The Gilbertine Rule, or more accurately rules, since a monastic rule was subject to constant mutation, survives in a unique manuscript, now Bodleian Library, Oxford, ms Douce 136. This is of uncertain provenance, though it must derive from a Gilbertine context for, though a composite work, its contents are entirely confined to Gilbertine legislation. More than half (fos 7–87v ) is taken up with the version of the rule that was written up in its final form between 1220 and 1238, which itself incorporates earlier texts, including fragments of Gilbert's own prologue to the rule and a stipulation establishing the maximum numbers for each community.Footnote ¹ This, and the fact that, although the rule is ordered in sections within it, the material is arranged in no clear order, has led me to argue elsewhere that here is a gradual accumulation of edicts arising from general chapter legislation incorporated into the rule as necessary.Footnote ²

The rule was the product of years of codification: in its ‘final’ recension of the second quarter of the thirteenth century it represented the most highly structured framework for women's religious life in England at that time. Its emphasis on discipline and the system of organisational checks and balances that distinguished it were the consequences of the traumas of the order's early years, which had experienced profound crises, sexual and organisational scandals typified by the episode of the nun of Watton and the lay brethren's revolt during the 1160s and 1170s.Footnote ³ These had almost brought the infant Gilbertine communities to an end; they certainly resulted in the transformation beyond recognition of Gilbert's original vision. What emerged was an authoritarian and highly centralised institution in which the power of the magister was unparalleled.

For the Gilbertines as for most, if not all, of the new orders of the twelfth century (and during the thirteenth century the Benedictines and Cluniacs also), the annual or triennnial chapters were where policy and legislation were articulated, either for individual communities or for the order as a whole. In orders subject to episcopal visitation, injunctions issued consequent on the bishop's inquiries were also normative. Moreover, during the thirteenth century ecclesiastical synods increased their surveillance and control of nuns, establishing norms applicable to all female communities. Though there was undoubtedly an interplay between the Gilbertines' regulations and the edicts imposed by episcopal sanction generated either from visitation or through synodal legislation, it is not easy to determine how far bishops were influenced by the ‘internal’ legislation of orders like the Gilbertines, or rather themselves laid down guidelines which were then enshrined in the orders' own legislation.Footnote ⁴ My aim here is to assess how far the Gilbertine revisions were generated from within the order, and to what extent they slotted into the bishop's regulatory matrix.

Like the Cistercians and the order of Fontevraud, the Gilbertines were exempt from episcopal visitation, the diocesan's authority being limited to the blessing of nuns and the ordination of canons.Footnote ⁵ This does not mean, however, that the order was uninfluenced by, or exempt from, synodal decrees, nor was it free from visitation by papal legates or exempt from their legislation. The most usual mechanism for reform and adjustment, however, was via the order's annual general chapter. The magister, or the summi scrutatores as his deputies, was also supposed to conduct annual visitations of each Gilbertine priory, while parallel summae scrutatorices acted for the nunneries. Regulations issued by the chapters were of general application: issues relating to specific priories had already been dealt with at the time of visitation.Footnote ⁶ However, the early Gilbertine chapters recorded in ms Douce 136 seem of themselves to have initiated little new legislation and their activity, or at least their recommendations, appears to have been confined to a recapitulation of the rule and of the two visitations conducted by papal legates in 1238 and 1268, which together constitute the most radical changes to the rule following its post-1220 codification. These reveal what were the major issues affecting the Gilbertines in the mid-thirteenth century, a century after the order's foundation.

In 1238 Abbot Adam of Warden, acting as representative of the reforming, and unpopular, papal legate, Otto, held a visitation at Sixhills priory which resulted in the first major revision of the Gilbertine statutes since the end of the previous century.Footnote ⁷ Otto had arrived in England in 1237 and though the high point of this visit was his legatine council in London in November 1237, he was keenly involved in a multiplicity of activities, including confirming monastic privileges, acting in monastic disputes and appointing to monastic offices.Footnote ⁸ Above all Otto was concerned to reform monastic, especially Benedictine, discipline. He had already been active in Germany, conducting visitations and issuing statutes for both Benedictines and Augustinians, and in 1238 he held a general meeting of English Benedictine abbots which rehearsed the legislation of Pope Gregory ix issued in 1235.Footnote ⁹ Monastic reform was certainly in the air. In 1232 Gregory had ordered a general visitation of religious houses and had mandated three delegates to visit exempt houses in the Canterbury province.Footnote ¹⁰ As the Gilbertines were exempt, it is not unlikely that Adam's visitation in 1238 was associated with Gregory's mandate, but it is in the context of widespread monastic reform that it should be placed.

