Bodl. Lib.

Bodleian Library, Oxford

Danelaw documents

Documents illustrative of the social and economic history of the Danelaw, ed. F. M. Stenton, London 1920

EYC

Early Yorkshire charters, ed. W. Farrer and C. T. Clay (Yorkshire Archaeological Society Record Series e.s. i–xii, 1914–65)

Foundation of Walden

The book of the foundation of Walden monastery, ed. D. E. Greenway and L. Watkiss, Oxford 1999

LRS

Lincoln Record Society

Monasticon

W. Dugdale and R. Dodsworth, Monasticon anglicanum, ed. J. Caley, H. Ellis and B. Bandinel, London 1846

RS

Rolls Series

In her seminal study of 1899 Mary Bateson made explicit the link between the double monasteries of the Anglo-Saxon period and ‘the great orders that in later times developed this system of organization in full elaboration’, namely the orders of Sempringham and Fontevraud, both founded in the twelfth century.Footnote ¹ Since then, scholars of the Anglo-Saxon institution have continued to keep one eye on the developments of the twelfth century and to make reference to them when concluding their accounts.Footnote ² Yet studies that focus on twelfth-century houses of men and women are more inclined to play down the similarities between earlier and later communities, and to question the very concept of the ‘double house’. This paper draws on late twelfth- and early thirteenth-century sources to establish, firstly, whether contemporary writers did perceive such an institution as a ‘double house’, and secondly, whether such institutions were seen as a continuation of an earlier theme, or as something new, which departed both from the example of the past and from that of other contemporaneous houses of men and women.

For much of the twentieth century Bateson's terminology was widely accepted and widely employed. The definition of the double monastery as a community of men and women who enjoyed a common church, common services, a common rule, common leadership and common or contiguous living quarters remained influential.Footnote ³ However, this flexible definition of the double monastery also helped to determine the parameters of the study of nunneries. Double houses were, and continue to be, implicitly and explicitly excluded from studies of women religious, in spite of recognition of the similarities that they exhibited with nunneries.Footnote ⁴ This dichotomy was undermined by the work of Sharon Elkins and Sally Thompson, who demonstrated not only that English ‘double houses’ had much in common with English nunneries in terms of recruitment, patrons and wealth, but that many ‘nunneries’ had their origins in mixed communities that housed both men and women. The term ‘double house’ was seen both as unnecessarily divisive, encouraging the segregation of groups that ought to be studied side by side, as well as being insufficiently precise, masking a diversity of forms of organisation and grouping together houses which otherwise had little in common.Footnote ⁵ Most seriously, Elkins attacked the use of the term as anachronistic and dysfunctional, arguing that whilst the term ‘double monastery’ had found favour amongst twentieth-century historians, ‘it was not used by twelfth-century advocates of monasteries for both sexes’.Footnote ⁶

Elkins's rejection of the term ‘double house’ has exerted a substantial influence on subsequent studies of women religious in England and on the continent.Footnote ⁷ It is now employed within quotations marks, and dismissed as unwieldy, unhelpful or unrepresentative. Critics of the term point out that ‘technically’, all houses of women are necessarily double houses, requiring male chaplains to say mass.Footnote ⁸ Yet this is not quite the same thing as arguing, as some historians appear to, that all double houses are necessarily nunneries. Part of the problem is the way in which the term has been applied to so many different types of community, albeit ones which contain both men and women. A single, universal definition will always be hard to construct, and even harder to defend.Footnote ⁹ There has also been confusion between the concept of the double order, exemplified by the orders of Fontevraud and Sempringham, and the double house. Not all houses of a ‘double order’, containing groups of monks or canons, nuns and lay servants of both sexes, would themselves be ‘double’, nor were all ‘double houses’ affiliated to a ‘double order’.Footnote ¹⁰

In spite of this, the concept of the ‘double house’ can be a useful tool when applied to specific, well-defined circumstances. For example, Janet Burton has suggested that the term is useful as an indicator of mixed communities in which men played more formal roles, whilst Roberta Gilchrist uses the term to distinguish mixed houses according to their morphological and economic traits, a recognition of the fact that double houses and nunneries frequently display different characteristics.Footnote ¹¹ The aim of this paper is not to provide a universal definition of the double house, nor to challenge the important insights which have been derived from a more integrated approach to the study of mixed communities. None the less, it will argue that the term ‘double house’ is both appropriate and indeed essential to a discussion of a small group of mixed communities founded in twelfth-century England, as it denotes the existence of a separate category of houses which were perceived by contemporaries as novel and unusual.

