if a convent was established by a king or emperor, it was a royal or imperial convent and had royal protection. Alongside imperial or royal convents, there was a multitude of ‘dependent convents’, some of which were under the direction of an elected abbess. As a mark of distinction, the abbess of the Middle Ages carried a staff. Other officials in the convent included the chantress, who directed the choir and composed music; the infirmarian, who was trained to serve as pharmacist and physician to the convent, and the teachers, who gave lessons in Latin, reading, writing, music and needlework. Following the Rule of St Benedict, the nuns performed domestic work and managed their bakery and garden. They accepted lay sisters to do domestic work, though the numbers of lay Benedictines remained small until the eighteenth century. Communities lived on the produce from their farms and they rented land and vineyards to servants and tenants, to raise income.
Religious life for nuns centred on the performance of choir service. By the Middle Ages, the nuns’ choir was located in a gallery within the church, or in an upper storey of the church, while the vault of the church often served as a tomb. Nuns spent much time walking and praying in the cloisters and reading was done in niches along the cloister. There was also a scriptorium for the copyists and scribes. Some nuns were particularly known for their scholarship and theological training, such as St Hildegard of Bingen and Elizabeth of Schönau.6 The Benedictine house was a place where the word of God was read and heard, as well as put into practice. The emphasis on ‘listening’ to the scriptures, through the Benedictine practice of lectio divina, was – and still is – central to Benedictine monasticism.7
Lady Mary Percy and the Benedictine Foundation at Ypres
The thirteenth century saw a decline in Benedictinism, which has been linked to economic changes. Convents were generally small and relied on barter and their own industry in order to survive. Poor harvests, crop failures, bad management and internal disputes all served to weaken the fabric of monastic life. Convents were also made weak through the practice of having to accept noblewomen who had no serious commitment to religious life. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the number of nuns in convents fell. In France and England, the Black Plague and the Hundred Years’ War contributed to the demise of many convents. When the Protestant Reformation brought about the complete suppression of the English monasteries, nuns were forced to either abandon religious life or flee to continental Europe. By 1539, there was no longer ‘a single convent in England’.8 However, this was not the end of the English convents; in the century that followed, the English convents in exile joined other communities on the Continent and new convents were founded. The first post-Reformation community of English Benedictines to be established on the Continent was the monastery of the Glorious Assumption of Our Lady, founded by Lady Mary Percy in Brussels in 1598.9
Lady Mary Percy, foundress of the monastery of the Glorious Assumption of Our Lady, Brussels (1598).
The foundation in Brussels, which was made by Lady Mary Percy, was intended for English women who wanted to follow the Benedictine way of life. Until its foundation, such women had ‘no choice but to join existing communities on the Continent’, even though they often did not speak their language.10 The Brussels foundation had the support of missionaries in England, who recruited postulants, and it flourished. As the congregation expanded, it became clear that filiations, or daughter houses, were needed to help accommodate the growing community. A convent was established in Cambray (Cambrai) in 1623 and another was founded in Ghent in 1624.11 In turn, the convent at Ghent became the mother house to four Benedictine houses: Boulogne (1652), Pontoise (1658), Dunkirk (1662) and finally Ypres (1665).12
The Ghent convent, known as the Abbey of the Immaculate Conception of Our Blessed Lady, was founded by a group of nuns from the Brussels convent, under the spiritual guidance of Jesuit confessors.
In 1665, a daughter house of the Ghent community was founded at Ypres, when the Bishop of Ypres, Martin de Praets, invited them into his diocese. The bishop was familiar with the work of the Benedictines in Ghent and, wanting a similar foundation for Ypres, he made a special request that Dame Marina Beaumont be appointed to lead the new foundation on account of her ‘fluency in languages’.13 In 1665, Dame Marina Beaumont became the first lady abbess of the Benedictines in Ypres and nuns from the communities in both Ghent and Dunkirk were chosen to join her.14 The Ypres monastery, known as Gratia Dei, was ‘the last foundation of English Benedictine nuns in exile’.15
Bishop de Praets had acquired temporary premises to serve as a convent and had promised to support the building of a more permanent abbey. However, when he died within a year of the arrival of the nuns, the future of the community was uncertain. In the preceding years, the situation in Ypres had been difficult as the nuns were unable to expand their community. Although a number of nuns had been sent from the Benedictine communities in Ghent, Pontoise and Dunkirk, to help with the foundation, none remained long.16 Until 1681, the only two constants in the Ypres community were Abbess Beaumont and Dame Flavia Carey.17 In 1671, the little community had to give up their house but a new abbey was secured in Rue St Jacques. It would serve as home to the Ypres community for the next 243 years.
To expand the community, Abbess Beaumont entered into negotiation with the Abbess of Pontoise, Anne Neville. Abbess Beaumont had hoped that if she surrendered the Ypres foundation to the community in Pontoise, ‘Ypres would be supplied by subjects from them and so by consequence to be by consent of all for future times to be dependant [sic] on that of Pontoise.’18 No agreement was reached and Abbess Beaumont subsequently approached the Paris community for help in the matter.19 According to Abbess Neville, in 1681, ‘My Lady Marina [Beaumont] made conditions with the Benedictine Dames at Paris and took two of theirs away with her … [and] by the favour of friends my Lady Marina procured some good charities and a yearly pension from the King of France, so she and her company returned home with much joy.’20
The Irish Dames of Ypres
Encouraged by support from the community in Paris, the Dames of Ypres became more optimistic for the future of their foundation. However, this period of tranquillity was short-lived. In 1682, Abbess Beaumont died and confusion around the affiliation of the house emerged. According to the Ypres Annals:
The Nuns of Ypres, discontented with the translation of their house, informed the Community of Gent of Lady Beaumont’s transaction. Lady Knatchbull, then Abbess of Gent, engaged Lady Caryl, Abbess of Dunkirk, to go to Ypres in order to keep the house for the Congregation, to take with her sufficient subjects to elect an Abbess for a Community of Irish; as she always intended that the house of Ypres should serve for that nation …21
The Dames from Paris were forced to relinquish their claims on Ypres and they returned to their Mother House. The annals record:
As soon as Lady Caryl [Abbess of Dunkirk] received the account of Lady Beaumont’s death (which happened on 27 August 1682), she came to Ypres, with four of her religious, two of whom being Irish, she desired they should join the Nuns of Ypres house and elect an Abbess; that the person elected was to be chosen in quality of the first Abbess
