris version, see Constitutions for the Better Observation of the Holy Rule of . . . St Bennet, MS P 2, §10.14, Colwich Abbey, Staffordshire. This work will hereafter be referred to as Paris Constitutions. 26. The Brussels house also compiled “Great Statutes,” which mandated punishments for extraordinary offenses as well as circumstances requiring the deposition of abbesses: MS G 19, Oulton Abbey, Staffordshire. I have found no evidence of similar statutes at Cambrai and Paris. The Dunkirk convent does not seem to have used the Great Statutes, based on a note appended to the cover of a Latin copy brought to Dunkirk by the Pontoise nuns after their convent dissolved: “The Great Statutes are written at the end of this Book at Pontoise they were read to the Novices before their Profession but I never heard of them at Dunkerque” (Pontoise Statuta, Box T II A B2, Douai Abbey, Berkshire). 27. Statutes Compyled for the Better Observation of the Holy Rule of . . . S. Benedict (Ghent, 1632), §2.14.8, §2.13.7, §3.3.5; Cambrai Constitutions, 57, 81, 83. Statutes will hereafter be referred to as Brussels Statutes. For a potential infirmary book, see MS G 25, Oulton Abbey, Staffordshire.

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28. Brussels Statutes, §§2.12.1–2; Cambrai Constitutions, 81; Paris Constitutions, §22.3. 29. Brussels Statutes, §3.3.10. Also see Cambrai Constitutions, 57; Paris Constitutions, §19.1. 30. Paris Constitutions, §19.1. 31. The Rule of the Holy Father Saint Benedict Translated into English (Douai, 1700), *2v. 32. Brussels Statutes, §1.1.1. 33. Benedict, Rule (1638), 18. 34. Paris Constitutions, §27.2. 35. Cambrai Constitutions, 2. 36. Benedict, Rule (1638), 12–13. 37. Benedict, Rule (1638), 33. 38. “The Third Parte,” Brussels Statutes, 29. 39. Cambrai Constitutions, 108–9. 40. Barbara R. Woshinsky, Imagining Women’s Conventual Spaces in France, 1600– 1800: The Cloister Disclosed (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2010), 1–38; Silvia Evangelisti, Nuns: A History of Convent Life, 1450–1700 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 41–65. 41. Cambrai Constitutions, 20. 42. Brussels Statutes, §3.3.1. 43. Paris Constitutions, §4.8. 44. Paris Constitutions, §1.3. 45. Brussels Statutes, §1.1.22. 46. Cambrai Constitutions, 8. 47. Cambrai Constitutions, 22. 48. Paris Constitutions, §6.1. 49. Nicky Hallett, The Senses in Religious Communities, 1600–1800: Early Modern “Convents of Pleasure” (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2013), 147–59. 50. Cambrai Constitutions, 23. 51. Brussels Statutes, §1.6.15. 52. Benedict, Rule (1638), 128. 53. Brussels Statutes, §1.3.2. 54. Brussels Statutes, §1.6.4. 55. Paris Constitutions, §2.7. 56. Jaime Goodrich, “Nuns and Community-­Centered Writing: The Benedictine Rule and Brussels Statutes,” Huntington Library Quarterly 77, no. 3 (2014): 287–303. 57. Convent to Mathias Hovius, December 15, 1611, Engelse Benedictinessen/12.4, Archdiocesan Archives of Mechelen-­Brussels, Mechelen. 58. Elizabeth Cook et al., The House History, MS R1, pp. 40–41, Colwich Abbey, Staffordshire. 59. Margaret Truran, “Did Father Baker Compile the Cambrai Nuns’ First Constitutions?” in Dom Augustine Baker, 1575–1641, ed. Geoffrey Scott (Leominster, UK: Gracewing, 2012), 31–42. Significantly, Truran’s evidence for Baker’s involvement includes his citation of a passage from the constitutions that is largely based on the Brussels Statutes: Truran, “Father Baker,” 37; Brussels Statutes, §3.5.11. 60. Anne Neville, The Beginning of the Congregation of the English Benedictin Dames, p. 35, Box T IV 3 1, Douai Abbey, Berkshire; M. J. Rumsey, ed., “Abbess Neville’s



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Annals of Five Communities of English Benedictine Nuns in Flanders 1598–1687,” in Miscellanea V (London: Arden Press for Catholic Record Society, 1909), 9. 61. Cook et al., House History, 162; Joseph S. Hansom, ed., “English Benedictines of the Convent of Our Blessed Lady of Good Hope in Paris,” Miscellanea VII (London: Aberdeen University for Catholic Record Society, 1911), 341. 62. Brussels Statutes, §1.13.16. 63. Cambrai Constitutions, 11. 64. Paris Constitutions, §1.9. 65. “Compassion, n. 1, 2a, and 3,” Oxford English Dictionary, http://www.oed.com (accessed June 18, 2020). 66. Cambrai Constitutions, 5, 8–9. 67. Statutes Compyled for the Better Observation of the Holy Rule . . . of S. Benedict (Ghent, 1632), §2.2.7, Box T V 4, Douai Abbey, Berkshire. 68. Brussels Statutes, §2.17.4. 69. Brussels Statutes, §1.6.8, §1.9.4, Douai Abbey. 70. Brussels Statutes, §1.6.18, §1.6.23, Douai Abbey. 71. Brussels Statutes, §1.7.9, Douai Abbey. 72. Brussels Statutes, §1.6.15, §1.10.17, Douai Abbey. 73. Benedict, Rule (1638), 114. 74. Barrett et al., To Prefer Nothing, 25, emphasis in the original. 75. Robert A. Orsi, Between Heaven and Earth: The Religious Worlds People Make and the Scholars Who Study Them (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 74. 76. Paris Constitutions, §9.3. 77. Brussels Statutes, §1.10.1. 78. Cambrai Constitutions, 42–43. 79. Cambrai Constitutions, 43. 80. On this point, see Jaime Goodrich, “‘Low & plain stile’: Poetry and Piety in English Benedictine Convents, 1600–1800,” British Catholic History 34, no. 4 (2019): 599–618. 81. Seven death chapters are extant from Ghent, six of which are datable to the abbacy of Magdalen Lucy: Death Chapters of the Ghent Benedictines, Box T Bc 1, Douai Abbey, Berkshire; “Obituary Notices of the Nuns of the English Benedictine Abbey of Ghent in Flanders 1627–1811,” in Miscellanea XI (London: J. Whitehead & Son for Catholic Record Society, 1917), 80–86. For a definition of death chapters, see “Obituary Notices,” 1. 82. Justina Gascoigne, Chapter Speeches, MS 71A, p. 354, Colwich Abbey, Staffordshire. 83. Magdalen Lucy, Chapter Speeches, MS G 45A, n.p., Oulton Abbey, Staffordshire. 84. Gascoigne, Chapter Speeches, MS 71A, 8–9. 85. Justina Gascoigne, Chapter Speeches, MS 71B, pp. 82–83, Colwich Abbey, Staffordshire. 86. Mary Baptist Phillips, Chapter Speeches, MS G 45B, n.p., Oulton Abbey, Staffordshire. 87. Lucy, Chapter Speeches, n.p. 88. Gascoigne, Chapter Speeches, MS 71B, 301. 89. Lucy, Chapter Speeches, n.p. 90. Christina Brent, Chapter Speeches, MS 20 H 10, pp. 879–80, Archives Départementales du Nord, Lille. 91. Brent, Chapter Speeches, 879.

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92. Brent, Chapter Speeches, 897. 93. Phillips, Chapter Speeches, n.p. 94. Gascoigne, Chapter Speeches, MS 71A, 492. 95. Lucy, Chapter Speeches, n.p. Good zeal and speech are perennial issues in monastic life: Francis, Letter to All Consecrated People (London: Catholic Truth Society, 2014), 18. 96. Phillips, Chapter Speeches, n.p. 97. Brent, Chapter Speeches, 883. 98. Brent, Chapter Speeches, 884. 99. Gascoigne, Chapter Speeches, MS 71B, 388–89. 100. Gascoigne, Chapter Speeches, MS 71A, 169. 101. Brent, Chapter Speeches, 887. 102. Brent, Chapter Speeches, 889. 103. The Ghent death chapters were also “preserved on loose sheets of paper”: “Obituary Notices,” 1. 104. MS 20 H 10, 424–26, 470–71. 105. Gascoigne, Chapter Speeches, MS 71A, 168–69. 106. Gascoigne, Chapter Speeches, MS 71B, 390–92. 107. The year 1757 is a conjecture as the final number is obscured and could possibly be a 1 or 7. 108. Lucy, Chapter Speeches, n.p. 109. Phillips, Chapter Speeches, n.p. 110. Mary Magdalen Arden, Chapter Speeches, MS G 45C, n.p., Oulton Abbey, Staffordshire. 111. Anne Neville, Conduct Book, Box T IV 1, Douai Abbey, Berkshire. 112. Buber, I and Thou, 163.

Chapter 2 1. Mary Clare Joseph of Jesus Bond, Meditations, MS 66, p. 27, Colwich Abbey, Staffordshire. 2. Bond, Meditations, MS 66, 56. 3. Bond, Meditations, MS 66, 45. 4. Mary Clare Joseph of Jesus Bond, Meditations, MS 65, p. 109, Colwich Abbey, Staffordshire. 5. Bond, Meditations, MS 66, 328, 332, 370. 6. Bond, Meditations, MS 66, 295. 7. Bond, Meditations, MS 65, 6–7. 8. Margaret P. Hannay, ed., Silent But for the Word: Tudor Women as Patrons, Translators, and Writers of Religious Works (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1985). 9. See, for example, Susan Felch, “Common and Competing Faiths,” in A History of Early Modern Women’s Writing, ed. Patricia Phillippy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 103–18; Micheline White, “Women in Worship: Continuity and Change in the Prayers of Elizabeth Tyrwhit and Frances Aburgavenny,” in A History of Early Modern Women’s Writing, ed. Phillippy, 170–85; Micheline White, “The Psalms, War, and Royal Iconography: Katherine Parr’s Psalms or Prayers (1544) and Henry VIII as David,” Renaissance Studies 29, no. 4 (2015): 554–75; Jaime Goodrich, Faithful Translators: Authorship, Gender, and Religion in Early Modern England (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press,