The first source for the existence of this separate category, Gervase of Canterbury's Mappa mundi, is a suitably problematic source for a problematic term. This work, written in about 1200, contains a list of religious houses in England, Scotland and Wales classified not merely by the colour of the habit worn by the inhabitants, but also by gender, lifestyle (whether monastic or canonial) and, in some instances, affiliation (such as de Cluni).Footnote ¹² Gervase's list is often seen as flawed and inaccurate, and there are certainly errors of attribution, some of which may derive from inaccurate information.Footnote ¹³ For example, Gervase refers to the house of Shouldham, founded between 1193 and 1197, as a house of moniales albae, when it is known to have housed both canons and nuns from its inception.Footnote ¹⁴ However, other ‘errors’ may actually reveal interesting information about the way in which houses were perceived. In contrast with the evidence provided by Elkins and Thompson, which demonstrates that communities housing both men and women were quite common, Gervase describes only thirteen houses as containing canonici albi et moniales, in comparison with seventy-four houses containing moniales. There was clearly something distinctive about these thirteen houses, and it was not just that they housed men alongside women.

The emphasis on the presence of canons and nuns as a distinguishing feature of a small group of houses is found in other sources and there is evidence for the presence of canons at all thirteen houses. Nine of the thirteen houses denoted by Gervase as containing canons and nuns belonged to the order of Sempringham, founded by Gilbert of Sempringham in Lincolnshire in the 1130s.Footnote ¹⁵ Gilbert's own account of the foundation of his communities describes how he enclosed a group of seven women in the church of Sempringham, and added lay sisters and lay brothers to serve them. Finally, after an unsuccessful mission to Cîteaux, he added ‘canons, for the rule and care of these women and these men’.Footnote ¹⁶ Of the thirteen communities founded during his lifetime, ‘four were for canons living apart and nine for nuns in association with men to guide them and with lay brethren’.Footnote ¹⁷ Gilbert's Vita, written c. 1202, described the order that he had founded as ‘the chariot of Aminadab’, with two sides, one of men and one of women, carried on four wheels, ‘two of men, clerks and laymen, and two of women, educated and unlettered’, and drawn by two beasts, ‘the clerical and monastic disciplines’.Footnote ¹⁸

The presence of both canons and nuns at Sempringham also attracted the attention of outside observers, most of whom were content to describe the order in more prosaic terms. Walter Map referred to the community at Sempringham as consisting of ‘regular canons and nuns, with a wall between them’, whilst the indignant Walden chronicler referred to the new way of life instituted by Gilbert of Sempringham that mixed ‘canons with nuns, brothers with sisters’.Footnote ¹⁹

Of the other four houses described by Gervase as housing canons and nuns, namely Nun Cotham and Stixwold in Lincolnshire, and Hampole and Wykeham in Yorkshire, there is evidence to suggest that Gervase was correct in his categorisation. There are references to a master, canons and nuns in the charters of Stixwold c. 1160, and at Wykeham between 1160 and 1176·Footnote ²⁰ In keeping with the pattern of development at Sempringham, the earliest charters from Stixwold and Wykeham refer simply to the nuns, whilst later material refers first to the nuns and their master, and finally to nuns, canons and a master.Footnote ²¹ A similar pattern can be seen at Nun Cotham. The earliest charters refer to the nuns and their prioress, but between 1168 and 1177 a bull issued by Alexander iii granted Mathilda the prioress and her sisters the right to elect a suitable master ‘from amongst your community’ (‘de congregatione vestra’), and the statutes issued by Bishop Hugh of Lincoln refer to the classic arrangement of nuns, canons, lay brothers and lay sisters, under the supervision of a master.Footnote ²² The evidence for the final house, Hampole, is less clear, although a master of Hampole appears after 1166, and frater William appears as a witness to charters between 1188 and 1200.Footnote ²³