Adam's visitation resulted in twenty canons, which are presented in no particular order, though a number of themes can be identified.Footnote ¹¹ Several were concerned with the provision of food and drink, and equality of diet between nuns and canons.Footnote ¹² The refectory, like the dormitory, was a powerful symbol: the essence of community and equality. Common eating at a common table was a core value of monastic life, and it is little wonder that it was so defended in legislation for both male and female communities. Moreover inequality not only threatened the symbolic unity of the community, it could easily lead to discontent, and thus in itself constitute a threat to discipline. Adam reiterated that the Gilbertine proctors should provide exactly the same food and drink for the nuns as for the canons. The regulation that fish were no longer to be cooked in the canons' kitchen, except for the master or guests, or unless the nuns asked that it be done otherwise, perhaps represents a further attempt to ensure that food was prepared equally for those on both sides of the wall dividing male from female community members. Care for the monastic sick was also the subject of concern. In small, relatively poor houses such as the Gilbertines, it was perhaps the more likely that scarce resources might be diverted away from the infirmary, and the cellarers of both male and female infirmaries were commanded to provide everything necessary for them according to the community's resources, and to ensure that those in the infirmary were not obliged to drink water when the rest of the convent had so to do through lack of beer. Only two statutes were concerned with property, personal and communal. No one was to procure gifts, and if this was done they were to be divided for the use of the infirmaries. The cellarer was forbidden to buy or sell wool or anything else without the proctors' assent, and in all transactions was to have a canon or lay brother as witness, so that false suspicion be avoided. By comparison with later legislation, particularly Ottobuono's 1268 statutes, less was said about other disciplinary matters beyond the more or less standard injunctions that there be more observance in keeping silence both in the infirmary and elsewhere. More serious offences were dealt with more harshly and if recidivist a canon might be condemned to perpetual imprisonment in the prisons which were ordered to be provided in each house.Footnote ¹³ No specific punishment was determined for an errant conversus. Lay-sisters were admitted to the order to serve the nuns: this they were to do with all diligence. If disobedient, they should be corrected once and then, if reprimanded, obliged to wear a white veil for as long as the master determined appropriate. For, with the exception of the cowl and the scapular, the lay sisters wore the same black, though rougher, habit as the nuns.Footnote ¹⁴ Just like the conversi they should speak in English. Even though the Latinity of the nuns might be questionable, and their linguistic knowledge fairly rudimentary, language, like clothing, was a significant demarcation point between lay and choir members of the community, and its regulation reinforced distinctions between them, thereby contributing to good order.Footnote ¹⁵ But, above all, Adam sought to reinforce monastic austerity, primarily in clothing. In this he seems clearly influenced by the recent regulations of the Fourth Lateran and the Oxford councils.Footnote ¹⁶ He ordered that the nuns' cowls should not be of excessive length. Canons and sisters should wear cloaks covering their ankles, but the material should not be of expensive furs but appropriate to monastic poverty. No member of the community other than obedientaries was to carry a purse, and theirs were not to be excessively large, while knives hanging from the canons' belts were in future to be decorated neither with silver nor ivory, although the master and priors could use knives at table if they wished.Footnote ¹⁷ The riding cloaks of both canons and lay brothers were to be less elaborate than heretofore, and of such a colour ‘which expressed humility and had the fragrance of the dignity of religion’. The riding gear of the lay brethren was to be in accordance with the custom of the Cistercian lay brethren.

Such detailed care for the administration and discipline of a female community was at that time almost unique. There was, of course, one fundamental difference between Gilbertine and other English nunneries: the Gilbertines then alone possessed a rule specific to themselves. There was no Benedictine rule for nuns; Benedict, unlike Augustine or Cassiodorus, had written solely for male communities. Consequently, while every nunnery's customs were themes and variations on the male Benedictine rule, it was to a greater or lesser degree a free translation of it.Footnote ¹⁸ No overarching organisation provided a general template of discipline and order. Without a strong internal authority regulation depended on diocesan or individual visitation. Prior to about 1200 there is little evidence that bishops paid much specific attention to nunneries. The legatine councils held at Westminster in 1127 and 1138 forbade elaborate adornment and hairstyles, but the issues that were to vex reformers and legislators during the thirteenth century are almost entirely absent.Footnote ¹⁹ Nothing is said of strict claustration until the end of the century, when the legatine council at York (1195) stated that nuns should not leave the community and the company of their superior. Even this prohibition was not specific to nuns, but part of a more general canon applicable to all religious: all should live according to their rule, and in order to keep within the cloister they should not hold rents at farm, go on pilgrimage or leave the house without due cause.Footnote ²⁰ There were also occasional condemnations of simoniacal entry – an issue which was especially to concern reformers of nuns in the thirteenth century – but these too were applicable to both male and female communities.Footnote ²¹ Nor were papal councils much concerned with nuns. The Second Lateran Council (1139) made only three references to nuns: like all religious they were not to marry, they should live according to a rule and nuns should not sing the office with monks or canons in the conventual choir.Footnote ²² The Third Lateran Council (1179) also passed nuns by: its only stipulation (though one that was to be repeated many times in following generations), was that clerics should not without due cause frequent nuns, the bishop should take care to exclude such clerics and the incorrigible should be barred from ecclesiastical office.Footnote ²³

Nor is there any indication of episcopal visitations. This should cause no surprise, since though the principle of episcopal oversight of monasteries was long established, it is only at the end of the twelfth century that episcopal visitations of male communities are first recorded.Footnote ²⁴ Though the earliest bishops' registers survive only from the beginning of the thirteenth century, and initially only in one or two dioceses, it is very likely that the absence of record reflects an absence of visitation.Footnote ²⁵ The first recorded episcopal visitation of a nunnery in England is that of Nun Cotham by Bishop Hugh de Wells of Lincoln (1209–35).Footnote ²⁶ This visitation cannot be precisely dated, but probably post-dated the Fourth Lateran Council. For it was the great council of 1215 that transformed the question of monastic discipline, as it did so many other issues relating to ecclesiastical government and control in Innocent iii's programme to translate long-established principles into practice. Even though the relevant pronouncements of the council were, like those of its ecumenical predecessors, sparse, it initiated a much greater dirigiste and proactive role for the diocesan bishops.Footnote ²⁷ However, it noted only one abuse particular to nunneries: the practice of simony, the paying of a dowry for reception into the community.Footnote ²⁸ Nunneries were generally poorer than male institutions and more reliant upon entry grants; moreover, as Joseph Lynch observed, a number of male religious orders had already taken steps to curb the more blatant features of this custom by 1215.Footnote ²⁹ As important, though its significance at first sight appears rather more tangential, was the twelfth canon, ‘On general chapters of monks’.Footnote ³⁰ This stipulated that all abbots should henceforward hold triennial general chapters. The model for this was explicitly Cistercian, regarded by Innocent, as it had been by other commentators such as Gerald of Wales, as exemplary.Footnote ³¹ Cistercian abbots were initially to function in an advisory capacity at these new chapters. The chapter should also appoint visitors to inspect all communities ‘both monks and nuns’, but the diocesan bishops were to reform the monasteries within their jurisdiction, so that the monastic visitors might have less to do. Both monastic and diocesan visitors were to ensure that the monasteries were protected from harm by lay people, especially patrons and advocates. Innocent iii clearly envisaged that the primary disciplinary mechanism was to be driven internally, by the religious themselves. Prima facie, therefore, it might be expected that succeeding diocesan legislation would initially follow existing monastic practice; thereafter we might see develop a creative dialogue between ‘internal’ monastic and ‘external’ diocesan reform.

