Squabbling Siblings: Gender and Monastic Life in Late Anglo‐Saxon Winchester

Abstract

In the Benedictional of AEthelwold, one of the most lavish surviving books from later Anglo-Saxon England, the blessing for the dedication of a church is illustrated with a miniature of a bishop performing the blessing while a congregation watches (and presumably listens) ( Figure 1). 1 This illustration is only partly coloured, so that although the bishop (and his robes and book) have been painted, the rest of the picture remains a line-drawing. The congregation is divided into two levels, perhaps reflecting the main part of the church and an upper gallery. The dress of those in the lower level indicates that they are religious men, and some of them are tonsured; only the heads and necks of those in the upper level are visible, and here the men wear lay clothing.The upper group also includes one woman, almost invisible because of the lack of colour in this part of the image, and easily missed if the illustration is not examined carefully. In contrast to the clear division between lay and religious men in the image, and as with many other depictions of women in this period, it is very difficult to identify from her dress or appearance whether she herself is a consecrated woman, or part of the laity. 2 Her headdress is like that found on many representations of both lay and religious women in later Anglo-Saxon England, and in dress and demeanour she is very like the image of St AEthelthryth found earlier in the Benedictional. 3 The uncertainties, ambiguities and almost invisibility of the woman in this illustration are symptomatic of knowledge of women in the Anglo-Saxon period more generally: the scant information for female communities is a running theme in the history of monasticism. 4 It is also particularly interesting and striking in the context of this illustration. Although there were three monastic houses in Winchester, two male communities and one female, only scraps of information remain for Winchester's religious women, while there is a considerable quantity about their male counterparts. What is clear from the surviving sources is that in the tenth and eleventh centuries these communities engaged with each other and with the surrounding urban space, sometimes collaboratively and sometimes competitively, but in significant ways which had important implications for the identities of the communities and of Winchester as a city.In the later Anglo-Saxon period, the saints whose relics lay in Winchester were sought for help and cures by citizens and by pilgrims from further afield, and their relics were carefully guarded and controlled by the male and female communities whose houses occupied the south-eastern corner of the city. This article will explore