Although Elkins was correct in stating that there is plenty of evidence for lay brothers living and working alongside nuns, there is far less evidence for canons and nuns living within the same precinct. In addition to the thirteen houses described by Gervase as housing canons and nuns, she lists a further six houses (Greenfield, Legbourne, Swine, Marton, Stainfield and possibly Marrick) which may have housed canons or a prior or master.Footnote ²⁴ There is clear evidence for the existence of canons at only two of these houses, Legbourne (omitted by Gervase) and Swine, classified as a house of moniales nigrae. Footnote ²⁵ It is true that Marton had originally housed both canons and nuns, but well before 1200 the nuns had moved to the nearby house of Moxby, described separately by Gervase as Molesbi, a house of moniales nigrae.Footnote ²⁶ Although there is evidence for magistri at Greenfield and Stainfield, there is nothing to suggest that the fratres mentioned in their charters were canons, rather than lay brethren.Footnote ²⁷ Finally, Marrick had a master or prior, but there is little to suggest the presence of canons or even lay brothers.Footnote ²⁸ This suggests that, in contrast with Elkins, who confuses references to lay brethren or magistri and priors with references to canons, perhaps Gervase was being rather careful in his use of terminology. It could be argued that his phrase, ‘canonici albi et moniales’, is an early thirteenth-century term for a double house, used to describe a new institution for which no previous term existed.

Nevertheless, it is not correct to state that the term ‘double house’ was never used by twelfth-century authors. In the Gemma ecclesiastica, Gerald of Wales referred to the houses of Sempringham as ‘a kind of double monastery’ (‘monasteria duplicia’) and referred to the ‘bipartite’ nature of these houses, where canons and nuns lived together under the same roof, in the Speculum ecclesiae.Footnote ²⁹ What is interesting about Gerald's use of the terms ‘double’ or ‘bipartite’ is that they appear to be used exclusively in his works to refer to houses of Sempringham. He did not use such terms to refer either to the early houses of St Basil, described as nunneries served by a chaplain, or to contemporary houses of Arrouaise in Ireland, which were described as two monasteries on a single site.Footnote ³⁰ The term ‘monasteria duplicia’ was not a neologism, but it was certainly not in frequent use in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, either in Britain or on the continent.Footnote ³¹ The Libellus de diversis ordinibus contains no such term, referring instead to women ‘who sweetly take up Christ's yoke with holy men or under their guidance’.Footnote ³²

With the notable exception of Gerald, the emphasis in contemporary accounts was on the single, rather than the double nature of the houses of Sempringham. For critics such as the author of the Walden Chronicle, the aim was to emphasise that nuns and canons, brothers and sisters, were living together in the same house. The Speculum stultorum had the same objective, contrasting the two groups of sisters, the canons and lay brothers who lived in one house at the same time: ‘Canons and lay brothers together, and two types of sisters: One house contains all four.’Footnote ³³

The single nature of such houses was also emphasised by supporters of double houses, but for a different reason. Following a serious revolt amongst the lay brothers of the order of Sempringham, a papal enquiry investigated the claims of the brothers, one of which concerned improper relations between the sexes. The pope initially insisted on the enforcement of a greater degree of segregation between the sexes, which prompted a flood of letters of support for the order.Footnote ³⁴ The authors of these letters had to tread warily, on the one hand emphasising that strict measures were already in place to keep the men and women apart, whilst insisting that further segregation, and in particular the removal of the canons to separate houses, would be extremely harmful to the future of the order. It appears that terms such as ‘monasteria duplicia’ were rarely used in the twelfth century, not because they were seen as creating artificial differences between otherwise similar communities, but because the term did not convey the single nature of a distinct group of houses in a way that satisfied both their supporters and critics.

