Parliamentary Links Day 2017

Albert, Helen

doi:10.1042/bio03904042

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Of the background of Abbess Fredeburga, who succeeded Ranló, nothing is known, and neither did she sign anything that we have in her own hand. 72 Before her appointment, however, in 961 another member of the comital family, proclaimed as such in her entry gift, had joined the nunnery, a girl called Enquília. 73 Her mother's title of countess derived from her marriage to Oliba, second son of Bishop Radulf of Urgell, son of Guifré the Hairy.…”

Section: The Origins Of the Women Of Sant Joanmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nuns, Signatures, and Literacy in Late-Carolingian Catalonia

Jarrett

2019

Traditio

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

It is somewhat rare to be able to analyze the membership of an early medieval women's religious community in any detail. Sant Joan de Ripoll, which operated from the late ninth century until 1017 at modern-day Sant Joan de les Abadesses in Catalonia, provides not just this opportunity but the even rarer chance to evaluate the nuns’ command of writing, by means of a single original charter of 949 that several of them signed autograph. This article argues that the signatures of these nuns indicate that they had in fact been taught to write before joining the nunnery. They are thus a source for female lay, rather than religious, literacy in this time and area. Consolidating this, the article provides a prosopography of the known nuns derived from the other charters of the nunnery's part-surviving archive, including tracing some of their careers beyond the 1017 dissolution of the house. This shows that the members of the comital family who had founded the house and provided several of its abbesses were not otherwise frequent among the nuns; rather, the nunnery recruited from the local notables in its neighborhoods, to whose interest in female literacy these signatures therefore testify. Such support could not prevent the closure of the house, however, and the article closes with a reflection on the agency available to the nuns in a political sphere dominated by male, secular interests.

show abstract

Section: The Origins Of the Women Of Sant Joanmentioning

confidence: 99%