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2014); Genelle Gertz, Heresy Trials and English Women Writers, 1400–1670 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012); Micheline White, ed., English Women, Religion, and Textual Production, 1500–1625 (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2011); Kimberly Anne Coles, Religion, Reform, and Women’s Writing in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008); Erica Longfellow, Women and Religious Writing in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). 10. Kitty Scoular Datta, “Women, Authority, and Mysticism: The Case of Dame Gertrude More (1606–33),” in Literature and Gender: Essays for Jasodhara Bagchi, ed. Supriya Chaudhuri and Sajni Mukherji (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 2002), 50–68; Heather Wolfe, “Dame Barbara Constable: Catholic Antiquarian, Advisor, and Closet Missionary,” in Catholic Culture in Early Modern England, ed. Ronald Corthell et al. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007), 158–88; Jenna Lay, “An English Nun’s Authority: Early Modern Spiritual Controversy and the Manuscripts of Barbara Constable,” in Gender, Catholicism, and Spirituality, ed. Laurence Lux-­Sterritt and Carmen Mangion (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 99–114; Genelle Gertz, “Barbara Constable’s Advice for Confessors and the Tradition of Medieval Holy Women,” in The English Convents in Exile, 1600–1800: Communities, Culture, and Identity, ed. Caroline Bowden and James E. Kelly (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2013), 123–38; Arthur F. Marotti, “Saintly Idiocy and Contemplative Empowerment: The Example of Dame Gertrude More,” in Mysticism and Reform, 1400–1750, ed. Sara S. Poor and Nigel Smith (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2015), 151–76; Jenna Lay, Beyond the Cloister: Catholic Englishwomen and Early Modern Literary Culture (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016), 92–108. 11. See Suzanne Trill, “Critical Categories: Toward an Archaeology of Anne, Lady Halkett’s Archive,” in Editing Early Modern Women, ed. Sarah C. E. Ross and Paul Salzman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 97–120; Susan Wiseman, “Elizabeth Delaval’s Memoirs and Meditations: Textual Transmission and Jacobite Context,” Early Modern Women 10, no. 1 (2015): 68–92. 12. Laurence Lux-­Sterritt, English Benedictine Nuns in Exile in the Seventeenth Century: Living Spirituality (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2017); Paula McQuade, Catechisms and Women’s Writing in Seventeenth-­Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017); Kate Narveson, Bible Readers and Lay Writers in Early Modern England: Gender and Self-­Definition in an Emergent Writing Culture (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2016). 13. For a wide-­ranging discussion of early modern women’s miscellanies, see Victoria E. Burke, “Manuscript Miscellanies,” in The Cambridge Companion to Early Modern Women’s Writing, ed. Laura Lunger Knoppers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 54–67. Also see Helen Hackett, “Unlocking the Mysteries of Constance Aston Fowler’s Verse Miscellany (Huntington Library MS HM 904): The Hand B Scribe Identified,” in Manuscript Miscellanies in Early Modern England, ed. Joshua Eckhardt and Daniel Starza Smith (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2014), 91–112; Christopher Shirley, “The Devonshire Manuscript: Reading Gender in the Henrician Court,” English Literary Renaissance 45, no. 1 (2015): 32–59; Helen Hackett, “Women and Catholic Manuscript Networks in Seventeenth-­Century England: New Research on Constance Aston Fowler’s Miscellany of Sacred and Secular Verse,” Renaissance Quarterly 65, no. 4 (2012): 1094–1124; Edith Snook, Women, Reading, and the Cultural Politics of Early Modern England (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2005).

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14. See, for example, Dorothy L. Latz, “Glow-­Worm Light”: Writings of 17th Century English Recusant Women from Original Manuscripts (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, 1989); Marion Wynne-­Davies, “Suicide at the Elephant and Castle, or Did the Lady Vanish? Alternative Endings for Early Modern Women Writers,” in Region, Religion, and Patronage: Lancastrian Shakespeare, ed. Richard Dutton, Alison Findlay, and Richard Wilson (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2004), 121–42; Lay, Beyond the Cloister; Victoria Van Hyning, Convent Autobiography: Early Modern English Nuns in Exile (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019). 15. St. Benedict, The Rule of Our Most Holie Father S. Benedict, 51, in The Second Booke of the Dialogues of S. Gregorie (Douai, 1638). 16. Mark Barrett et al., To Prefer Nothing to Christ: The Monastic Mission of the English Benedictine Congregation (London: Catholic Truth Society, 2015), 47. 17. Martin Buber, I and Thou, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Touchstone, 1996), 130–31. 18. Martin Buber, Between Man and Man, trans. Ronald Gregor Smith (Mansfield Centre, CT: Martino Publishing, 2014), 7. 19. Paul Mendes-­Flohr, Martin Buber: A Life of Faith and Dissent (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019), 18, 149–56, 176, 239. Several scholars, however, argue that Buber’s attitude toward ritual was more nuanced: Zachary A. Braiterman, “Martin Buber and the Art of Ritual,” in New Perspectives on Martin Buber, ed. Michael Zank (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006), 111–24; S. Daniel Breslauer, “Ritual in Martin Buber’s Myth of Zion,” Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies 34, no. 3 (2016): 28–49. 20. Martin Buber, “Revelation and Law,” in Franz Rosenzweig, On Jewish Learning, ed. N. N. Glazer (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1955), 111, emphasis in the original. 21. Buber, “Revelation and Law,” 114. 22. John Macmurray, Persons in Relation (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1961), 162. 23. Macmurray, Persons in Relation, 163. 24. Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, Fraternal Life in Community (Boston: Pauline Books & Media, 1994), 30. 25. Francis, Vultum Dei Quaerere: Seeking the Face of God (London: Catholic Truth Society, 2016), 22. 26. Barrett et al., To Prefer Nothing, 47. 27. Barrett et al., To Prefer Nothing, 47. 28. Francis, Vultum Dei, 22. 29. First Book of Death Bills, 1627–1659, MS G 8, p. 29, Oulton Abbey, Staffordshire; “Obituary Notices of the Nuns of the English Benedictine Abbey of Ghent in Flanders 1627–1811,” in Miscellanea XI (London: J. Whitehead & Son for Catholic Record Society, 1917), 24. 30. Agnes of the Infant Jesus Temple, Teresa of the Infant Jesus Cook, and Elizabeth of the Blessed Lady Cook, Some Perticuler Remarkes of Our Venerable Mother Beginners, MS R3, p. 23, Colwich Abbey, Staffordshire; Joseph S. Hansom, ed., “The English Benedictine Nuns of the Convent of Our Blessed Lady of Good Hope in Paris,” in Miscellanea VII (London: Aberdeen University Press for Catholic Record Society, 1911), 336. 31. Temple, Cook, and Cook, Some Perticuler Remarkes, n.p.; Hansom, “English Benedictine Nuns,” 392. 32. First Book of Death Bills, 51; “Obituary Notices,” 44.



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33. First Book of Death Bills, 51; “Obituary Notices,” 44. 34. Mary Gertrude Darrell, Miscellany, n.p., Box T V 6, Douai Abbey, Berkshire. 35. Pontoise Registers, n.p., Box T IV 1, Douai Abbey, Berkshire; “Registers of the English Benedictine Nuns of Pontoise,” in Miscellanea X (London: J. Whitehead & Son for Catholic Record Society, 1915), 279. 36. Pontoise Registers, n.p.; “Registers,” 279. 37. Pontoise Registers, n.p.; “Registers,” 280. 38. Fragment 4, n.p., Colwich Abbey, Staffordshire. 39. Mary Benedict Dalley, Miscellany, MS 32, pp. 12–16, Colwich Abbey, Staffordshire; and Maura Wytham, Miscellany, MS 35, pp. 235–57, Colwich Abbey, Staffordshire. 40. Wytham, Miscellany, 252. 41. St. Bernard, A Rule of Good Life, trans. Anthony Batt (Douai, 1633), 320. 42. Buber, I and Thou, 56. 43. J. T. Rhodes, “The Library Catalogue of the English Benedictine Nuns of Our Lady of Good Hope in Paris,” Downside Review 130, no. 459 (2012): nos. 31–34, 37, 42, 49–55. 44. Rhodes, “Library Catalogue,” nos. 31, 37, 42, 46, 49, 54–55. 45. Mary Bede Culcheth, Miscellany, Mary Gertrude Darrell, Miscellany, and Mary Winifred Englefield, Miscellany, all in Box T V 6, Douai Abbey, Berkshire; Constantia Savage, Miscellany, Box T VI 4, Douai Abbey, Berkshire. 46. The XXIVth Book of Collections, MS 22, Colwich Abbey, Staffordshire. 47. Englefield, Miscellany, n.p. 48. Macmurray, Persons in Relation, 162. 49. Culcheth, Miscellany, n.p. 50. Savage, Miscellany, n.p. 51. Buber, I and Thou, 56. 52. Savage, Miscellany, 11–12. 53. XXIVth Book of Collections, 149. 54. Culcheth, Miscellany, n.p. 55. Culcheth, Miscellany, n.p. 56. Catherine Sheldon, Miscellany, n.p., Box T V 6, Douai Abbey, Berkshire. 57. Savage, Miscellany, 13. 58. Sheldon, Miscellany, n.p. 59. Anselma Anne, Miscellany, 56, Stanbrook Abbey, North Yorkshire. 60. Anne, Miscellany, 226. 61. Anne, Miscellany, 227. 62. XLth Book of Collections, MS 23, pp. 295–96, Colwich Abbey, Staffordshire. 63. XLth Book of Collections, 292–93. 64. Wytham, Miscellany, 296. This same passage occurs in an eighteenth-­century miscellany: MS 52, n.p., Colwich Abbey, Staffordshire. Another translation of this moment occurs in XXIVth Book of Collections, 151. 65. Buber, I and Thou, 131. 66. Sheldon, Miscellany, n.p. 67. Savage, Miscellany, 8. 68. Culcheth, Miscellany, n.p. 69. XLth Book of Collections, 230. 70. Buber, I and Thou, 68.