The problem of finding suitable terminology, a problem for twelfth- and thirteenth-century commentators as well as their modern counterparts, introduces a second theme, namely how far such ‘houses of canons and nuns’ were seen as something new, and how far they were seen as a development of an earlier, Anglo-Saxon institution. It has already been implied that search for a suitable descriptive term was indicative of the novelty of the institution. Earlier writers in England had made no use of terms such as monasteria duplicia, referring instead to groups of monastic men and women, or to monasteria which contained men and women. When condemning the local custom of the establishment of double houses, the Penitential of Archbishop Theodore simply stated that ‘it is not permissible for men to have monastic women, nor women, men’.Footnote ³⁵ Rudolph of Fulda referred to the house of Wimbourne as consisting of two separate but closely linked monasteries, ‘one for men, the other for women, both surrounded by strong and lofty walls’.Footnote ³⁶ Bede, perhaps the most influential source of depictions of Anglo-Saxon monasticism, referred consistently to houses of men, houses of women and houses of men and women as monasteria, his preferred term for a religious community.Footnote ³⁷

It has been noted that Bede rarely made explicit reference to the presence of men and women living together in the same community. Instead, a mixed community was usually introduced as a ‘house of nuns’, and the presence of men would be revealed in an incidental detail, such as a reference to the men's quarters, or to a male servant.Footnote ³⁸ Rather than indicating Bede's desire to suppress information about such communities in order to present a more orthodox picture of the English Church, as Hollis suggests, I would point towards Bede's use of terminology as indicative of the habitual presence of men in women's communities. That which is common or familiar does not necessarily attract comment, whilst that which is novel or unusual does. Similarly, twelfth-century houses which simply contained women and men, especially as lay brothers, and which were governed by women, did not attract comment. They fitted traditional perceptions of what a ‘nunnery’ should be. A ‘house of canons and nuns’ was something different.

It would appear that the only twelfth-century commentator to make any link between a ‘house of canons and nuns’ and an Anglo-Saxon mixed community was Ailred of Rievaulx, in his account of the miracle which occurred at the Gilbertine house of Watton in the mid-twelfth century.Footnote ³⁹ Even here it appears that Ailred was commenting on the revival of religious worship which had led to the revival of miracles, rather than the revival of a particular institution. For the most part, the emphasis amongst both supporters and critics of ‘houses of canons and nuns’ was on the novelty of the arrangements. The Walden chronicler, referring to patrons of the houses of Sempringham, attacked ‘those who are attracted by things that are vain or novel [vana novaque] and out of admiration for that order which had been lately introduced’.Footnote ⁴⁰ It also referred to the ‘new mode of religious life unheard of in the world’ (‘novus et seculis inauditus religionis exigit modus’) established by Gilbert, which brought together ‘canons with nuns, brothers with sisters’.Footnote ⁴¹ Although he was not the most objective observer, he was not alone in commenting on the novelty of Gilbert's order. Walter Map spoke of Sempringham in the context of other new orders, but singled out the ‘new fashion of religion’ (‘novum modo religionis cultum’) founded by Gilbert, consisting of ‘regular canons and nuns, with a wall between them’.Footnote ⁴² Such accounts emphasised the cohabitation of canons and nuns, implying that this was the real novelty.

The emphasis in sources derived from the order itself was slightly different. In his account of the foundation of the order, Gilbert of Sempringham made no reference to any earlier inspiration, describing the development of the structure of the order as entirely pragmatic and dictated by circumstances.Footnote ⁴³ Even Gilbert's Vita was at pains to stress the arrangements as something that Gilbert had devised himself, and which were entirely new. In a chapter entitled ‘an argument against detractors’, the author wrote that the ‘devising of a new type of religious life’ strengthened the Church rather than damaging it, ‘as not every new thing, but rather worldly novelty, should be avoided’.Footnote ⁴⁴