Hugh's visitation of Nun Cotham and Adam's at Sempringham occurred within a few years of each other. Nun Cotham was only a few miles from Sempringham and other Gilbertine houses in Lincolnshire: they appealed to similar benefactors and, though little is known of the internal workings of the Cistercian nunneries in Lincolnshire, they were probably rather similar to those of their Gilbertine neighbours. The bishop's rulings were concerned first with regulation of the nunnery's economic and administrative affairs, and then with issues of claustration. Hugh imposed strict numerical quotas for the community, an ordinance which imitates, perhaps consciously, similar restrictions placed on Gilbertine houses at the end of the twelfth century.Footnote ³² Simoniac entry and the possession of private property by the nuns was forbidden. Access to the nunnery's seal was carefully controlled and written accounts were to be presented to the prioress and other senior nuns, while the magister and proctors were to have responsibility for purchases and render account for them. All the community and guests should have the same food and drink, though the sick might be allowed a better diet. The regulations concerning relations between the cloister and the outside world prefigure developments in synodal legislation later in the century. Recognising that monastic peace was disrupted by secular visitors, no lay person was allowed to stay in the convent, except overnight if hospitality demanded. No one, lay or clerical, was to speak alone with a nun, but only in the presence of a witness and by permission. No nun or lay sister was to stay at any of the house's granges and nuns could leave the cloister only to visit neighbours or kin in case of great necessity and with special permission.

A comparison of the two visitations indicates some shared concerns, such as equality in diet and care for financial probity, but there is nothing in Hugh's statutes on austerity and clothing, and conversely, perhaps because the Gilbertines were seen to have effective regulations in place, nothing is found in Adam's regulations on contact with the secular world. Thereafter no further records of visitations are found for a generation, though the Gilbertines undoubtedly continued to hold them annually and it is certainly possible that other episcopal visitations of Cistercian nunneries occurred similar to that at Nun Cotham. By comparison with male communities, few visitation records relating to female houses survive, and it is even rarer to find both the comperta and the resulting injunctions together. Only once are both found together in the registers of the thirteenth-century archbishops of York. These relate to the visitation of Swine in 1267–8 and merit consideration in more detail, for it is only visitations like this that open a window on the cloistered world. Moreover, this visitation was held only a few months before Cardinal Ottobuono's visitation of Sempringham: a comparison between the two reveals both the differences in procedure and the similarities of problems and issues within the two communities. These similarities should cause no surprise. Both the Yorkshire Cistercian nunneries and the Gilbertine foundations of Yorkshire and Lincolnshire occupied the same regional space, indeed, Gilbertine Watton was only a few miles from Swine; the overwhelming majority were founded in the mid-twelfth century; they were founded and attracted benefactions and recruits from the same social milieu, the lesser aristocracy; and they faced similar problems of discipline and financial exigency, though Watton was significantly wealthier than Swine. First, they allow us to see the problems to which diocesan bishops were responding, both through injunctions issued to individual houses and in synodal legislation of more general application; second, they provide a rare snapshot of a small community in crisis, riven by faction and inequality; third, Swine, though not formally a Gilbertine house (not least because it was the subject of episcopal visitations), was of fluid and uncertain status and followed a hybrid rule akin to that of the Gilbertines, and had some arrangements clearly derived from Gilbertine custom.Footnote ³³ Like the Gilbertines, Swine followed the practice, otherwise seemingly unique to the Gilbertines, of having three prioresses in post at any one time. Moreover, Swine's communal topography was also very similar to that of Gilbertine nunneries, with communication windows between the male and female quarters. The most significant difference was the absence at Swine of the highly-articulated command structure leading up to the magister. Although there were magistri at Swine they belonged to no fixed order and were, at various times, religious (including Augustinian, Premonstratensian and Trinitarian), secular priests or even laymen.Footnote ³⁴ Janet Burton has argued that this eclecticism allowed the nuns greater self-government than their Gilbertine counterparts. But such liberty may have carried a price and contributed to a lack of discipline, apparent both at Giffard's visitation and in following generations.

It is easy to see what was wrong at Swine, rather more difficult to see exactly how the problems had arisen and who was to blame. Swine was seemingly answerable only to the bishop on his infrequent visitations, though very little is known about the role of the masters. In such an unstructured community favouritism and cliques could flourish and much was attributable to the prioress who was partial, easily persuaded and guilty of diverting grants given for pittances and for the purchase of clothing and other necessities to other uses. Indeed, she should not have had control of these funds at all, since they were the responsibility of two trustworthy nuns. Some nuns were openly rebellious, including a group of three sisters by birth. Such clashes might have been personal; they also had potentially wider repercussions for the community. Family members of some of the excessively disciplined nuns were complaining: these grievances could easily lead to a decline in patronage. This could be serious. Swine was not poverty-stricken, but it was hardly wealthy and was at least 140 marks in debt. Not surprisingly it had turned, like many other nunneries, to receiving ‘dowries’ from nuns entering the community. So serious were these issues that even before leaving the nunnery the archbishop enjoined that, since it could not sustain any more nuns or lay sisters, no more recruits were to be received without the consent of the whole community.