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71. Buber, I and Thou, 69. 72. As Nancy Bradley Warren has already noted, “Writing and reading . . . take on a quasi-­sacramental aspect in the monastic communities of Cambrai and Paris.” See Warren, The Embodied Word: Female Spiritualities, Contested Orthodoxies, and English Religious Cultures, 1350–1700 (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010), 75. 73. Michel de Certeau, The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, vol. 1: The Mystic Fable, trans. Michael B. Smith (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 22, 25. 74. MS G 10, Oulton Abbey, Staffordshire. 75. 3rd MSS Retreat with Renovations by Fr Bisson & F. Sabran, Box T V 5, Douai Abbey, Berkshire. 76. Gertrude More, Confessiones amantis, Rawlinson MS C 581, fol. 23r, Bodleian Library, Oxford; Confessiones amantis: The Spiritual Exercises of the Most Vertuous and Religious Dame Gertrude More, ed. John Clark (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, 2007), 33. 77. Barbara Constable, Gemitus peccatorum, Haslemere MS 1886 VI C, 148, Downside Abbey, Somerset. 78. More, Confessiones, Rawlinson MS C 581, fol. 79r; Confessiones, ed. Clark, 103. 79. Constable, Gemitus, 139. 80. More, Confessiones, Rawlinson MS C 581, fols. 54r–v; Confessiones, ed. Clark, 71. 81. Constable, Gemitus, 113. 82. Buber, Between Man and Man, 10. 83. More, Confessiones, Rawlinson MS C 581, fols. 27v–28r; Confessiones, ed. Clark, 39. 84. Constable, Gemitus, 175. 85. More, Confessiones, Rawlinson MS C 581, fol. 37v; Confessiones, ed. Clark, 51. 86. More, Confessiones, Rawlinson MS C 581, fols. 37v–38r; Confessiones, ed. Clark, 52. 87. Constable, Gemitus, 136–37. 88. Constable, Gemitus, 166. 89. Constable, Gemitus, 166–67. 90. More, Confessiones, Rawlinson MS C 581, fols. 96r–v; Confessiones, ed. Clark, 126. 91. “Tridentine (1570) Matins for July 22,” Divinum Officium Project, https:// divinumofficium.com (accessed June 19, 2020). 92. “Tridentine (1570) Vespers for July 22,” Divinum Officium Project, https:// divinumofficium.com (accessed June 19, 2020). 93. Officium divinum juxta ritum romanum (Tours, 1876), 838. 94. More, Confessiones, Rawlinson MS C 581, fol. 97r; Confessiones, ed. Clark, 127. 95. Constable, Gemitus, 23. 96. Constable, Gemitus, 24. 97. Tobie Matthew, A Relation of the Holy, and Happy Life, and Death, of the Lady Lucie Knatchbull, MS G 13, fols. 148r–49r, Box O IV 1, Douai Abbey, Berkshire; Tobie Matthew, The Life of Lady Lucy Knatchbull, ed. David Knowles (London: Sheed & Ward, 1931), 138–39. 98. Buber, I and Thou, 57. 99. Matthew, Relation, fol. 174v; Life, 160. 100. Matthew, Relation, fols. 174v–75r, emphasis in the original; Life, 160. 101. Matthew, Relation, fol. 175r; Life, 161. 102. Matthew, Relation, fol. 178r; Life, 163.



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103. On the liturgical aspects of Gertrude’s visions, see Anna Harrison, “‘I Am Wholly Your Own’: Liturgical Piety and Community among the Nuns of Helfta,” Church History 78, no. 3 (2009): 549–83. 104. First Book of Death Bills, 11; “Obituary Notices,” 7. 105. Matthew, Relation, fols. 163v–64r, emphasis in the original; Life, 151. 106. Matthew, Relation, fol. 164r, emphasis in the original; Life, 152. 107. Matthew, Relation, fol. 165r; Life, 153. 108. Matthew, Relation, fol. 165v; Life, 153. 109. Jaime Goodrich, “‘Attend to Me’: Julian of Norwich, Margaret Gascoigne, and Textual Circulation among the Cambrai Benedictines,” in Early Modern English Catholicism: Identity, Memory, and Counter-­Reformation, ed. James E. Kelly and Susan Royal (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 105–21. 110. Miscellany, MS 18, pp. 130–31, Colwich Abbey, Staffordshire.

Chapter 3 1. Its first modern editors describe the Life as an “ancillary text” to the play: Elizabeth Cary, The Tragedy of Mariam, ed. Barry Weller and Margaret W. Ferguson (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 50. 2. Nandra Perry, Imitatio Christi: The Poetics of Piety in Early Modern England (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2014), 94–105; David Wallace, Strong Women: Life, Text, and Territory 1347–1645 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 227–28; Mary Beth Long, “The Life as Vita: Reading The Lady Falkland Her Life as Hagiography,” English Literary Renaissance 38, no. 2 (2008): 304–30. 3. Annabel Patterson, “‘This girl hath a spirit averse from Calvin’: Reading the Life, Hearing the Voice(s),” in Writing Lives: Biography and Textuality, Identity and Representation in Early Modern England, ed. Kevin Sharpe and Steven N. Zwicker (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 255–73; Frances E. Dolan, “Reading, Work, and Catholic Women’s Biographies,” English Literary Renaissance 33, no. 3 (2003): 328–57. 4. Marion Wynne-­Davies, “‘To have her children with her’: Elizabeth Cary and Familial Influence,” in The Literary Career and Legacy of Elizabeth Cary, 1613–1680, ed. Heather Wolfe (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 223. 5. Patterson, “Reading the Life,” 258. 6. Dolan, “Reading, Work,” 346. 7. Elizabeth Cary, Elizabeth Cary, Lady Falkland: Life and Letters, ed. Heather Wolfe (Cambridge: RTM Publications, 2001), 222. 8. Cary, Life and Letters, 216–17. 9. Cary, Life and Letters, 210. 10. Cary, Life and Letters, 221. 11. Cary, Life and Letters, 222. 12. Cary, Life and Letters, 164–65. 13. Elspeth Graham et al., ed., Her Own Life: Autobiographical Writings by 17th-­Century Englishwomen (New York: Routledge, 1989). For useful overviews of the scholarship on women’s life writing, see Julie A. Eckerle, Romancing the Self in Early Modern Englishwomen’s Life Writing (New York: Routledge, 2016), 9–18; Michelle M. Dowd and Julie A. Eckerle, “Recent Studies in Early Modern English Life Writing,” English Literary Renaissance 40, no. 1 (2010): 132–62.

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14. Eckerle, Romancing the Self; Catherine Field, “‘Many hands hands’: Writing the Self in Early Modern Women’s Recipe Books,” in Genre and Women’s Life Writing in Early Modern England, ed. Michelle M. Dowd and Julie A. Eckerle (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2007), 49–63. 15. See Caroline Bowden, ed., English Convents in Exile, 1600–1800, vol. 3: Life Writing I, ed. Nicky Hallett (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2012), and vol. 4: Life Writing II, ed. Katrien Daemen-­de Gelder (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2013); Nicky Hallett, ed., Lives of Spirit: English Carmelite Self-­Writing of the Early Modern Period (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2007). 16. Megan Matchinske, Women Writing History in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009); Devoney Looser, British Women Writers and the Writing of History, 1670–1820 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000). 17. Caroline Bowden, ed., The Chronicles of Nazareth (The English Convent), Bruges 1629–1793 (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press for Catholic Record Society, 2017); Bowden, ed., English Convents in Exile, 1600–1800, vol. 1: History Writing (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2012). For discussions of history writing in convents, see Caroline Bowden, “Introduction: History Writing in the English Convents,” xxxix–xlii, in Bowden, ed., English Convents in Exile, 1600–1800, vol. 1: History Writing; Silvia Evangelisti, Nuns: A History of Convent Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 82–89; K. J. P. Lowe, Nuns’ Chronicles and Convent Culture in Renaissance and Counter-­Reformation Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Charlotte Woodford, Nuns as Historians in Early Modern Germany (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002). 18. St. Benedict, The Rule of Our Most Holie Father S. Benedict, 1, in The Second Booke of the Dialogues of S. Gregorie (Douai, 1638). 19. Benedict, Rule, 3. 20. Mark Barrett et al., To Prefer Nothing to Christ: The Monastic Mission of the English Benedictine Congregation (London: Catholic Truth Society, 2015), 28. See also Francis, Vultum Dei Quaerere: Seeking the Face of God (London: Catholic Truth Society, 2016), 3; Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, Rejoice! A Letter to Consecrated Men and Women: A Message from the Teachings of Pope Francis (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2014), 8–13. 21. Martin Buber, I and Thou, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Touchstone, 1996), 62. 22. Buber, I and Thou, 84–85. 23. Buber, I and Thou, 94. 24. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed. (New York: Verso, 1991), 6. 25. Anderson, Imagined Communities, 15–16. 26. Barrett et al., To Prefer Nothing to Christ, 30. 27. First Book of Death Bills 1627–1659, MS G 8, pp. 34–35, Oulton Abbey, Staffordshire; “Obituary Notices of the Nuns of the English Benedictine Abbey of Ghent in Flanders 1627–1811,” in Miscellanea XI (London: J. Whitehead & Son for Catholic Record Society, 1917), 29. 28. Magdalen Lucy, Chapter Speeches, MS G 45A, n.p., Oulton Abbey, Staffordshire. 29. Statutes Compyled for the Better Observation of the Holy Rule of . . . S. Benedict (Ghent, 1632), §3.5.1.



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30. Agnes of the Infant Jesus Temple, Teresa of the Infant Jesus Cook, and Elizabeth of the Blessed Lady Cook, Some Perticuler Remarkes of Our Venerable Mother Beginners, MS R 3, n.p., Colwich Abbey, Staffordshire; Joseph S. Hansom, ed., “The English Benedictine Nuns of the Convent of Our Blessed Lady of Good Hope in Paris,” in Miscellanea VII (London: Aberdeen University Press for Catholic Record Society, 1911), 334. 31. On the importance of history to the imagined community of the nation, see Anderson, Imagined Communities, 145, 149. 32. Accounts of Miraculous Cures, Haslemere MS 3116 VI C, Downside Abbey, Somerset. 33. “The True Relation of the Miraculous Cure of an English Nun at Ghent” (1661), in Bowden, English Convents in Exile, 1600–1800, 3:367–72; An Account of the Miraculous Cure Wrought by the Intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the Person of Sister Jane Weardon (London, 1785). 34. Additional MS 21203, fol. 24, British Library, London. 35. Tobie Matthew, The Life of Lady Lucy Knatchbull, ed. David Knowles (London: Sheed & Ward, 1931), 27–49. 36. Hansom, ed., “English Benedictine Nuns of . . . Paris,” 398–99. 37. Mary Knatchbull, The Foundation of Bullogne, Box T IV 1, Douai Abbey, Berkshire. 38. Christina Brent, A Discourse Concerning Some Difficullties about the Doctrine of Verie Reverend Father Augustine Baker, MS 20 H 10, pp. 901–7, Archives Départementales du Nord, Lille; Brent, “Discourse Concerning Father Baker’s Doctrine,” in John Clark, ed., Francis Gascoigne, An Apologie for Myselfe about Fr. Baker’s Doctrine (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, 2011), 95–101; Thomas Willis, Histories of the Brussels Benedictines, Haslemere MSS 1874 VI C and 1875 VI C, Downside Abbey, Somerset. 39. Ann Teresa Partington, A Brief Narrative of the Seizure of the Benedictine Dames of Cambray, Stanbrook Abbey, Wass; Partington, A Brief Narrative of the Seizure of the Benedictine Dames of Cambray, ed. Scholastica Jacob (Wass: Stanbrook Abbey, 2016); Joseph Gillow, ed., “Records of the English Benedictine Nuns at Cambrai 1620–1793,” in Miscellanea VIII (London: Ballantyne, Hanson & Co. for Catholic Record Society, 1913), 20–35; Teresa Joseph Johnson and Teresa Catherine McDonald, Accounts of the French Revolution, MS P9, Colwich Abbey, Staffordshire. 40. Anne Neville, The Beginning of the Congregation of the English Benedictin Dames, pp. 211–12, Box T IV 3 1, Douai Abbey, Berkshire; M. J. Rumsey, ed., “Abbess Neville’s Annals of Five Communities of English Benedictine Nuns in Flanders 1598–1687,” in Miscellanea V (London: Arden Press for Catholic Record Society, 1909), 1–72. 41. Elizabeth of the Blessed Lady Cook et al., The House History, MS R 1, Colwich Abbey, Staffordshire. 42. Brussels Statutes, §1.13.15. 43. Caroline Bowden, “Collecting the Lives of Early Modern Women Religious: Obituary Writing and the Development of Collective Memory and Corporate Identity,” Women’s History Review 19, no. 1 (2010): 10. 44. A manuscript compiled in 1876 by Mary Frances Sales Woollett, abbess of the East Bergholt community that descended spiritually from the Brussels Benedictines, contains obituaries for members of the Brussels house during its time in exile: Haslemere MS 1881, Downside Abbey, Somerset. However, careful comparison of these obituaries with the nineteenth-­century annals of the convent (which cover the years 1598–1878)

