Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index


  • Record Number: 8004
  • Author(s)/Creator(s): Berman , Constance H.
  • Contributor(s):
  • Title: Were There Twelfth-Century Cistercian Nuns?
  • Source URL: Church History (Full Text via JSTOR) 68, 4 (Dec. 1999): 824-864. Link Info Later published in Medieval Religion: New Approaches. Edited by Constance Hoffman Berman. Routledge, 2005. Pages 217-248. target = '_blank'>Church History (Full Text via JSTOR) 68, 4 (Dec. 1999): 824-864. Link Info Later published in Medieval Religion: New Approaches. Edited by Constance Hoffman Berman. Routledge, 2005. Pages 217-248.
  • Description:
  • Article Type: Journal Article
  • Subject (See Also): Cistercian Order Monasticism Monks Nuns Women in Religion
  • Award Note:
  • Geographic Area: General
  • Century: 12-13
  • Primary Evidence:
  • Illustrations:
  • Table:
  • Abstract: Cistercians have generally been thought to have only admitted women into their order in the late twelfth century under considerable outside pressure. This view has posited a twelfth-century Gold Age when abbots of the Order totally avoided contact with women. Only later did the flood-gates burst open and a great wave of women wishing to be Cistercians flood over the Order powerless to resist it. This paper reassesses narrative accounts, juridical arguments and charters evidence to show that such assertions of the absence of twelfth-century Cistercians nuns are incorrect--based on incorrect notions of how the early Cistercian Order developed and a biased reading of the evidence, including a double-standard of proof of Cistercian status, made much higher for women's houses than for men's. [Abstract submitted by the author to the Medieval Feminist Index.]
  • Related Resources:
  • Author's Affiliation: University of Iowa
  • Conference Info: - , -
  • Year of Publication: 1999.
  • Language: English
  • ISSN/ISBN: 00096407
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