Although there is some debate over the precise status of the men in Anglo-Saxon mixed communities, there was little to suggest to late twelfth- and early thirteenth-century commentators that they had been canons.Footnote ⁴⁵ Just as in the twelfth century, many of the men in Anglo-Saxon mixed communities would have played ancillary roles, whether as manual labourers or chaplains. Canons on the other hand, although often entrusted with the provision of religious services for others, had a religious role of their own. The creation of formal, integrated roles for men within mixed communities represented a level of deliberate organisation which appears to have been new, and which may have been linked to an increasing tendency for groups of male religious to adopt the Augustinian rule.Footnote ⁴⁶

Another distinctive feature of ‘houses of canons and nuns’ was male leadership, something which was new in England, if not the continent.Footnote ⁴⁷ In addition, ‘houses of canons and nuns’ were not governed by an external custos, master or warden, but by a canon selected from amongst their number.Footnote ⁴⁸ This brings us back to Gervase's description of the houses of Fontevraud as ‘houses of nuns’, instead of ‘houses of canons and nuns’. Two of the English houses, Nuneaton and Westwood, were described as houses of moniales nigrae, making no reference to canons or lay brothers, whilst the third house, Amesbury, was designated a house of moniales albae.Footnote ⁴⁹ This could indicate faulty information, as the houses of Fontevraud certainly contained groups of Augustinian canons as well as Benedictine nuns.Footnote ⁵⁰ On this basis, the houses should have been classed in the same way as the houses of Sempringham, as houses of canonici albi et moniales.

This identification of Fontevraud and its daughter houses as nunneries was not an isolated slip on Gervase's part. Early twelfth-century chroniclers such as Orderic Vitalis and William of Malmesbury referred to Fontevraud as a nunnery and made no reference to the canons living there.Footnote ⁵¹ Later in the century Walter Map made no comment on the order of Fontevraud, although the Grandmontines, Carthusians, Templars and Hospitallers all drew comment as new forms of monastic organisation, as did the Gilbertines.Footnote ⁵² William of Newburgh, writing in the 1190s, made an implicit distinction between the orders of Sempringham and Fontevraud, referring to the nuns of Fontevraud, but to the canons and nuns of Sempringham.Footnote ⁵³ The contemporary perception of Fontevraud and her daughters as nunneries is also found in the charters recording gifts to the order, which refer to nuns and houses of nuns, with little indication that the houses were also staffed by canons and lay brothers.Footnote ⁵⁴ Such houses, ruled by a prioress subordinate to the abbess of the mother house, fitted the traditional pattern of a ‘nunnery’ with ancillary male staff.

Thus a ‘house of canons and nuns’ not only contained canons and nuns, but had to be governed by a canon elected from amongst the community, or in the case of Sempringham, from communities belonging to the same order. This might explain the distinction which Gervase makes between the Yorkshire houses of Swine (‘moniales nigrae’), and Watton (‘canonici albi et moniales’), although this apparent distinction may also be as a result of incorrect information.Footnote ⁵⁵ In an article comparing the two houses, Janet Burton raised the important distinction between formal and informal male roles. Both houses contained canons, nuns, lay brothers and sisters, and were subject to the rule of a master.Footnote ⁵⁶ Yet the master of Swine was not necessarily appointed from amongst the canons of the community, unlike the prior of Watton. Certainly during the thirteenth century, and perhaps earlier, the mastership of Swine was offered to an Augustinian from Healaugh Park, a Premonstratensian from Croxton, and a Trinitarian from Knaresborough.Footnote ⁵⁷ The master was an outsider, an external individual appointed to take care of the secular needs of the house. In contrast, the integrated role of the canons in the management of the communities of Sempringham and houses such as Nun Cotham struck Gervase and his contemporaries as novel, and as a departure from traditional practice. Elkins was right to suggest that contemporaries did not view the presence of men as unusual, but nor did they necessarily regard it as new. Male servants, both lay and clerical, had been a feature of female religious communities since the time of Caedmon. It was the combination of canons, and a male leader recruited from amongst their number, which was so striking and so new.