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reveals that a majority of the early obituaries in Woollett’s volume contain material lifted verbatim from older manuscripts documenting the house’s history: Haslemere MSS 1876 and 1877, Downside Abbey, Somerset. Since these obituaries seem to be nineteenth-­century compositions, I have not included them in my analysis. 45. “Obituary Notices,” 1. 46. Temple, Cook, and Cook, Some Perticuler Remarkes, n.p.; Hansom, “English Benedictine Nuns of . . . Paris,” 334. 47. First Book of Death Bills, n.p.; “Obituary Notices,” 2. 48. Temple, Cook, and Cook, Some Perticuler Remarkes, n.p.; Hansom, “English Benedictine Nuns of . . . Paris,” 334. 49. Register of the Pontoise Benedictines, 68, Box T IV 1, Douai Abbey, Berkshire; “Registers of the English Benedictine Nuns of Pontoise,” in Miscellanea X (London: J. Whitehead & Son for Catholic Record Society, 1915), 266–67. 50. Temple, Cook, and Cook, Some Perticuler Remarkes, n.p.; Hansom, “English Benedictine Nuns of . . . Paris,” 334. 51. First Book of Death Bills, n.p.; “Obituary Notices,” 2. 52. First Book of Death Bills, n.p.; “Obituary Notices,” 2. 53. Martin Buber, Between Man and Man, trans. Ronald Gregor Smith (Mansfield Centre, CT: Martino Publishing, 2014), 10–11. 54. Buber, Between Man and Man, 15. 55. Death Chapters of the Ghent Benedictines, n.p., Box T 1 Bc 1, Douai Abbey, Berkshire; “Obituary Notices,” 84. 56. Register, 102; “Registers,” 278. 57. A Catalogue of the Names of the Religious Dames and Sisters Profes’d of this Convent of Our Blessed Lady of Consolation in Cambray Who Are Dead, MS 20 H 7, n.p., Archives Départementales du Nord, Lille; Gillow, “Records,” 77. 58. First Book of Death Bills, 31; “Obituary Notices,” 25. 59. First Book of Death Bills, 32; “Obituary Notices,” 26. 60. Buber, I and Thou, 182. 61. Temple, Cook, and Cook, Some Perticuler Remarkes, 65; Hansom, “English Benedictine Nuns of . . . Paris,” 349. 62. Book of the Anniversarys and Bills of the Deceas’d Religious of This Monastery . . . in Pontoise, MS 68 H 4, p. 157, Archives Départementales de Val d’Oise, Cergy-­Pontoise. 63. Temple, Cook, and Cook, Some Perticuler Remarkes, n.p.; Hansom, “English Benedictine Nuns of . . . Paris,” 373. 64. First Book of Death Bills, 54–55; “Obituary Notices,” 48. 65. First Book of Death Bills, 55; “Obituary Notices,” 49. 66. First Book of Death Bills, 18; “Obituary Notices,” 13. 67. Buber, I and Thou, 84. 68. Buber, I and Thou, 84. 69. Catalogue, n.p.; Gillow, “Records,” 78. 70. Death Chapters, n.p.; “Obituary Notices,” 82. 71. Register, 180; “Registers,” 320. 72. First Book of Death Bills, 58; “Obituary Notices,” 52. 73. First Book of Death Bills, 58; “Obituary Notices,” 52. 74. On the difficulties of convent finances, see Richard G. Williams, ed., Mannock



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Strickland 1683–1744: Agent to English Convents in Flanders: Letters and Accounts from Exile (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press for Catholic Record Society, 2016). 75. Temple, Cook, and Cook, Some Perticuler Remarkes, 100; Hansom, “English Benedictine Nuns of . . . Paris,” 359. 76. Temple, Cook, and Cook, Some Perticuler Remarkes, n.p.; Hansom, “English Benedictine Nuns of . . . Paris,” 389. 77. Temple, Cook, and Cook, Some Perticuler Remarkes, 31; Hansom, “English Benedictine Nuns of . . . Paris,” 338. 78. First Book of Death Bills, 51; “Obituary Notices,” 44. 79. First Book of Death Bills, 57; “Obituary Notices,” 51. 80. Constitutions Compiled for the Better Observation of the Holie Rule of . . . S. Bennet, MS 20 H 1, p. 13, Archives Départementales du Nord, Lille. Also see Constitutions for the Better Observation of the Holy Rule of . . . St Bennet, MS P 2, §1.13, Colwich Abbey, Staffordshire. 81. Temple, Cook, and Cook, Some Perticuler Remarkes, n.p.; Hansom, “English Benedictine Nuns of . . . Paris,” 387. 82. An early twentieth-­century copy of the Ghent death chapters notes that the originals were destroyed: Death Chapters, n.p.; “Obituary Notices,” 2. 83. First Book of Death Bills, 19; “Obituary Notices,” 14. 84. Paris Constitutions, §1.13. 85. First Book of Death Bills, 38; “Obituary Notices,” 32. Missing words also occur in the obituaries of Elizabeth Wakeman and Bridget Gildrige: First Book of Death Bills, 40, 48; “Obituary Notices,” 33–34, 41–42. 86. First Book of Death Bills, 13; “Obituary Notices,” 9. Matthew is also referenced in the obituaries for Poulton (d. 1646) and Digby (d. 1659): First Book of Death Bills, 46, 78; “Obituary Notices,” 40, 73. 87. Catalogue, n.p.; Gillow, “Records,” 81. 88. Temple, Cook, and Cook, Some Perticuler Remarkes, n.p.; Hansom, “English Benedictine Nuns of . . . Paris,” 334. 89. Temple, Cook, and Cook, Some Perticuler Remarkes, 136; Hansom, “English Benedictine Nuns of . . . Paris,” 367. 90. Temple, Cook, and Cook, Some Perticuler Remarkes, 21; Hansom, “English Benedictine Nuns of . . . Paris,” 335. 91. First Book of Death Bills, 25; “Obituary Notices,” 20. 92. Book of the Anniversarys. 93. Book of the Anniversarys, 79. 94. Mortuary Bills of the Dunkirk Benedictines, n.p., Box T 1 Bc 2, Douai Abbey, Berkshire. 95. Circular Bill of Margaret Knatchbull, G 21, Oulton Abbey, Staffordshire. 96. Mortuary Bills, n.p. 97. Register, 70; “Registers,” 268. 98. First Book of Death Bills, 67; “Obituary Notices,” 62. Wigmore’s death notice exists in two distinct versions, and this translation incorporates material from both: Register, 70; “Registers,” 268; Book of the Anniversarys, 117. 99. Register, 76; “Registers,” 270. 100. Circular Bill of Mary Baptist Phillips, G 57, Oulton Abbey, Staffordshire.

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101. Book of the Anniversarys, 78; Register, 170; “Registers,” 316. 102. Register, n.p. 103. Book of the Anniversarys, 164. 104. Register, 179, emphasis in the original; “Registers,” 320. 105. Register, n.p. 106. Gerda Lerner, The Creation of Feminist Consciousness from the Middle Ages to Eighteen-­Seventy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 249–56. 107. Francis, Letter to All Consecrated People (London: Catholic Truth Society, 2014), 5–6. 108. Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, Fraternal Life in Community (Boston: Pauline Books & Media, 1994), 56–57. 109. Buber, Between Man and Man, 175–76, emphasis in the original. 110. Martin Buber, “What Is Common to All,” trans. Maurice Friedman, in The Knowledge of Man: Selected Essays, ed. Maurice Friedman (Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 1998), 96. 111. Buber, Between Man and Man, 176. 112. An edited collection on Jewish sexuality has already proposed a We-­You model, but not in relation to spiritual community: Danya Ruttenberg, ed., The Passionate Torah: Sex and Judaism (New York: New York University Press, 2009). 113. F. Smith Fussner, The Historical Revolution: English Historical Writing and Thought 1580–1640 (London: Routledge, 1962); Angus Vine, In Defiance of Time: Antiquarian Writing in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). 114. Jaime Goodrich, “The Antiquarian and the Abbess: Gender, Genre, and the Reception of Early Modern Historical Writing,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 50, no. 1 (2020): 95–113. 115. Fussner, Historical Revolution, 11. 116. D. R. Woolf, The Idea of History in Early Stuart England: Erudition, Ideology, and “The Light of Truth” from the Accession of James I to the Civil War (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990), 8; F. J. Levy, Tudor Historical Thought (San Marino, CA: Huntington Library, 1967), 100; Fussner, Historical Revolution, 25. 117. Knatchbull, Foundation, 113. 118. Alexandra Walsham, Providence in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 5. 119. Neville, Beginning of the Congregation, 211–12; Rumsey, “Neville’s Annals,” 44. 120. Knatchbull, Foundation, 6. 121. Neville, Beginning of the Congregation, 112; Rumsey, “Neville’s Annals,” 19. 122. Knatchbull, Foundation, 93. 123. Knatchbull, Foundation, 94. 124. Cook et al., House History, 222. 125. Cook et al., House History, 77–78. 126. Neville, Beginning of the Congregation, 14; Rumsey, “Neville’s Annals,” 5. 127. Cook et al., House History, 61. 128. Cook et al., House History, 67. 129. Neville, Beginning of the Congregation, 136; Rumsey, “Neville’s Annals,” 25. 130. Teresa Joseph Johnson, Account of Our Community during the French Revolution, MS P 9, pp. 97–98, Colwich Abbey, Staffordshire. 131. Johnson, Account of Our Community, 60.