But this was not all. There were systemic as well as personal disciplinary issues. Tensions between nuns in the infirmary and the others, between the nuns and lay sisters, and between the men and women of the community are clearly apparent. The sick were not properly provided for; the lay sisters claimed to be the equal of the nuns and demanded the right to wear black veils like them. The clothing of all the nuns was inadequate, unless they were able to beg for more from family and friends outside the cloister. The canons and lay brothers were guilty of misusing the community's resources for which they were responsible and enjoyed a better diet than the nuns. The canons had their own problems, being pressured by a local lord, Robert of Hilton, to give him a barn full of wheat intended for the community's use. Robert's activities indicate how difficult it was to exclude the world from the cloister. His household servants roamed through the cloister and the parlour, and were strongly suspected of meeting and talking with the women. Robert may have been too influential to oppose, but there was also evidence that the fundamentals of strict claustration were neglected. The points of contact between the community's male and female elements, the windows through which food was passed to the men, and the entrance to the church, were not well-policed, with the result that the canons and brethren were meeting and talking with the women. Silence was not duly kept in the church, cloister, refectory and dormitory.Footnote ³⁵

It is clear from Giffard's response to these shortcomings that he considered the failings of the prioress to be a fundamental problem. In future she was to be neither too harsh nor too lenient; all should be obedient to her authority. Silence, particularly at the hazardous entrance and exit to the cloister, was to be enforced. There were to be no secret conversations between nuns and lay sisters or laywomen unless demanded by the needs of the nunnery or order, and then only in the presence of an observer. Confidentiality should be maintained. Better provision should be made for the community's diet, while to ameliorate the house's temporal needs forty marks were to be set aside until it was free of debt.Footnote ³⁶ Perhaps more significant is what remains unsaid. Only by implication is financial maladministration addressed, there is no obvious response to the tensions between the men and women, nuns and lay sisters, and no mention of lay infringements of the community's sacred space.

The abuses found at Swine were encountered to a greater or lesser extent at many nunneries. A particularly serious issue was poverty, which was both a cause and consequence of mismanagement. Nunneries' concern to raise short-term revenue by taking in more recruits, which in itself almost inevitably meant breaking the rule on simoniac entry, placed future resources under excessive pressure and, unsurprisingly, a number of bishops addressed this problem.Footnote ³⁷ Thus in 1268 Giffard ordered the prioress of Hampole on pain of punishment not to receive any more nuns or sisters without his will and permission since there were now sufficient numbers within the nunnery: ‘indeed numbers are too great for your patrimony and if growth were unchecked you might be oppressed’.Footnote ³⁸ Economic difficulties also led nunneries to seek a solution by alienating property, and it was doubtless the recognition of this danger that lay behind Archbishop Romeyn's order to the nuns of Arthington not to alienate anything without his special licence, which he would not grant unless it brought a three-fold annual increase.Footnote ³⁹ At Nun Appleton in 1281 Archbishop Wickwane found a lack of transparency in the nunnery's revenues and ordered that in future the prioress was to be accompanied by two or three senior nuns when receiving revenues for the community's use and at the end of the year income and expenditure were to be audited in the presence of senior nuns chosen for this purpose.Footnote ⁴⁰

By contrast with visitation injunctions synodal legislation paid comparatively little attention to nunneries' economic problems and mismanagement. The Statutes of Salisbury (1217–19), recognising the danger in the concentration of authority in too few hands, stipulated that no nun should take on several offices when previously these roles had been separate, and the Statutes of Oxford enjoined that bishops were to ensure that nuns were well provided for and that numbers were kept reasonable, but that is all.Footnote ⁴¹ Synodal priorities were generally rather different. The provincial council held by Stephen Langton at Oxford in 1222 stressed the role of the diocesan bishop in maintaining good order both in supervising the temporal needs of nunneries and in sending priests to hear confessions. But generally the councils had little to say about the internal discipline of nunneries, other than to emphasise strict claustration and separation from the world. Nuns, as well as monks and canons, were to sleep communally in one dormitory rather than separately and were to eat in a common refectory. Careful control was exercised over clothing (a matter on which later councils had little to say) which was to be bought and apportioned by those appointed, not by individuals. The Fourth Lateran Council had legislated against excessive luxury in the dress of the religious.Footnote ⁴² But the Oxford council, although clearly derived from Lateran IV, paid no attention to the dress of clerics, confining its regulations against excessive luxury and ornamentation to nuns and other women dedicated to the religious life, proclaiming that since women were weaker against Satan's wiles they required greater protection.Footnote ⁴³

However, the issue of central concern to legislators was the need for strict claustration. This was increasingly emphasised, culminating in 1298 with Boniface viii's bull, Periculoso, which established norms of strict enclosure that were to remain definitive for centuries.Footnote ⁴⁴ Though the need for strict enclosure had long been recognised it is only as the thirteenth century progressed that legislators became more explicit in their pronouncements.Footnote ⁴⁵ The regulations of specific orders such as the Gilbertines and the Order of Fontevraud may well have been influential, as probably was the strict code of the Poor Clares. Following the Council of Oxford nearly all synods which made mention of nuns stressed with growing rigour the essential need for claustration. The barring of entry to the nuns' cloister, and conversely the ban on nuns leaving their own convent, was central to the question of discipline and the avoidance of scandal. At first the emphasis was primarily on preventing male access. The 1222 council prohibited religious from leaving their community without their superior's permission, even for devotional reasons or to visit kin unless there was absolutely no suspicion, and then a date for return had to be fixed, but this chapter was not confined to women religious. In the only chapter specific to nuns it was stipulated that no man should have frequent access to the cloister without due cause.Footnote ⁴⁶ That the cura monialium was particularly fraught with moral danger was also recognised in Peter des Roches's statutes for Winchester of 1224: all clerks should bear themselves with decorum in church, ‘not laughing, not chattering’, but this was particularly to be observed by those with the oversight of nunneries in order to avoid scandalising those who visited the house for reverence or devotion. For the same reason, while performing the office priests were not to enter the choir without their cope closed and without wearing a surplice.Footnote ⁴⁷ The Statutes of Salisbury (1238×1244) were somewhat fuller.Footnote ⁴⁸ Noting the scandals and outrages occasioned by frequent visits of men to nunneries, clerics and laymen, kinsmen and strangers, were forbidden to enter the nuns' choir, cloister, refectory and infirmary. The only exceptions were prelates, patrons, the visitors, the nuns' confessors and doctors above suspicion. Clerks were not to go to the parlour without good cause and then could speak only in the presence of one or two senior nuns above suspicion. Written communication was carefully monitored. Neither letters close nor patent were to be sent or received by nuns without the knowledge of abbess or prioress.Footnote ⁴⁹

