ABSTRACT
Monastic rules defined monastic space and created behavioural expectations for those who lived within such spaces. The varying configurations of nunnery space and of behaviour within its enclosure will be examined in the following chapters. For the present the purpose is simply to set down the history of the rules which were written for women’s religious communities during the early Middle Ages and which defined their spatial contexts and the ways in which the sisters conducted their lives. Throughout the current chapter the rules will be located within other historical and cultural processes and effects of these interrelationships will be assessed. The discussion will also consider authorship of the rules and the ways in which this acted upon understandings of nunnery space and associated behavioural expectations. Interwoven throughout will be a mindfulness of the gendered nature of nunnery rules.