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132. Knatchbull, Foundation, 35, emphasis in the original. 133. Knatchbull, Foundation, 37. 134. Cook et al., House History, 312. 135. Johnson, Account of Our Community, 1. 136. A sixth manicule occurs when the house leaves the English Benedictine Congregation and relinquishes any claim to financial support in the future: Cook et al., House History, 124. 137. Cook et al., House History, 58. 138. Cook et al., House History, 187. 139. Cook et al., House History, 229. 140. Cook et al., House History, 14. 141. Cook et al., House History, 23. 142. Chronicles of the First Monastery Founded for Benedictine Nuns, 1597 (Bergholt: St Mary’s Abbey, 1898), 236. 143. Chronicles of the First Monastery, 237. 144. On election, see, for example, Elizabeth Bouldin, Women Prophets and Radical Protestantism in the British Atlantic World, 1640–1730 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 45, 52–88.

Chapter 4 1. St. Benedict, The Rule of the Most Blissed Father Saint Benedict (Ghent, 1632), sigs. (2)r–(:)r. 2. Jaime Goodrich, “Nuns and Community-­Centered Writing: The Benedictine Rule and Brussels Statutes,” Huntington Library Quarterly 77, no. 3 (2014): 287–303. 3. Jaime Goodrich, “Authority, Gender, and Monastic Piety: Controversies at the English Benedictine Convent in Brussels, 1620–1623,” British Catholic History 33, no. 1 (2016): 91–114. 4. Hilary Hinds, “Prophecy and Religious Polemic,” in The Cambridge Companion to Early Modern Women’s Writing, ed. Laura Lunger Knoppers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 235–46. 5. Carme Font, Women’s Prophetic Writings in Seventeenth-­Century Britain (New York: Routledge, 2017); Hilary Hinds, ed., Anna Trapnel’s Report and Plea; or, A Narrative of Her Journey from London into Cornwall (Toronto: Iter, 2016); David Loewenstein, “Scriptural Exegesis, Female Prophecy, and Radical Politics in Mary Cary,” Studies in English Literature 46, no. 1 (2006): 133–53; Teresa Feroli, Political Speaking Justified: Women Prophets and the English Revolution (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2006); Esther S. Cope, ed., Prophetic Writings of Lady Eleanor Davies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). 6. Hinds, “Prophecy and Religious Polemic,” 238. 7. The polemical miscellanies of Barbara Constable offer a counterexample to this larger trend. For more on Constable, see Genelle Gertz, “Barbara Constable’s Advice for Confessors and the Tradition of Medieval Holy Women,” in The English Convents in Exile, 1600–1800: Communities, Culture, and Identity, ed. Caroline Bowden and James E. Kelly (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2013), 123–38; Jenna Lay, “An English Nun’s Authority: Early Modern Spiritual Controversy and the Manuscripts of Barbara Constable,” in Gender, Catholicism, and Spirituality, ed. Laurence Lux-­Sterritt and Carmen Mangion (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 99–114; Heather Wolfe, “Dame Barbara Constable: Catholic

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Antiquarian, Advisor, and Closet Missionary,” in Catholic Culture in Early Modern England, ed. Ronald Corthell et al. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007), 158–88. 8. Sacred Congregation for Religious and for Secular Institutes, Religious and Human Promotion; and The Contemplative Dimension of Religious Life (Boston: Daughters of St. Paul, 1980), no. 24, emphasis in the original. Also see Mark Barrett et al., To Prefer Nothing to Christ: The Monastic Mission of the English Benedictine Congregation (London: Catholic Truth Society, 2015), 63. 9. Francis, Letter to All Consecrated People (London: Catholic Truth Society, 2014), 10. 10. The Second Booke of the Dialogues of S. Gregorie the Greate (Douai, 1638), 6–7. 11. Pietro da Lucca, A Dialogue of Dying Wel, trans. Richard Verstegan (Antwerp, 1603), sig. A3r. 12. Barrett et al., To Prefer Nothing, 59. 13. Martin Buber, “Community,” trans. Asher D. Biemann, in Buber, The Martin Buber Reader: Essential Writings, ed. Asher D. Biemann (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 251. 14. Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, Fraternal Life in Community (Boston: Pauline Books & Media, 1994), 50. 15. Martin Buber, “How Can Community Happen?” trans. Asher D. Biemann, in The Martin Buber Reader, 256. 16. Martin Buber, “What Is Common to All,” trans. Maurice Friedman, in Buber, The Knowledge of Man: Selected Essays, ed. Maurice Friedman (Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 1998), 96–97. 17. Paul Mendes-­Flohr, From Mysticism to Dialogue: Martin Buber’s Transformation of German Social Thought (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1989), 122. 18. Martin Buber, Between Man and Man, trans. Ronald Gregor Smith (Mansfield Centre, CT: Martino Publishing, 2014), 176. 19. Buber, Between Man and Man, 176, emphasis in the original. 20. Buber, “Community,” 251. 21. Francis, “Address of Pope Francis to Participants in the General Chapter of the Salesian Society of Saint John Bosco . . . Monday, 31 March 2014,” emphasis in the original, https://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en.html (accessed June 23, 2020). 22. Buber, “How Can Community Happen?” 255. 23. Buber, Between Man and Man, 31, emphasis in the original. 24. Nancy Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy,” Social Text 25–26 (1990): 67, emphasis in the original. 25. Michael Warner, Publics and Counterpublics (New York: Zone Books, 2005), 119. 26. Peter Lake and Steve Pincus, “Rethinking the Public Sphere in Early Modern England,” Journal of British Studies 45, no. 2 (2006): 274. 27. A. F. Allison and D. M. Rogers, The Contemporary Printed Literature of the English Counter-­Reformation between 1558 and 1640, 2 vols. (Aldershot, UK: Scolar Press, 1989–94). 28. Warner, Publics and Counterpublics, 90. 29. Warner, Publics and Counterpublics, 91. 30. Jaime Goodrich, Faithful Translators: Authorship, Gender, and Religion in Early Modern England (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2014), 154–67. 31. Goodrich, Faithful Translators, 167–82. 32. Isabella Berinzaga and Achille Gagliardi, An Abridgment of Christian Perfection, trans. Mary Percy (St. Omer, 1612), sig. *3r.



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33. Berinzaga and Gagliardi, Abridgment, sigs. *3v–*4r. 34. François de Sales, Delicious Entertainments of the Soul, trans. Potentiana Deacon (Douai, 1632), sig. ã2v. 35. De Sales, Delicious Entertainments, sig. ã3r. 36. For more on synecdochic authority and these translations, see Goodrich, Faithful Translators, 145–83. 37. Benedict, Rule, sig. (2)r. 38. Benedict, Rule, sig. (:)v. 39. For accounts of this controversy, see Liam Peter Temple, Mysticism in Early Modern England (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2019), 42–43; Claire Walker, “Spiritual Property: The English Benedictine Nuns of Cambrai and the Dispute over the Baker Manuscripts,” in Women, Property, and the Letters of the Law in Early Modern England, ed. Nancy E. Wright, Margaret W. Ferguson, and A. R. Buck (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), 237–55; In a Great Tradition: Tribute to Dame Laurentia McLachlan, Abbess of Stanbrook (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1956), 23–27. 40. Augustine Baker, Sancta Sophia, or Directions for the Prayer of Contemplation, 2 vols. (Douai, 1657), 2:313. 41. Baker, Sancta Sophia, 1:12. 42. On this earlier clash, see Temple, Mysticism in Early Modern England, 37–41; Goodrich, Faithful Translators, 167–82; and In a Great Tradition, 12–18. 43. Baker, Sancta Sophia, 2:319. 44. Letters from the Cambrai Benedictines, Rawlinson MS A 36, p. 85, Bodleian Library, Oxford. 45. Letters, 89, emphasis in the original. 46. Letters, 45. 47. Letters, 49. 48. Letters, 79. 49. Letters, 65. 50. On obedience and Cambrai, see Jenna Lay, Beyond the Cloister: Catholic Englishwomen and Early Modern Literary Culture (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016), 92–108. 51. Letters, 65. 52. In a Great Tradition, 23. 53. “Selections from Augustine Baker’s Vindication,” in Augustine Baker, The Life and Death of Dame Gertrude More, ed. Ben Wekking (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, 2002), 373. 54. Letters, 89. 55. Letters, 62. 56. Walker, “Spiritual Property,” 252. 57. Baker, Sancta Sophia, 1:7–8. 58. Baker, Sancta Sophia, 1:12. 59. For example, the English Short Title Catalogue identifies More as the author of this work, as does Thomas H. Clancy, English Catholic Books 1641–1700: A Bibliography (Aldershot, UK: Scolar Press, 1996), no. 685. 60. The Holy Practises of a Devine Lover (Paris, 1657), 34–35. 61. Holy Practises, sigs. L10r–v.