Archbishop Giffard had arrived at Swine in mid-January 1268. It was probably only a few weeks later that Ottobuono Fieschi (afterwards Pope Adrian v) came to Sempringham to conduct the second substantial legatine visitation of the thirteenth century. He had arrived in England in October 1265, remaining till July 1268, with a primarily political mission, to support King Henry iii against the rebels, but he was also concerned with issues of ecclesiastical reform, and it is therefore the more interesting that Ottobuono also chose to make a visitation of the Gilbertine order: with the exception of one of Winchester and an attempted visitation of the Cistercian house of Stratford Langthorne, that of Sempringham is the only other monastic visitation he made while in England. The account given in ms Douce 136 of his Gilbertine visitation makes it clear that it was a lengthy and complex procedure.Footnote ⁵⁰ First the legate and members of his household visited Sempringham, leaving the visitation of the other priories ‘for the most part to be visited by prudent men and religious of various orders’. Then followed the collation of reports ‘in the legate's own house’ by magister Ralph of Huntingdon (the legate's Dominican penitentiary) and the order's scrutator generalis, who began the compilation of the visitation records to be laid before the legate ‘in order to avoid divisions of opinion and divergent practice’. This was clearly a major task, and indeed Ralph's work as penitentiary made it necessary to draft in additional help. Sometime before his departure from England, Ralph and Richard presented the legate with the agreed new constitutions: however, we cannot be certain when the process had begun. Ottobuono was a busy man in 1268. Besides his political activities in April he held a major legatine council at London, and there was clearly no time for the Gilbertine visitation to have been carried through between 25 April (when the London Council ended) and 1 August when Ottobuono, who is known to have been in Northampton in June, left the country. Ottobuono's political activities had left him little time for monastic visitations, but the most likely date is October 1267 when he preached the crusade at Lincoln, only a few miles from Sempringham.Footnote ⁵¹ If this hypothesis is correct he would have arrived at London for the council fresh from his activity at Sempringham.

Ottobuono's Gilbertine statutes, which were intended to be recited two or three times a year in the chapter of every community, constitute an altogether more ambitious and extensive collection than that issued a generation earlier, though many of Adam's concerns, implicit and explicit, remained. It comprises fifty-eight chapters, and is followed by the seventeen last canons of the 1268 Council of London, ‘concerning monks, canons and nuns’, and concludes (though in a different hand) with just the chapter headings of a further five statutes which appear to form part of the same visitation.Footnote ⁵² The statutes reveal a much greater concern with the related questions of discipline and security than hitherto. At particular risk were the doorways connecting the cloistered to the secular world and the windows through which food and other necessities were passed from the canons to the nuns and vice-versa. These were to be carefully watched and rather than the keys of the outer gate being kept by a layman (which suggests that security had been entrusted to a community lay servant) they were to be in the care of a specially delegated conversus. In order to avoid scandal none of the household was to go out at night. If any lay person of the familia left other than by the gates after they had been locked they were to be punished severely by the judgement of the prior or cellarer, and if they refused punishment or offended again they were to be expelled.Footnote ⁵³ At mealtimes no lay person was to be allowed near the window where food for the male members of the community was delivered lest they hear or see secrets. The windows themselves should not exceed the dimensions laid down in Gilbert's original rule. If they were found so to do during a visitation then the magister or generalis scrutator was to have them amended before leaving the priory while the proctors were to make the necessary changes within eight days, or eat bread and water for a week.Footnote ⁵⁴

Ottobuono stipulated that the prioresses (or at least one of them) be present in the dormitory and other communal areas at all hours of the day and night. If she was customarily absent without due cause and did not reform after warning the speculatrices had to present this to the magister at his next visitation ‘to avoid this indignity to almighty God and St Gilbert’. If the nuns' dormitory were divided in two then two of the three prioresses should lie in one half and the other prioress and a subprioress in the other, one at one end of the room and the other at the far end, while in the lay sisters' domitory a similar arrangement obtained, with two of the more trustworthy sisters appointed by the prioresses lying at each end of the room.Footnote ⁵⁵

Lesser restrictions were placed on the community's servants in the granges who were not to go to other vills without permission of their superior. Anyone doing so, or even anyone who had permission and who while out brought scandal or harm to the community, was to be severely punished and if contumacious expelled. Ottobuono repeated Adam's call for prisons in every house for the recalcitrant. In the case of apostacy the order might look to the secular arm for aid and, if found, the apostate was to be imprisoned.Footnote ⁵⁶

