Nuns’ Priests’ Tales: Men and Salvation in Medieval Women's Monastic Life is a study of the ways in which eleventh- and twelfth-century clerics estimated and articulated the value of the cura monialium—their spiritual care of religious women. The author's stated aim is to show that despite the dominant clerical rhetoric of this period, many priests who provided pastoral and liturgical services to the growing number of religious women did not think of them purely in negative, misogynistic terms. On the one hand, these clerics flouted contemporary criticism and risked sexual scandal in order to imitate Christ (who himself is seen associating intimately with women in the Gospels). On the other, they fostered spiritual friendships and pastoral connections in order to tap into the power of women's prayers as “brides of Christ.” From the clerical perspective, the pastoral care of women was fundamentally about the male quest for salvation.

This is a book based primarily on texts written by men, with a particular emphasis on the writings of Peter Abelard, whose works stand at the core of Griffiths’ own scholarly expertise. Griffiths draws on a variety of written sources—primarily letters, chronicles, monastic rules, advice literature, and sermons produced by men—to show how priests “evolved spiritually through their service to nuns” (18). As she argues in the prologue and chapter 1, the more positive assessment of women's spirituality associated with men like Peter Abelard and Robert of Arbrissel did not lie as far outside the assumed misogynistic norm as scholars have asserted. Distracted by the anti-female sentiment in many texts, Griffiths argues, even recent work has failed to take seriously enough the case for the spiritual advantages of the “symbiosis of male and female within the religious life” (31).

In chapter 2, “Biblical Models: Women and Men in the Apostolic Life,” Griffiths traces the medieval reception of biblical models for this positive female-male symbiosis. As she notes, the Gospels offer plentiful models for the “dignity of female religious life,” with Jesus “serving as [the] ultimate and perfect model” (42). But beyond simply establishing the evangelical dignity (and even priority) of the women in the Gospels, clerical writers in the central Middle Ages celebrated the interaction of women and men as biblically mandated, and even interpreted the spiritual care of religious women as a form of the imitation of Christ (imitatio Christ). This material clearly situates the phenomenon of men's perceived spiritual benefit from interaction with women within the contemporary “evangelical awakening”—the intensification of interest in the study of the Bible in the central Middle Ages. Chapter 3, “Jerome and the Noble Women of Rome,” offers an interesting discussion of the reception of the example(s) offered by the life and writings of Jerome. While we can credit Elizabeth Clark with drawing attention to Jerome's ambivalence toward women—warning his readers against contact with women while seeking it out himself—Griffiths focuses on the reception of Jerome's more female-positive example within her target group of central medieval clerics. As she argues, male clerics in the twelfth century evoked Jerome's example “consciously and intentionally” in defense of their own involvement within female circles, “linking themselves to a tradition of innocent, even saintly, relations between religious men and women” (109). In chapter 4, “Brothers, Sons, and Uncles: Nuns’ Priests and Family Ties,” Griffiths argues that contact between religious women and men who were related biologically occasioned less criticism than relationships between those who were not related, contemporary anxieties about incest notwithstanding. It is interesting to note, however, that several contemporary monastic chronicles (including the monk Ortlieb's twelfth-century Chronicle of Zwiefalten, which Griffiths cites elsewhere, but not in this context) specifically limit contact between sisters and brothers and mothers and sons—a prohibition that may reflect concerns about persistent family politics within a dual-sex monastery even more than anxieties about sex. Indeed, many priests (perhaps most notably in German-speaking lands) were the blood relatives of at least some of the women to whom they offered pastoral care, but Griffiths does not touch on this important family-political dimension of the realities of contemporary pastoral care for religious women. Chapter 5, “Speaking to the Bridegroom: Women and the Power of Prayer,” offers a discussion of the “gendered efficacy” (149) of prayer. As Griffiths notes, scholars like Gisela Muschiol have argued convincingly that women's prayers, especially in the early Middle Ages, were seen to have been “particularly pleasing to God” (151)—to echo Abelard's articulation of this opinion. Prayer was the vital work of religious women living in community, and nuns’ prayers were highly valued payback for pastoral and material services rendered to them by men. This alone, as Griffiths argues, explains much of the clerical enthusiasm for continuing to seek out contact with women, despite the known potential for calumny and occasion for scandal. Men wanted to achieve salvation, and in serving the “brides of Christ,” they could move closer to that goal.

None of this clerical female-positivity will surprise specialists in the history of medieval religious women. Indeed, there has been much recent work showing religious women and men engaging in partnerships that were spiritually, intellectually, and economically beneficial. The book has considerable value, however, not least for the wealth of textual evidence it presents to nonspecialists who may still hold to discredited narratives but also for its careful and nuanced exploration of the reception of biblical and patristic models for male-female collaboration in the context of eleventh- and twelfth-century religious life. Griffiths’ decision not to include the voices of women—a choice that she justifies quite vigorously in the conclusion—makes good intellectual sense when the reader accepts that this is a book about men and what they wrote about their dealings with religious women. Further holistic studies that combine male and female voices, and consider both written and material sources, will surely benefit from the wealth of textual evidence for the more positive clerical views assembled here.