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62. Holy Practises, sig. L10v. 63. Holy Practises, 3. 64. Holy Practises, 4. 65. Holy Practices, sig. L11r. 66. Gertrude More, The Spiritual Exercises of the Most Vertuous and Religious D. Gertrude More (Paris, 1658), 3. 67. More, Spiritual Exercises, 4, emphasis in the original. 68. John Clark, ed., Francis Gascoigne, An Apologie for Myselfe about Fr. Baker’s Doctrine (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, 2011), 3. 69. More, Confessiones amantis, sig. ã2r, emphasis in the original, in More, Spiritual Exercises. 70. See, for example, Arthur F. Marotti, “Introductory Note,” in Gertrude More, The Early Modern Englishwoman: A Facsimile Library of Essential Works, series 2, Printed Writings 1641–1700, part 4, vol. 3 (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2009), xvii–xviii. 71. More, Spiritual Exercises, 7. See Arthur F. Marotti, “Saintly Idiocy and Contemplative Empowerment: The Example of Dame Gertrude More,” in Mysticism and Reform, 1400–1750, ed. Sara S. Poor and Nigel Smith (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2015), 151–76; Kitty Scoular Datta, “Women, Authority, and Mysticism: The Case of Dame Gertrude More (1606–33),” in Literature and Gender: Essays for Jasodhara Bagchi, ed. Supriya Chaudhuri and Sajni Mukherji (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 2002), 50–68. 72. More, Confessiones, 77, emphasis in the original. 73. More, Spiritual Exercises, 4. 74. Datta, “Women, Authority, and Mysticism,” 55. 75. More, Spiritual Exercises, 103, emphasis in the original. 76. More, Confessiones, 138, emphasis in the original. 77. More, Confessiones, 45, emphasis in the original. 78. More, Confessiones, 44–45. 79. More, Confessiones, 48, emphasis in the original. 80. More, Confessiones, 50, emphasis in the original. 81. More, Confessiones, 52, emphasis in the original. 82. For an edition of the sole surviving manuscript, see John Clark, ed., Confessiones amantis: The Spiritual Exercises of the Most Vertuous and Religious Dame Gertrude More (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, 2007). 83. More, Confessiones, 47. 84. Baker, Life and Death, 306. 85. More, Confessiones, 5, emphasis in the original. 86. More, Confessiones, 6, emphasis in the original. 87. More, Confessiones, 9, emphasis in the original. 88. More, Confessiones, 243, emphasis in the original. 89. More, Spiritual Exercises, 25, emphasis in the original. 90. More, Confessiones, 37–38, emphasis in the original. 91. More, Spiritual Exercises, 47, emphasis in the original. 92. More, Confessiones, 183, emphasis in the original. 93. More, Confessiones, 54, emphasis in the original. 94. More, Confessiones, 19, emphasis in the original. 95. More, Spiritual Exercises, 72–73, emphasis in the original.



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96. On the Lisbon convent and its polemic, see Lay, Beyond the Cloister, 57–88. 97. Lay, Beyond the Cloister, 60. 98. Lay, Beyond the Cloister, 81. 99. Statutes Compyled for the Better Observation of the Holy Rule of . . . S. Benedict (Ghent, 1632), §1.9.5. 100. Mary Percy to Jacobus Boonen, 22 September 1629, Engelse Benedictinessen /12.2, Archdiocesan Archives of Mechelen-­Brussels, Mechelen. 101. Amatus Coriache 15, p. 55, emphasis in the original, Archdiocesan Archives of Mechelen-­Brussels, Mechelen. 102. An Apologeticall Letter Written by the Lady Abbesse at Bruxells, State Papers, 16/153, fol. 115r, National Archives, Kew. 103. Apologeticall Letter, n.p. 104. Godfrey Anstruther, The Seminary Priests, vol. 2: Early Stuarts 1603–1659 (Great Wakering, UK: Mayhew-­McCrimmon Ltd., 1975), 332. 105. Thomas M. McCoog, English and Welsh Jesuits 1555–1650, Part 2: G–Z (Totton, UK: Hobbs for Catholic Record Society, 1995), 194. 106. It is difficult to ascertain the identity of this John Port, who is identified as a Jesuit by the pro-­Percy faction elsewhere: Innocency Justified and Insolency Repressed, Harley MS 4275, fol. 29v, British Library, London. As Percy notes, Port was an alias: “you call John Port others calling him by another name”: Apologeticall Letter, fol. 125v. 107. Apologeticall Letter, fol. 118v. 108. Apologeticall Letter, fol. 118v. 109. Apologeticall Letter, fol. 115v. 110. Apologeticall Letter, fol. 115v. 111. Apologeticall Letter, fol. 116v. 112. Apologeticall Letter, fol. 117r. 113. Apologeticall Letter, fols. 116v–17r. 114. Apologeticall Letter, fols. 118v, 126r. 115. Apologeticall Letter, fol. 129r. 116. Apologeticall Letter, fol. 118v. 117. Brussels Statutes, §1.1.12. 118. Apologeticall Letter, fols. 118v–19r. 119. Buber, “How Can Community Happen?” 255; Buber, Between Man and Man, 31. 120. Apologeticall Letter, fol. 119r. 121. Apologeticall Letter, fol. 124r. 122. Apologeticall Letter, fol. 119v. 123. Innocency Justified, fol. 20v. 124. Innocency Justified, fol. 1v. 125. Innocency Justified, fol. 1v. 126. Innocency Justified, fol. 1v. 127. Innocency Justified, fol. 55v. 128. Innocency Justified, fol. 4r. 129. Innocency Justified, fol. 1v. 130. Innocency Justified, fols. 4v–5r. 131. Innocency Justified, fol. 11r. 132. Innocency Justified, fol. 17r.

202

Notes to Afterword

133. Innocency Justified, fol. 2r. 134. Innocency Justified, fol. 2v. 135. Innocency Justified, fol. 3r. 136. Innocency Justified, fol. 25v. 137. Innocency Justified, fol. 46r. 138. Innocency Justified, fol. 51r. 139. Innocency Justified, fol. 51v. 140. Jaime Goodrich, “‘Low & plain stile’: Poetry and Piety in English Benedictine Convents, 1600–1800,” British Catholic History 34, no. 4 (2019): 599–618. 141. Innocency Justified, fol. 45r. 142. Innocency Justified, fol. 13v, emphasis in the original. 143. Innocency Justified, fol. 19v. 144. Innocency Justified, fol. 35r. 145. Augustine Baker, An Introduction or Preparative to a Treatise of the English Benedictine Mission, MS 26582, n.p., Downside Abbey, Somerset.

Afterword 1. Rod Dreher, The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-­Christian Nation (New York: Sentinel, 2017), 2. 2. Susan Felch, “The Backward Gaze: Editing Elizabeth Tyrwhit’s Prayerbook,” in Editing Early Modern Women, ed. Sarah C. E. Ross and Paul Salzman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 34. 3. See, for example, Theodora A. Jankowski, Pure Resistance: Queer Virginity in Early Modern English Drama (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000); Valerie Traub, The Renaissance of Lesbianism in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Katherine R. Kellett, “Performance, Performativity, and Identity in Margaret Cavendish’s The Convent of Pleasure,” Studies in English Literature 48, no. 2 (2008): 419–42; Melissa E. Sanchez, Erotic Subjects: The Sexuality of Politics in Early Modern English Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011); Paula Loscocco, “You Who in Your Selves Do Comprehend All: Notes towards a Study of Queer Union in Katherine Philips and John Milton,” Women’s Writing 23, no. 4 (2016): 527–48. 4. Sasha Roberts, “Women’s Literary Capital in Early Modern England: Formal Composition and Rhetorical Display in Manuscript and Print,” Women’s Writing 14, no. 2 (2007): 246–69; Sasha Roberts, “Feminist Criticism and the New Formalism: Early Modern Women and Literary Engagement,” in The Impact of Feminism in English Renaissance Studies, ed. Dympna Callaghan (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 67–92; Elizabeth Scott-­Baumann, Forms of Engagement: Women, Poetry, and Culture 1640–1680 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); Danielle Clarke and Marie-­Louise Coolahan, “Gender, Reception, and Form: Early Modern Women and the Making of Verse,” in The Work of Form: Poetics and Materiality in Early Modern Culture, ed. Ben Burton and Elizabeth Scott-­ Baumann (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 144–61; Jenna Lay, Beyond the Cloister: Catholic Englishwomen and Early Modern Literary Culture (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016). 5. Lara Dodds and Michelle M. Dowd, “Happy Accidents: Critical Belatedness, Feminist Formalism, and Early Modern Women’s Writing,” Criticism 62, no. 2 (2020): 169–93. 6. Dodds and Dowd, “Happy Accidents,” 175.

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Index

Page numbers in italics refer to tables. abbesses and prioresses, 30, 40–41. See also specific names Abridgment of Christian Perfection, An, 131–32 administrative texts: Benedictine Rule as, 26; and Buberian model, 54–55; chapter speeches, 24–25, 40–53; and communal formation, 54; and communal orientation toward God, 43–44; function of, 25; and Gemeinschaft, 25–30; plural authorship of, 23–24, 30, 182n2; Seremonys and Customs, 23–24; statutes and constitutions, 24, 29–40 Allison, A. F., 130 Anderson, Benedict, 89, 91–92 Anne, Anselma (Elizabeth), 66, 71 Apologeticall Letter Written by the Lady Abbesse at Bruxells to the Catholiks of England 18 December 1629, 148–53 Appleby, Maria (Mary), 63, 103–4 Arden, Mary Magdalen (Magdalen), 51, 52–53 audiences: death notices as tailored to, 110–11, 113; of polemical texts, 126; public opinion, affected by controversial writing, 131–33. See also counterpublic Augustine, Saint, 104 authorship, plural: of administrative texts, 30, 182n2; of chapter speeches, 51–53; of circular bills, 107; of death notices, 107–8; of statutes and constitutions, 35–36 Baker, Augustine (David): and Brussels Statutes, 36; and Cambrai convent,

10; Constable’s translation of Introduction or Preparative to a Treatise of the English Benedictine Mission, 158–59; controversial texts in defense of, 133–46; controversy over writings of, 134–46; as Gascoigne’s spiritual advisor, 15, 16–17; influence of, on Cambrai and Paris convent writings, 71–72, 75; influence of, on convent writing, 67 Barlow, Rudesind (William), 17, 36, 134, 136–37, 158 Batt, Anthony (William), 65 Benedictine convents: Buberian analysis of, 2, 14; and Gemeinschaft, 28; history of, 10; otherness of, 18; public role of, 126–27. See also religious communities; and specific convents Benedictine convent writings: categories of, 12–13, 18–19; and daily routines, 11–12; otherness of, 15; plural authorship of, 23–24; preservation of, 10–11. See also specific genres and texts Benedictine Rule: Grey’s edition of, 124– 25, 131–33; on interpersonal relations, 34–35; on monastic life, 8; overview of, 26; on shared worship as primary, 59; and statutes and constitutions, 31–32 Berington, Anne Xaveria (Anne), 111–12 Berkeley, Joanna (Joanne), 127 Bernard, Saint, 65 Bond, Mary Clare Joseph of Jesus (Mary), 12, 56–57, 94