But most care was taken to ensure the discipline of the conversi. This is hardly surprising given the shock of the lay brethren's rebellion of the 1160s which had graphically demonstrated the need for control.Footnote ⁵⁷ One of the longest chapters, headed ‘Quod conversi non iaceant soli’, orders that no brother should lie alone but always be with a fellow as witness, but it covers far more than this one issue.Footnote ⁵⁸ A conversus appointed as custos of any property required a responsible lay servant appointed by the prior to be with him and be his witness, and if he were accused of disobedience by reliable sources he was to be recalled from the grange. Conversi novices should be well-instructed before they were allowed to work outside the priory. No novice could proceed to profession until he knew properly the Lord's Prayer, Creed, Salutation, Miserere and the other prayers the order stipulated. Anyone negligent in learning them should be severely punished. They were to be taught how to confess by the priors, subpriors and magister conversorum and were not to be negligent in making confession. Conversi were to keep silence in their refectory unless given leave by the prior, magister, summus scrutator or (strangely) an official of another order. Finally, conversi could not practise surgery ‘unless well-skilled and experienced’ and then only with the prior's permission and they could operate only on men, never women. The statutes for the lay sisters are similar to Adam's thirty years earlier. They were to do all in their power to serve the nuns otherwise they were to be punished as Adam enjoined by having their black veils replaced by white ones until the magister allowed them to resume their own habit. Recalcitrant sisters were to be punished in their chapter. They were to make their profession in English and in person.Footnote ⁵⁹

Ottobuono also reiterated the order's constitutions that the nuns and sisters should be thickly veiled from all, religious and secular, male and female: if any contravened this they were to be publicly punished in chapter.Footnote ⁶⁰ Clothing should not be made or bought of black or near-black russet. If any such cloth were given then the recipient should exchange it for regular cloth of the same value. Those breaking the rule were to have the cloths confiscated.Footnote ⁶¹ There was to be no work in silk except that given to the glory of God and the Church and then only by permission, while work in silk was not to be given to others except after permission had been sought and obtained, a regulation indicating that the Gilbertine nuns did needlework.Footnote ⁶²

Other possibilities for scandal had also to be addressed. Perhaps most dangerous, since it involved physical contact, was medicinal blood-letting, and it is no surprise that the statutes strictly forbade any canon or lay-brother in whatever capacity to be bled by a woman ‘neither from the vein nor by scarification nor in way whatsoever’, nor should the canons bleed women. Anyone contravening these rules was to be punished most severely according to the judgement of the head of the community.Footnote ⁶³ Women might also constitute a danger in other ways. Surprisingly Ottobuono makes no mention of secular women staying in Gilbertine communities, though an undated – but almost certainly thirteenth-century – ruling forbids them to remain in perpetuity within the nuns' enclosure without the general chapter's leave.Footnote ⁶⁴ Nuns should not eat or drink with the canons, nor should women work with the canons within the abbey (sic) or outside its gates or in the granges since ‘in this way dangers and scandals can easily arise’. Anyone in authority allowing this was to be reported by their subordinates to the magister or scrutator generalis when they next came on visitation and the perpetrators severely punished.Footnote ⁶⁵

More problematic was the question of women in the canons' guest hall. They were not to be allowed entry unless they were patrons or nobles ‘to whom this cannot be denied’. And here, of course, the statute recognises a real danger to monastic discipline: the power of the patron, or a local lord or potential benefactor, to override the norms of monastic behaviour by withdrawing or, at the least, threatening to withdraw benefactions.Footnote ⁶⁶ This distorting influence was always to act as a practical restraint on reforming bishops and communities alike, and is found again in the instructions of magister Roger de Bolingbroke, issued before the general chapter of 1298.Footnote ⁶⁷ Those remaining in the convents while the priors were at the chapter were to ensure that no women entered the nun's quarters nor anyone spoke at the ‘little window’ until the priors returned ‘except special advocates, nobles and known and reputable people’. In fact there is comparatively little evidence that Gilbertine patrons were overbearing in their demands, and the case in 1272 when Agnes de Vesci came to Watton priory for an overlengthy stay with ‘a great crowd of women with dogs and other animals’ is exceptional.Footnote ⁶⁸ The provision of hospitality was a difficult issue: on the one hand a necessary element of monastic charity, on the other a means whereby scandal might filter into the community. Priors and obedientiaries were forbidden to offer hospitality to their relatives without the master's leave, as Gilbert had enjoined.Footnote ⁶⁹ Conversely it was the duty of the communities to care for the poor as far as their resources allowed, and when poor kinsfolk visited they were not to be scorned because of their unfashionable dress but received by all with kindness and consideration.Footnote ⁷⁰

Almost as important in the Ottobuono statutes as disciplinary matters was the question of authority and its misuse. In all communities there was always a fear that that might be abused. This was perhaps the more likely in communities that were as tightly governed as the Gilbertines, which reposed such power in the hands of the magister. That magistri were exceeding their legitimate authority is indicated by the second statute. Referring to Gilbert's own rule that no one who is not affable should hold high office the magister was to show himself kindly to his subjects and to others, for, citing Augustine, it was better to seek to be loved than feared.Footnote ⁷¹ Priors and subpriors too should not be excessively harsh or, if they did not amend their behaviour, they were to be removed from office.Footnote ⁷² Nor were priors to conduct business without consultation with the house's proctors, as Gilbert had ruled.Footnote ⁷³ Visitations had reported that the magistri had been abusing their authority in receiving novices without the assent of the community as the rule demanded.Footnote ⁷⁴ This was strictly forbidden, both perhaps because of the abuse of power it represented and also for the possibility of simony and favouritism it offered. The communities were also forbidden from making unjust exactions of their tenants or holding courts unless the house's poverty demanded it, nor were they to make excessive amercements. Neither courts nor pleas were to be heard in churches or churchyards.Footnote ⁷⁵