This brings us, finally, to the distinction between a ‘double house’ and a ‘double order’, a concept beloved by more recent commentators. The latter term is used to indicate a federation of houses of men and women, such as the houses of Sempringham and Fontevraud, and, less frequently, the houses of Arrouaise and Prémontré before the decision to increase the segregation between the sexes from the 1130s onwards.Footnote ⁵⁸ The term has been accepted by scholars who reject the term ‘double house’, as it provides a mechanism for recognising the difference between a single house containing men and women, and a house of an order which included both men and women. In her work, Elkins states that the ‘only distinction’ between houses of Fontevraud and Sempringham, and other houses containing men and women is that the houses of Sempringham and Fontevraud belonged to federated orders.Footnote ⁵⁹

For other scholars, this distinction is of the greatest importance. Penny Schine Gold explored the legal differences between a single house which might contain both men and women, and the house of an order in which the presence of men and women within the same house was a central tenet of the constitution or rule of the order. Her definition of the term therefore included the orders of Fontevraud and Sempringham, but not Arrouaise and Prémontré. What marked out the two former orders was the early codification of statutes concerning the relationship between the men and women of the order.Footnote ⁶⁰ She saw this as a decisive factor in ensuring that houses which had originally been founded for both sexes in the twelfth century continued to house both sexes in the centuries that followed. In contrast, a general trend towards greater segregation as the twelfth century progressed can be seen in both the more informal, unaffiliated communities of men and women, as well as in the orders of Prémontré and Arrouaise.Footnote ⁶¹

Yet there is little evidence to suggest that twelfth-century commentators in England recognised the importance of the ‘double order’ as a distinct entity. What interested them most were the arrangements that governed relationships between men and women at individual houses, not the technicalities of a rule. Houses which were governed by women were seen as nunneries, regardless of the presence of men. Houses which contained women but which were governed by men were something different, a ‘house of canons and nuns’. I would suggest that the problematic nature of the term ‘double house’ has stemmed in part from its confusion with the term ‘double order’. The evidence suggests that contemporaries recognised the former category, but not the latter.

Thus it remains to draw some conclusions regarding the validity of the term ‘double house’ in the eyes of twelfth-century commentators. The aim of this paper was not to construct a universal definition of a ‘double house’, but to test the evidence for perceptions of such an institution within clear chronological and spatial boundaries. In contrast with earlier work, most notably that of Elkins, it has demonstrated the validity of the term ‘double house’ with reference to a small group of twelfth-century English ‘houses of canons and nuns’, which were perceived as differing from both Anglo-Saxon and contemporary mixed communities. The novelty of such arrangements lay in the provision of an integrated, formal role for men alongside women. They were not just servants or wardens, but played an active role in the community.

Although the actual term ‘double house’ was rarely used in the twelfth-century, this may have had less to do with a lack of perceived difference, as Elkins suggests, and more to its inadequacy as a polemical term. Both supporters and critics wanted to emphasise the single nature of a house that contained both sexes. The lack of a more specific, technical term to describe such arrangements points not merely to the novelty of the institution, but also to the short-lived and limited nature of the experiment. At Stixwold, perhaps the best documented of the ‘houses of canons and nuns’ outside the order of Sempringham, there was an increasing tendency amongst those outside the community during the thirteenth century to describe it as a house of nuns, a description that was perhaps facilitated by the appointment of masters from outside the community.Footnote ⁶² Even at Sempringham there was an increasing tendency to downplay the element of cohabitation. Although Gilbert's Vita, written at almost precisely the same moment as Gervase's Mappa mundi, referred to his thirteen foundations as either for canons or for ‘nuns in association with men to guide them and with lay brethren’, the letters which accompanied the canonisation dossier referred to them simply as houses for canons or houses for nuns, with no mention of cohabitation.Footnote ⁶³

In spite of an increasing tendency to speak of ‘houses of canons and nuns’ as houses of canons or houses of nuns, the arrangements at the houses of Sempringham persisted until the Dissolution. Yet this enduring institution needed no special technical vocabulary to describe it. From the mid-thirteenth century, the term ‘house of the order of Sempringham’ would probably have sufficed.