216 Index Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, 7 Boonen, Jacobus, 147, 157 Bowden, Caroline, 2, 95 Brent, Christina, 45, 47, 48, 49, 94 Brent, Elizabeth, 63 Briefe and Sincere Relation of the Beginnings, Grounds, and Issue of the Late Controversy betwixt the Lady Mary Percy Abbesse and her Religious, 153–57 Browne, Ruperta (Margaret), 99 Brussels Benedictine convent: departure of, for England, 11, 121–22; division within, 125, 147–58; and failure of WeYou relationship, 147; Great Statutes, 183n26; polemical texts of, 146–58; rivalry with Ghent, 131 Brussels Statutes: as basis for other convents’ statutes, 36; and Brussels convent divisions, 151–52; death notices, 95, 109; Grey’s edition of, 131; as guidance to nuns, 33–35, 37, 41; material analysis of, 39–40; as record of monastic routines, 29–32 Buber, Martin: on collective identity, 114–15; on communal orientation toward God, 2; on community versus collectivity, 6–7, 129; on Divine encounter as beyond language, 81; on fleeting nature of I-You encounters, 73–74; on God-centered community, 91; on God revealed in everyday life, 100; on God’s call, 98–99; on prayer, 59–60; on revelation, 60–61; on “spirit of turning,” 127–28, 159; Tönnies’s influence on, 27, 183n18. See also I-You relationship Buberian model: and administrative texts, 54–55; and communal orientation toward God, 43, 83–84; and Eucharistic encounter with Divine, 68–70; and everyday life, 26–27; as framework for current study, 2, 14; and Gascoigne on seeking God, 15–18; God as encountered through others, 8, 46–47; “It-world,” 101–2; and prayer, 59–60, 71–72; and ritual, 60–61; We-You

relationship, 114–15, 122–23. See also I-You relationship Butler, Deirdre, 9 Cambrai Benedictine convent: Baker’s influence on writings, 71–72, 73; and chapter speeches, 45, 47–48, 49; and controversial texts defending Baker, 133–44; Deacon as representative of, 132–33; and death notices, 99, 102, 106–7; departure of, for England, 11; founding of, 10; meditations by nuns of, 75–80, 84–86; and miscellanies, 66, 71; and Paris convent, 139–40 Cambrai Constitutions: compared to other statutes and constitutions, 36– 38; as guidance to nuns, 31, 32, 33–34; material analysis of, 38–39; as means of vigilance, 42; as record of monastic routines, 29 Cary, Clementia (Anne), 36, 65, 117–18 Cary, Elizabeth, 87–89 Cary, Magdalena (Lucy), 66, 87–88 Caryll, Eugenia (Elizabeth), 39 Caryll, Justina (Catherine), 39 Caryll, Mary Teresa (Mary), 30, 39 Chaddock, Margaret, 111 Chambers, Robert, 35 Champney, Anthony, 125, 147, 148, 150, 152, 155 chapter meetings, 41 chapter speeches: bibliographical analysis of, 48–53; and communal orientation toward God, 43; on death, 43; defined, 24–25, 30; Divine Office in, 47–48, 50–51; extant, 42; “good zeal” in, 46–47; intertextuality of, 49–50; overview of, 41–43; plural authorship of, 51–53; preservation of, 49; as repeated, 49–51; silence in, 45–46; on St. Benedict’s feast day, 51–53 circular bills: as death notice, 96; imagined communities of, 109–13; material analysis of, 106–7; plural authorship of, 107; Pontoise convent, 108; templates for, 111–13. See also death notices

Index 217 Clavering, Mary Ann (Anne Barbara), 24 commonplace books. See miscellanies communal identity: Buber on, 114–15; and death notices, 95, 97, 98; historical texts’ role in creating, 90, 113–14; Pope Francis on, 113; and statutes and constitutions, 32 communities, imagined. See imagined communities community, versus collectivity, 6–7, 129. See also religious communities Constable, Barbara, 49, 75–80, 158–59 Conyers, Augustine, 134 Conyers, Catherine (Elizabeth), 105 Cook, Elizabeth of the Blessed Lady (Elizabeth), 94, 97, 107 Cook, Teresa of the Infant Jesus (Teresa), 94, 97, 107–8, 118 counterpublic: attempts to shape opinion of Baker, 133–46; awareness of Brussels convent divisions, 150–51, 153–55; and Cambrai convent’s damaged reputation, 137; defined, 129–30; English Catholics, 130; and failure of We-You relationship, 160; as imagined community, 125–26; polemical texts as written for, 130–31, 159–60; and Spiritual Exercises (More), 145–46. See also audiences; public opinion Cressy, Serenus (Hugh), 138; Sancta Sophia or Directions for the Prayer of Contemplation, 133–34 Crowther, Anselm (Arthur), 134–35 Culcheth, Mary Bede (Anne), 67, 68, 69–70, 73

identity, 95, 97, 98; extant, 97; imagined communities of, 95, 97–98, 104–5, 107–11; The Life of the Lady Falkland (Cary), 87–89; material analysis of, 105–13; plural authorship of, 107–8; preservation of, 105–6; tailored to specific audiences, 110–11, 113; templates for, 111–13; and vocation, 98–105. See also circular bills; death chapters; obituaries De Certeau, Michel, 74 De la Fosse, Louis, 138, 140 Delicious Entertainments of the Soul, 132 dialogic nature: of Eucharist, 70–72; of I-You relationship, 76, 77–78, 85–86; of meditations, 76–79; of polemical texts, 130; of religious vocation, 90–91 Digby, Magdalen (Elizabeth), 106 Digby, Mary, 106 Divine Office: in administrative texts, 33, 49–51; Constable on, 77; as essential focus of convent life, 44, 47–48; More on, 76–77, 78 Dodds, Lara, 165 Dolan, Frances, 87 Dowd, Michelle M., 165 Dreher, Rod, 162 Dunkirk Benedictine convent: and Benedictine Rule, 39–40; and death notices, 109–10; and Eucharist as transactional, 72–73; extant manuscripts, 10; Ignatian influence on, 10; influence of Ignatius on writings, 70–71, 72; and miscellanies, 64, 66–68, 70–71, 72–73, 74; printed texts, 30

Dabridgecourt, Elizabeth, 23–24, 107, 111–12, 182n2 Dalley, Mary Benedict (Mary), 17, 65 Darrell, Mary Gertrude (Gertrude), 64 Datta, Kitty Scoular, 141 Deacon, Potentiana (Elizabeth), 131–33 death, 37–38, 43 death chapters, 96–97 death notices: categories of, 96–97; circulation of, 109–10; and communal

early modern studies, feminist philosophical perspective, 162–65 Eccles, Mary Philippa (Anne), 11, 121 editorial empathy, 163 enclosure, 33 Englefield, Mary Winifred (Winifred), 67 Eucharist: access to God through, 62, 68– 70, 80; as dialogic versus passive encounter, 70–72; and I-You relationship, 68–70; in Knatchbull’s meditations,

218 Index 82–83; in miscellanies, 67–72; as transactional, 72–73 everyday life: and Benedictine convent writings, 11–12; and Buberian framework, 26–27; God revealed in, 100 Ezell, Margaret, 3 Felch, Susan, 163 feminist formalism, 165 feminist perspective, 21–22 feminist philosophy, 162–65 Flanders convents, 11 Forster, Christina (Anne), 110 Francis, Pope: on communal identity, 113; on divisions in religious communities, 129; on Eucharist, 62; on monastic institutions, 7; on public role of religious communities, 127; on seeking God, 1 Fraser, Nancy, 129–30 Fursdon, Cuthbert (John), 89 Fussner, F. Smith, 115 Gardiner, Teresa (Jane), 100–101 Gascoigne, Catherine: defense of her prayer, 1, 15–18; on incomprehensibility of God, 1; and Introduction or Preparative to a Treatise of the English Benedictine Missioni (Baker), 158–59; and Sancta Sophia controversy, 134–35, 137–38 Gascoigne, Francis, 140–44 Gascoigne, Justina (Catherine): on administrative texts, 44; chapter speeches of, 42, 43, 49–51; on Divine Office, 47–48; on love of neighbor, 46–47; on providence, 103; on silence, 45 Gascoigne, Margaret (Margaretta), 29, 84 Gawen, Mary Francis (Frances), 66 Gemeinschaft: and administrative texts, 25–30; and Benedictine convents, 28; and Brussels convent divisions, 151–52; and Buberian framework, 27; defined, 19; types of, 27–28 German, Aloysia, 94 Gertrude of Helfta, 69, 72, 82 Ghent Benedictine convent: and Benedictine Rule, 124–25; and chapter

speeches, 43–47, 51–53; and death notices, 92–94, 96–97, 98, 99, 101–3, 104–6, 108–10; departure of, for England, 11; founding of, 125; Grey as representative of, 133; and historical writings, 94, 115–16, 117; Ignatian influence on, 10; meditations by nuns of, 80–84; obituaries, 108; rivalry with Brussels, 125, 131 God: access to, through Eucharist, 68–70, 80; access to, through liturgical rites, 57, 59, 83, 84–86; as center of monastic life, 7–8, 18; encounters with, as mediated through others, 8, 46–47; Francis on seeking, 1; Gascoigne on seeking, 15–18; histories as recorded encounters with, 115–16; Levinas on accessing, 5–6; as revealed in everyday life, 100 “good zeal,” 44, 46–47 Gregory the Great, 78–79, 121, 127 Grey, Alexia (Margaret), 99–100, 124–25, 131–33 Hall, Cecilia, 106 Hallett, Nicky, 2, 34 Hanne, Gertrude (Anne), 100 Hardwike, Martha, 109 Higginson, Scholastica (Helen), 102 Hinds, Hilary, 126 historical texts: as creating collective identity, 90, 113–14; foundation narratives, 117; imagined communities’ role in, 93–95; material analysis of, 120–21; and providentialism, 113–22; as record of encounters with God, 115–16; and We-You relationship, 115–20, 122–23 historicism, 3–4, 21 Hodson, Gertrude (Elizabeth), 108 Holy Practises of a Devine Lover or the Sainctly Ideots Devotions, 133, 138–39, 140 Hovius, Mathias, 32, 35 Hugginson, Mary Magdalen (Mary), 100 Hull, Francis, 17, 134, 136 Ignatian Spiritual Exercises, 64–65, 70 imagined communities: categories of, 92;

