ABSTRACT
Any discussion about women and their communities in medieval and early modern Europe has to consider the religious cloister. Theoretically, the monastery was a self-contained community of women who lived and died within the confines of their enclosure. All goods were held in common and all activities from eating to praying to decision-making were undertaken by the professed choir nuns. Outsiders were barred from interfering in the monastery’s affairs, and physically the community was distanced from the external world by walls, bars and grates. Yet, the convent was by no means isolated from the intersecting communities beyond its walls. Individual nuns came from various families, social backgrounds and regions. Although the monastic regimen, which was focussed on commonality, aimed to divorce nuns from former influences, the women rarely severed all ties with their formative communities. In any case, the convent was dependent economically and politically upon its members’ families and connections. It also had to do business with civic and clerical governing bodies, and with local trades-people, to exist in the wider world. Moreover, it was part of larger bodies – the Roman Catholic Church and England’s nonconformist Catholic population. Thus, the cloister comprised a small religious grouping within far broader confessional communities which entertained a range of spiritual and political ideals.
