similarity in profession services is not surprising given the ties between the Benedictine tradition and the Brigittine and Franciscan traditions. The Brigittine Rule has close connections with the strict Cistercian interpretation of the Rule of St. Benedict,36 and Franciscan nuns were initially professed formaliter under the Benedictine Rule, according to the terms of which enclosure was imposed on the women religious.37 The Brigittine and Franciscan traditions depart from the Benedictine model of monastic life in significant ways, though, as their profession services begin to make clear.
Although nuptial discourse is quite important in Franciscan and Brigittine profession services, it is offset and partially counteracted by the imagery of maternity. Just as earthly marriage is prohibited for nuns, so too is bodily maternity. Profession services for Franciscan nuns, and, to an even greater extent, those for Brigittine nuns, though, open up the potentially empowering possibilities of the maternal in religious identity. The abbess and Mary as strong maternal figures model subject positions of authority and autonomy which the insistent nuptiality of Benedictine profession tries (although, as we shall see, not always successfully) to deny. Felice Lifshitz has rightly observed that the “maternal responsibility to nurture” does not contain the “maternal authority to command.”38 The abbess and Mary, however, transcend the approved function for nurturing mothers in patriarchal society, that is, the function of “maintain [ing] the social order without intervening so as to change it.”39 While the presence of the maternal in Franciscan and Brigittine profession services does not fully negate the limiting aspects of nuptial discourse as a structuring principle for female monastic identity, maternal figures do in fact intervene in the social order. They provide models of female authority and legitimate women’s autonomous possession of, exchange of, and profit from their own resources.
In the Benedictine profession service for women, while the clergy symbolically stand in for spouse and father, the role of mother is largely neglected. Neither the abbess as mother nor Mary as mother figure prominently in this service in which clerics engage in the “reproductive” work of making nuns. While the abbess does play an important role in the Benedictine profession service (for instance, she “removes the novice’s secular dress while the priest or prelate blesses the habit and veil”40), her status as mother, and the authority implied by that status, are not specifically emphasized. In the verse translation of the Benedictine rule, the chapter on receiving nuns into the community also gives Mary a mere token role. While the Latin, masculine version describes the postulant as making his vows “Coram Deo et sanctis eiis,”41 the English briefly adds Mary to the equation. The candidate makes her vow “vnto god” and to “al halows of heuyn chere” as in the Latin but also “Vnto mary, cristes moder dere.”42 The “Method of makeing a Nunn” in MS BL Cotton Vespasian A. 25 similarly gives Mary a relatively minor role in the service—brief mentions of her as virgin mother occur in three prayers.43
The Franciscan vow resembles the Benedictine vow in that Mary, here not specifically named as a mother, appears in a list with others whom the candidate addresses: “I Suster … bihote to god & owre ladi blissid mayde marie & to seynt Fraunces, to myne ladi seint Clare & to alle seyntis” (Rewle 83–84). Mary as mother nevertheless comes to the fore in the rule’s description of a woman’s motivation for entering this order. The rule envisions the influence of a “Marian trinity,”44 referring to “Eche womman whiche bi þe grace & gifte of þe holi goste schal be brouht to entre in þis ordre for to nyʒe to god owre lorde Ihesu Criste & to his ful swete moder” (Rewle 82). While the Holy Spirit provides the desire, Mary the Mother takes her place with God the Father and Jesus the Son as those to whom the nun will draw near when she enters religion.
Moreover, the abbess as a specifically maternal authority figure is also central. The candidate does not make her profession to a clerical stand-in for husband and father but rather “in hondes of þe Abbesse bifore alle þe couent,” declaring, “I Suster … bihote … in ʒoure hondes, moder, to lyue after þe rule of myne lorde þe apostle Boneface þe eytiþ correctid & approuid be alle þe time of myne life” (Rewle 83–84). Although as Lifshitz correctly notes, etymologically “an abbatissa, or abbess, is not a mother” but rather “a female father,”45 the abbess here in fact is a mother, explicitly addressed as such. The Franciscan profession is thus an exchange between women in which women are in charge rather than a transaction in which the reproductive role is coopted by clerics and in which women are subjected to male, clerical representatives of fathers and husbands.
An extremely strong emphasis is placed on maternity in the Brigittine tradition. In St. Birgitta’s revelations, when Christ describes to her the new order he wants her to found, he says, “This religion þerfore I wyll sette: ordeyne fyrst and principally by women to the worshippe of my most dere beloued modir” (Rewyll fol. 42r).46 Given this emphasis, it is not surprising that the abbess as mother plays, as she does in the Franciscan service, an important role in Brigittine consecrations. While during the consecration service the candidate makes her promise of obedience to both the bishop and the abbess,47 on the eighth day following her consecration she writes her profession in the register. The Syon Additions for the Sisters indicates that during this ceremony the new nun makes her promise “to the abbes of thys monastery, and to thy successours,” and specifically to the abbess as mother: “I delyuer and betake to ʒour reuerent moderhode, thys wrytyng.”48 In this textual transaction, the Brigittine nun does not come into male hands and under male control as the Benedictine nun does in placing her written profession on the altar. When the new Brigittine nun writes her profession in the register, which remains in the community’s possession, the textual exchange is one between women in which female, maternal authority is emphasized.
The Brigittine Rule similarly emphasizes maternal authority when it says that the abbess as mother stands in Mary’s stead as head of both male and female members of the community; the abbess “for the reuerence of the most blessid virgyn marie to whomme this ordre ys halwyd. owith to be hedde and ladye. ffor þat virgyn whose stede the abbes beryth in eerth. cryst ascendynge in to heuyn. was hedde and qwene of the apostelis and disciples of cryst” (Rewyll fol. 56r–56v). In describing how the confessor general (the highest-ranking male official in the community) and the abbess “schal behaue them,” the Syon Additions for the Sisters states that they “owe to be as fader and moder” (198). Then, altering the traditional hierarchy of father and mother, the text specifies that the abbess “is hede and lady of the monastery” and the confessor general is to “feythfully assiste the abbess” (Sisters 198).49
The authority constructed for the abbess in the Brigittine tradition did not go unchallenged. In the process of papal approval, the Rule encountered difficulties, since Pope Urban V disapproved of the “subordination of the men to the women.” Consequently, he insisted on revisions which redefined the role of the abbess, diminishing her power over the male religious of the community.50 The abbess at Syon was also not immune from challenges to her authority. The foundation charter initially gave her control over both spirituals and temporals, but an ecclesiastical council subsequently reduced her control to that of temporals only.
The Syon Additions for the Sisters itself results from a struggle between the abbess and clerical officials regarding her authority and the rights of the community. At a conference of “distinguished abbots” held in January 1416, one of a series of meetings in which the Additions were drawn up, “the claim of the sisters against the performance of certain kinds of manual work, such as cooking and baking, was refused: and the claim of the abbess Matilda Newton to be obeyed by the confessor and brothers was also refused.”51 The degree to which the Syon Additions still enables the abbess at Syon to mobilize the maternal authority originally bestowed by the Brigittine Rule is thus all the more remarkable.
In accordance with the foundation of the abbess’s maternal authority in Mary’s maternal authority, Mary is appropriately advanced