Index 219 and counterpublics, 160; and death notices, 95, 97–98, 104–5, 107–11; role of, in Benedictine texts, 93–95; and Spiritual Exercises (More), 145; theory of, 89, 91–92 imagined community, English Catholic counterpublic as, 125–26 “in-between” orientation, 14–15 Innocency Justified and Insolency Repressed or a Round yet Modest Answere, to an Immodest and Slaunderous Libell, 153–58 interpersonal relations: “good zeal,” 44, 46–47; of nuns, 34–35; role of, in Buberian model, 6 intertextuality: of chapter speeches, 49–50; in Gascoigne’s prayer, 16, 17; of historical texts, 120; of meditations by More and Constable, 76, 79 Introduction or Preparative to a Treatise of the English Benedictine Missioni (Baker), 158–59 “It-world,” 101–2 I-You relationship: and administrative texts, 54–55; and community as religious state, 7; dialogic nature of, 76, 77–78, 85–86; and Eucharist, 62; and Eucharistic encounter with Divine, 68–70; and female experience, 9; fleeting nature of, 73–74; as framework for current study, 2; and Gascoigne on seeking God, 15–18; and meditations, 73–74, 75; and prayer, 59–60; of religious vocation, 90–91; social relations as key to, 6. See also Buber, Martin; Buberian model Jackson, Ken, 3, 4, 18, 178n12 Johnson, Teresa Joseph of the Holy Ghost (Mary Ann), 119, 120 Jones, John (Leander à Sancto Martino). See Sancto Martino, Leander à Kelly, James, 2 Kempis, Thomas à, 17, 142 Knatchbull, Lucy (Elizabeth), 80–84, 94, 105–6

Knatchbull, Margaret, 63 Knatchbull, Mary, 94, 115–17, 119–20 Knatchbull, Paula (Margaret), 109 Lahav, Hagar, 9 Lay, Jenna, 2, 146 Levinas, Emmanuel, 3, 5–6 Life of Lady Lucy Knatchbull (Matthew), 105–6 Life of the Lady Falkland, The (Cary), 87–89 life writing, 93–94 Lisbon Bridgettines, 146–47 literary periodization, 20–21 liturgical rites: access to God through, 57, 59, 62, 83; and communal orientation toward God, 83–85; Macmurray on, 61–62. See also Divine Office; Eucharist Lucy, Magdalen (Mary), 43–44, 45, 47, 51, 102 Lupton, Julia Reinhard, 4, 5, 18, 22 Lux-Sterritt, Laurence, 2, 58 Macclesfield, Mary Placida (Mary), 74 Macmurray, John, 61–62 Marcel, Gabriel, 7 Marotti, Arthur F., 3, 4, 18 Martins, Teresa (Maria Joanna), 102 Matlock, Teresa (Catherine), 102–3 Matthew, Tobie, 80–81, 94, 105–6 McQuade, Paula, 58 meditations: bibliographical analysis of, 74–75; by Bond, 56–57; by Cambrai nuns, 75–80; and communal rituals, 82–83; as dialogic, 76–79; by Gascoigne, 84–85; by Ghent nuns, 80–84; intertextuality of, 76, 79; and I-You relationship, 73–74, 75; overview of, 73–74. See also spiritual texts Mendes-Flohr, Paul, 27, 128 Messenger, Placida (Mary), 10 Meynell, Mary, 74 Minshall, Mary, 93 miscellanies: active versus passive meditations in, 70–72; Baker’s influence on, 71–72, 73; bibliographical analysis of, 66–67; circulation of, 66–67; Eucharist in, 67–72; Ignatius’s influence on, 70–71, 72, 73; overview of, 65–66

220 Index More, Bridget, 36, 108 More, Gertrude (Helen), 16, 75–79; Spiritual Exercises of the Most Vertuous and Religious D. Gertrude More, 133, 140–46 Mullins, Angela (Issett), 99 Narveson, Kate, 58 Nelson, Bennet (William), 94 Neville, Anne (Mary), 36, 53, 94, 98–99, 107–10, 116, 118–19 New Historicism, 3 Noddings, Nel, 9 obituaries: as death notice, 96; Ghent convent, 108; material analysis of, 106. See also death notices Orsi, Robert, 14–15, 18, 40 otherness: of cloister, 18; Levinas on, 3, 5–6; of monastic texts, 15; and New Historicism, 3 Paris Benedictine convent, 10–11; Baker’s influence on writings, 71–72, 73; and Cambrai convent, 139–40; and chapter speeches, 41, 43–48, 50–51; and controversial texts defending Baker, 138–46; and death notices, 100, 102, 103–4, 105, 107–8; extant manuscripts, 11; founding of, 139; and historical writings, 117–21; history of, 94–95; and miscellanies, 66–67, 69, 71–72 Paris Constitutions: based on Brussels Statutes, 31, 36; on chapter meetings, 41; on chapter speeches, 42; compared to other statutes and constitutions, 36–38; on death notices, 105–6; on love of neighbor, 35; and preservation of documents, 30; as record of monastic routines, 29; regulation of nuns’ daily experiences, 33–34 Parkes, Mary Agnes (Elizabeth), 75 Patterson, Annabel, 87 Pearce, Mary Xaveria (Xaveria), 39 Pease, Benedicta, 107 Percy, Mary: Apologeticall Letter Written by the Lady Abbesse at Bruxells to the

Catholiks of England 18 December 1629, 148–53; controversial writings, 131–32; Nancy Fraser, 125; translation of An Abridgment of Christian Perfection, 131–32 Phillips, Mary Baptist (Elizabeth), 44, 47, 51, 52, 110 polemical texts: Apologeticall Letter Written by the Lady Abbesse at Bruxells to the Catholiks of England 18 December 1629, 148–53; in Baker’s defense, 133–46; Briefe and Sincere Relation of the Beginnings, Grounds, and Issue of the Late Controversy betwixt the Lady Mary Percy Abbesse and her Religious, 153–57; broad audience of, 126; and Brussels convent divisions, 146–58; counterpublic as audience for, 130–31; of early modern women, 125–26; Holy Practises of a Devine Lover or the Sainctly Ideots Devotions, 133, 138–39; Innocency Justified and Insolency Repressed or a Round yet Modest Answere, to an Immodest and Slaunderous Libell, 153–58; Lisbon Bridgettines, 146–47; material analysis of, 157–58; Spiritual Exercises of the Most Vertuous and Religious D. Gertrude More, 133, 140–46; types of, 130–31 Pontoise Benedictine convent: and death notices, 99, 100, 107, 108–9, 110–13; establishment, 10; and historical writings, 94, 116, 118 Port, John, 149, 152, 201n106 Poulton, Eugenia (Jane), 106, 124, 132 poverty, 33 prayer, 59–60, 71–72 presentism, 3–5, 21 Price, Cecily (Jane), 101, 105 Prince, 1 prioresses. See abbesses and prioresses Pritchard, Leander à St. Augustine, 137 providence: as evidence of divine favor, 103–4, 117–22; and The Life of the Lady Falkland (Cary), 89; and vocation, 116 providentialism, and historical texts, 113–22 Prujean, Mary Magdalen (Anne), 10

Index 221 public opinion: attempts to shape, through texts, 131–33; Brussels convent’s attempts to shape, 148–50, 153– 55; and Cambrai convent’s damaged reputation, 137; and texts in Baker’s defense, 133–46 reflection, 61 relationships. See interpersonal relations religious communities: divisions within, 128–29; hierarchical structure of, 153, 156–57; as oriented toward God, 7–8, 18; We-You relationship in, 128. See also Benedictine convents revelation, 60–61 Reyner, Laurence (Clement), 137 Rhodes, J. T., 11 Robinson, Paul, 137 Rogers, D. M., 130 Roper, Mary, 63–64, 104, 109 Rosenzweig, Franz, 60, 61 Rule of St. Benedict. See Benedictine Rule Rumsey, Mary Justina, 109 Salvin, Peter, 36 Sancta Sophia or Directions for the Prayer of Contemplation, 133–39 Sancto Martino, Leander à, 17, 36, 134 Savage, Constantia (Katherina), 67, 68, 69, 70, 73 Selby, Mary Placida, 109 Seremonys and Customs, 23–24 Shakespeare, William, 162 Sheldon, Catherine, 70, 71, 72, 74, 102 Sheldon, Mary Benedict (Anne), 74 Sherman, John, 94 silence, 34, 44–45 social relations. See interpersonal relations Solloman, Anne, 111 Southcote, Mary, 92–93 Spiritual Exercises of the Most Vertuous and Religious D. Gertrude More, 133, 140–46 spiritual texts: on convent doors, 64; function of, 63; and Ignatian Spiritual Exercises, 64–65; Knatchbull on, 63;

meditations, 56–57, 73–84; miscellanies, 65–73. See also meditations; miscellanies Stanbrook Abbey, 11, 56 Stapleton, Benedict (Gregory), 137 statutes and constitutions: and Benedictine Rule, 31–32; bibliographical analysis of, 35–38; and communal identity formation, 32; comparison of, 37; defined, 24; and Divine Office, 33; and enclosure, 33; localized identities reflected in, 36–38; material analysis of, 38–40; overview of, 29–30; plural authorship of, 35–36; and poverty, 33; and silence, 34. See also specific texts Swales, Bridget, 103–4, 111 Temple, Agnes of the Infant Jesus (Agnes), 94, 97, 107 Thurloe, John, 134 Tönnies, Ferdinand, 24, 27–28, 183n18 To Prefer Nothing to Christ (2015), 8 Tragedy of Mariam (Cary), 87 transubstantiation, 67, 68, 69 Trevillian, Ursula, 100 Truran, Margaret, 36 “turn to religion,” 3–5, 6, 18, 21 Van Hyning, Victoria, 2 Vaughan, Clare, 64–65, 99 Vavasour, Mary, 93, 148 Verstegan, Richard, 127 victimhood trope, 56 Vincent, William, 81 vocation: and death notices, 98–105; as dialog between God and individual, 90–91; “It-world” as path to, 101–2; obstacles to, 102; and providence, 116; and supernatural intercessors, 100–101 Wainwright, Richard, 149 Waldegrave, Hieronima, 108 Waldegrave, William, 135, 140, 149 Walker, Claire, 2, 137 Walsham, Alexandra, 116 Ward, Mary Laurentia, 97

222 Index Warner, Michael, 125, 130, 131 Warren, Nancy Bradley, 2, 190n72 Weardon, Anna (Jane), 93–94 Wells, Maria Anna Joseph (Anne Joseph), 109 We-You relationship: failure of, 128–29, 147, 152–55, 159–60; and historical texts, 115–20, 122–23; of religious communities, 128; and Spiritual Exercises (More), 144–46 Whetenhall, James, 74

White, Claude (William), 134–37, 158 Wigmore, Catherine (Elizabeth), 110 Willis, Thomas, 94 Wilson, Barbara, 93 Wintour, Robert, 148 Wynne-Davies, Marion, 87 Wytham, Maura of St. Mary Magdalen (Maura), 65 Yaxley, Viviana (Mary), 106