Other statutes mirrored contemporary episcopal injunctions in reinforcing financial probity. Ottobuono's regulations are amongst the most detailed issued for thirteenth-century nunneries. Priors were warned against unnecessary and lavish spending on luxury and display. No one having the custody of any of the priory's property was to indulge in excessive expenditure or hold feastings without the prior's will or make gifts or grants to any person. Even if the magister's permission had been obtained, it was still necessary to gain the prior's consent and to render account when required. Anyone contravening this, once warned, was to be removed from office and severely punished.Footnote ⁷⁶ It was perhaps to ensure that no conflict of interest arose as well as to maintain efficiency that the annual scrutators, male and female, were forbidden to hold other offices. Three senior nuns (‘religiose et discrete’) and claustrales, a term applied especially to religious who were not obedientaries, were to have custody of the priory's money, not the prioresses. Indeed, if one of them were to be appointed prioress then she had to surrender her key to another chosen by the prioresses and the convent. Nevertheless the three were neither to receive nor spend money without the consent of the three prioresses and others of the more discreet members of the house.Footnote ⁷⁷ It was presumably these same three nuns who had custody of the three keys to the chest containing the community's seal. No nun should ever hold more than one key and no key should be like another. If anything was to be sealed the three nuns, along with one of the prioresses and another claustralis, were to carry the seal to the chapter. Once the sealing was completed the seal was returned and locked away in the presence of the five nuns responsible. This long-winded procedure was not to be changed for any reason in order to speed up the business in hand. Moreover, every document to be sealed was first to be read and explained to the prior, or his deputy, and the whole community of canons in their chapter. It was then to be taken to the window by three or more of the more mature trustworthy canons who would next explain the contents to the nuns' representatives, i.e. one of the prioresses and three or four of the claustrales. These would in turn explain it to the nuns' chapter ‘in a language known to all’.Footnote ⁷⁸ After discussion, if the majority agreed, the document would finally be handed over for signing. Anyone not following this procedure was to be deposed from office.Footnote ⁷⁹ Simony, always a temptation to poor nunneries, was once again strictly forbidden, which suggests, as do the frequent references to simony in other nunneries both in England and elsewhere during the thirteenth century, that the practice continued to be a problem in spite of the Fourth Lateran's prohibition.Footnote ⁸⁰ Novices might very well bring a good-will offering on entering the community as the Benedictine rule permitted: the magister was to assign a proportion of such money to the most pressing needs of the community.Footnote ⁸¹

In some areas, however, the legate was less harsh than some of his episcopal contemporaries. Surprisingly, in view of the thrust towards ever more rigid seclusion of religious women, friends and kin were allowed to speak with the nuns and lay sisters and freely receive necessities they passed to them.Footnote ⁸² There was always the danger that resources intended for the nuns would be diverted away. Thus pittances bequeathed to commemorate an anniversary or any money charitably given were not to be converted to other uses or taken away.Footnote ⁸³ Moreover pittances were, according to the priory's resources, to be better and given more frequently in order that more was not sought outside the refectory.Footnote ⁸⁴ Ottobuono, like Adam before him, was very concerned that those in the infirmary be well-cared for, visited frequently and provided with all necessities, including freshwater fish, by their proctors. But, even in the infirmary, care needed to be taken. Meetings should be held in the places appointed and gossiping, scurrilous talk and ‘opera curiosa monialium habita’ were to be avoided: those there for recreation should not enjoy the better diet for longer than necessary. Malingerers were to be denied the privilege for a year.Footnote ⁸⁵ Relief of the poor outside the cloister was, of course, a monastic imperative. Charitable opportunities for nunneries with their relatively slender resources were restricted but they were able to distribute used clothes for the poor, just as did far wealthier institutions.Footnote ⁸⁶ Ottobuono repeated Adam's statute, adding that in future the clothes' value might be given to the poor in food or other necessities.Footnote ⁸⁷ Other regulations were concerned with the nuns' economic life. Corrodies or payments were not to be sold or granted to clerics or lay persons by the priors except in dire necessity and with the diocesan's consent. There was clear recognition that a nunnery's resources might be insufficient if the community were too large and bishops were ordered to ensure that income was sufficient to maintain the complement of nuns; no recruit was to be received above that number, rather she should wait until there was a vacancy. Any prioress, magister, or prior having authority over the nuns acting in contravention was to be removed from office. Nuns were to be confessed only by clerks assigned by the diocesan, for confession represented another dangerous point of contact for the nun. Yet Ottobuono's strict prohibition on any nun daring to hear confessions or absolve another as contrary to church law suggests that this practice was not unknown in Gilbertine houses.Footnote ⁸⁸

A comparison of the visitations of Swine (and of other Yorkshire nunneries) with that of Sempringham suggests similar concerns with problems of internal discipline and authority, and with related issues of inequality, the misuse of resources and the necessity (particularly in houses that were relatively poorly endowed) for financial rectitude. Both also saw the dangers of lay interference and presence within the community, but generally the archbishops of York were less concerned with security and claustration than was Ottobuono. It may be that the former normally dealt with specific difficulties relating to the visited community, more general problems were addressed in synodal legislation applicable to all.

One further significant difference between episcopal injunctions and synodal legislation on the one hand and the internal regulations of the Gilbertine order was that the former was confined to ordering discipline and organisation, paying no attention to the religious life, devotional practices or liturgy of the nuns. By contrast both Adam and Ottobuono were also concerned with spiritual regulation. The former stipulated that at the end of the nuns' Hours there should be a pause before the Kyrie, just as there was before the singing of the Psalms. He also ruled that in future there be no excessive pictures or sculptures; no one could have icons or images other than of Christ, Mary and John the Evangelist.Footnote ⁸⁹ In other words the nuns could venerate the ‘communal’ image of the Rood, but ‘private’ images were suspect. The issue of veneration of the latter had also vexed Aelred who, in the De institutione inclusarum, wrote that anchoresses should venerate only the hanging Christ upon their altar but they might have statues of Mary and John on either side ‘si hoc et ad commendandam tibi virginitatis excellentiam’. On the other hand the author of the Ancrene Wisse clearly envisaged that the anchoresses might venerate images both of Our Lady and other images, especially those to whom altars were dedicated out of devotion.Footnote ⁹⁰ That this issue was contested is illustrated by the fact that, following an appeal by the nuns, Ottobuono granted that not only should the Rood be allowed but they were permitted to have an image of the saint placed at altars dedicated to that saint, an arrangement that closely parallels that in the Ancrene Wisse.Footnote ⁹¹ The nuns also made an urgent request that the communities be allowed to celebrate the feasts of SS. Mark and Luke, the translation of St Andrew and St Margaret, and to observe the memoriae of SS. Benedict and Gilbert at Vespers and Matins.Footnote ⁹² These new observances were similarly sanctioned by the legate. This episode sheds a rare light on the spiritual life of the Gilbertine nuns, otherwise so elusive.Footnote ⁹³ As important, it indicates that members of the Gilbertine communities themselves had a voice in the new ordinances.Footnote ⁹⁴

