Female Religous Experience

Female Religious Experience and Society in Thirteenth-Century Italy

Luigi Pellegrini

Though this essay focuses on the changes in female religious life in Italy, the implication of those changes in Rome would have wide-spread effects and impact the lives of nuns in the entire Christian world. The prioress and nuns of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales lead lives very different from those of modern day religious and this article explores some of the historical and political context of the establishment of female religious orders. According to Pellegrini, prior to the thirteenth century, “there is very little evidence of autonomous female communities that were capable of making their own religious choices, independent of male monastic communities.” Autonomous female monasteries arose at a time in which the cults of female saints were gaining wide-spread popularity. Also at this time, many female orders began the practice of radical poverty, which allowed women to enter monasteries without a substantial dowry or other counter-gift of economic value. This extended the choice of taking holy orders to women of lower classes. This change led to outrage on the parts of some older, prestigious families and often led to social stratification within the monasteries themselves, with lower-class women in the role of little more than servants. Still, they were able to make the choice to avoid marriage and make a religious commitment.

From:

Farmer, Sharon, and Barbara H. Rosenwein, ed. Monks and Nuns, Outcasts and Saints. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000.