Finally, we should turn to the London council, one of the most significant church councils ever to be held in medieval England. According to their most recent editors ‘the canons became the most important single collection of local law for the English Church’.Footnote ⁹⁵ Though in part a restatement of the canons issued at the Council of London in 1237 they go significantly beyond those in their scope. Preserved in about seventy manuscripts, they were soon regularly cited by English diocesan bishops in their own legislation. Of the fifty-three canons, about a third relate to the religious, of which the longest is entitled, ‘quod moniales certa loca non exeant’. This was rightly described by Power as ‘an amplification of the Benedictine rule of enclosure, made far more rigid and severe’.Footnote ⁹⁶ It reiterated and strengthened earlier prohibitions on entering the cloister, but also established very strict rules of enclosure that went far beyond any earlier legislation. For the first time the question of nuns leaving the cloister was addressed in detail. Nuns were allowed to go into the oratory, to pray lest they fall into temptation and sin; the chapter house, where due punishment was given; the dormitory and refectory, to rest and restore the body that temptations might be the more resisted. At all other times they were to stay in the cloister which provided a barrier between the nun and the ‘world's chaos’. The disciplinary and devotional imperatives underlying claustration had seldom been so clearly and economically expressed. Other parts of the nunnery – including the offices – were normally off-limits, except for those nuns who had responsibility for them, and then only if accompanied, except for the infirmary when necessary or other areas if sanctioned by the abbess or prioress. Naturally nuns other than the abbess or prioress (and even these were to be accompanied) were forbidden to leave the house except in great necessity, with permission, and accompanied by a trustworthy companion. Previously nuns had taken part in public devotional processions, now they were to have their own processions within the nunnery at the appointed times. One small concession allowed a nun to eat with a close relative or friend provided there was no cause for suspicion.Footnote ⁹⁷ The issue of claustration was, of course, closely connected with that of chastity. This connection was made explicit both in the 1268 ordinance which noted the danger of arousing wicked desires and the need to preserve the innocence of heart and body, and in the chapter of the 1281 Lambeth Council which likened the nun out of her cloister to Dinah (the daughter of Jacob who had left her home and as a consequence was raped by Shechem).Footnote ⁹⁸ Yet in spite of the fact that visitation records contain frequent instances of individual sexual failings there are relatively few references in these accounts to the possibility and punishment of sexual encounters involving nuns.Footnote ⁹⁹ The Lambeth council reserved absolution to a bishop and this sanction was repeated in characteristically forthright manner by Archbishop Pecham.Footnote ¹⁰⁰

The monastic canons of the London council represent a convergence of Gilbertine legislation, the experience of episcopal visitors, and wider conciliar regulation. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that Ottobuono used what he had found at Sempringham and the new ordinances he had issued there as a blueprint for decrees to be observed by all English nunneries. At the same time there was reciprocity, for the Gilbertine record of Ottobuono's visitation appends the London council's statutes pertaining to the religious. In one sense the Gilbertines had lost something of their distinctiveness; for the first time they were now additionally subject to a significant codification established outside their own walls. In another they were now more fully incorporated into the mainstream of the religious life for women in medieval England which they did so much to influence.

Until Periculoso Ottobuono's legislation was the point of reference for all diocesan visitations of nunneries. The legate explicitly stated that all visitors should ensure that the statutes were strictly observed and there is some evidence that diocesan bishops did indeed take the new regulations seriously: it is also clear that breaches of observance continued to be widespread.Footnote ¹⁰¹ That this legislation was intended to be normative for nunneries is suggested by William of Wykeham's explicit reference to his imitation of the ‘constitutiones bone memorie domini Othoboni’ in his injunctions for Romsey in 1387, although how successful it was in reality rather than as a statement of intent remains unclear.Footnote ¹⁰² Of all bishops between the Council of London and Periculoso Archbishop Pecham was the most assiduous in imposing and even extending the recent legislation through his Lambeth council.Footnote ¹⁰³ How far the Ottobuono injunctions were observed within Gilbertine communities in the following century is equally hard to say. Statutes deriving from the chapters of 1300, 1304 and 1347, insofar as they deal with disciplinary matters, largely reiterate earlier pronouncements, both in the rule and in the amendments of Adam and Ottobuono. Certainly none seem to derive from abuses discovered through the visitation of the magister. The paucity of the Gilbertine evidence compared with the significantly increased records of episcopal visitations of nunneries during the fourteenth century is disappointing. John Tillotson has argued that the apparent increase in disciplinary problems in Yorkshire nunneries following Periculoso may indicate an increased enthusiasm for visitations amongst the archbishops combined with greater attention to their recording by their administration. At the same time, however, he notes that fourteenth-century archbishops were generally pragmatic in their approach to claustration, following practices observed by their thirteenth–century predecessors: the strict claustration demanded by Periculoso was never achieved.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ Ultimately the strong network of ties that enmeshed the nuns in a web of relationships with the lay world through spiritual and secular kinship, through recruitment and friendship, benefactions and litigation proved too strong for those who strove to keep the nuns far from the ‘world's chaos’.