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NUNS, SIGNATURES, AND LITERACY IN LATE-CAROLINGIAN CATALONIA
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 November 2019
Abstract
It is somewhat rare to be able to analyze the membership of an early medieval women's religious community in any detail. Sant Joan de Ripoll, which operated from the late ninth century until 1017 at modern-day Sant Joan de les Abadesses in Catalonia, provides not just this opportunity but the even rarer chance to evaluate the nuns’ command of writing, by means of a single original charter of 949 that several of them signed autograph. This article argues that the signatures of these nuns indicate that they had in fact been taught to write before joining the nunnery. They are thus a source for female lay, rather than religious, literacy in this time and area. Consolidating this, the article provides a prosopography of the known nuns derived from the other charters of the nunnery's part-surviving archive, including tracing some of their careers beyond the 1017 dissolution of the house. This shows that the members of the comital family who had founded the house and provided several of its abbesses were not otherwise frequent among the nuns; rather, the nunnery recruited from the local notables in its neighborhoods, to whose interest in female literacy these signatures therefore testify. Such support could not prevent the closure of the house, however, and the article closes with a reflection on the agency available to the nuns in a political sphere dominated by male, secular interests.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © Fordham University 2019
Footnotes
This article began its life as a paper given at a conference in honor of Professor Rosamond McKitterick in the University of Cambridge in 2009, the publication of which was projected but never occurred. An alternative offer of publication in a volume edited by Michelle Armstrong-Partida, Alexandra Guerson De Oliveira, and Dana Wessell Lightfoot, still to emerge, was subsequently withdrawn for reasons of theme, but I owe all three thanks for their comments, which have made this essay considerably stronger and better directed. I also owe thanks to Drs. Amy Brown and Rebecca Darley for comments and support during drafting and to the Archivo de la Corona de Aragón in Barcelona for permission to reproduce the illustration. This remains, however, a paper for Rosamond, and it is to her I dedicate it in its final home.
References
1 The phrasing is necessitated by the very late combination of the territories that go to make up any version of the political unit we call Catalonia, by the hot debate over its historical independence provoked by that over its modern nationhood, and by the mismatch of most versions of its boundaries with the modern-day situation. My use of the term “Catalonia” in what follows to refer to the area in the ninth to eleventh centuries is not intended to imply any exact equivalence of this historical geographical area with the modern political unit. Although there is no neutral guide to medievalist historiography on this theme, Flocel Sabaté i Curull, Percepció i identificació dels catalans a l'edat mitjana (Barcelona, 2016), accessed 8 December 2017, https://publicacions.iec.cat/repository/pdf/00000238/00000010.pdf, is of great use.
2 On these rulers and the development of their territory see now Cullen J. Chandler, Carolingian Catalonia: Politics, Culture, and Identity in an Imperial Province, 778–987, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought, 4th series 111 (Cambridge, 2019). The issue will shortly be treated by Josep M. Salrach Marès, “Política i moral: Els comtes de Cerdanya-Besalú i la comunitat de monges benedictines de Sant Joan de les Abadesses (segles IX-XI),” in El monestir de Sant Joan. Primer cenobi femení dels comtats catalans (887–1017), ed. Coloma Boada, Irene Brugués, and Xavier Costa Badia (Barcelona, forthcoming).
3 For the detail of Sant Joan's history see below. The key works are Esteve Albert i Corp, Les Abadesses de Sant Joan, 2nd ed., Episodis de la història 69 (Barcelona, 1999); Antoni Pladevall i Font et al., “Sant Joan de les Abadesses,” in El Ripollès, ed. Antoni Pladevall, Catalunya Romànica 10 (Barcelona, 1987), 354–410; Jarrett, Jonathan, “Power over Past and Future: Abbess Emma and the Nunnery of Sant Joan de Les Abadesses,” Early Medieval Europe 12 (2003): 229–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar, DOI: 10.1111/j.0963-9462.2004.00128.x.; Jarrett, Rulers and Ruled in Frontier Catalonia, 880–1010: Pathways of Power (Woodbridge, 2010), 23–72; and Pladevall, Antoni, “El monestir de Sant Joan, del cenobi benedictí femení a canònica clerical,” in El monestir de Sant Joan de les Abadesses, ed. Crispi, Marta and Montraveta, Miriam (Sant Joan de les Abadesses, 2012), 18–37Google Scholar. I must thank Xavier Costa Badia for alerting me to this last piece and the volume which contains it. All personal names in what follows are normalized to modern Catalan forms, following those used in the principal source editions on which I rely (see n. 6 below).
4 Albert, Abadesses.
5 Araceli Rosillo-Luque, “De nenes a abadesses: llinatge i cultura als cenobis femenins alt-medievals (segles IX-X),” in Boada, Brugués and Costa, El monestir de Sant Joan, was not yet available as this article went to press.
6 I use sigla and document numbers for most primary sources in what follows, as follows:
CC2 = Ramón d'Abadal i de Vinyals, ed., Catalunya carolíngia, volum II: Els diplomes carolingis a Catalunya, facsimile reprint of 1st ed. (1922–52), Memòries de la Secció històrico-arqueològica 75 (Barcelona, 2007). CC4 = Ramon Ordeig i Mata, ed., Catalunya carolíngia, volum IV: Els comtats d'Osona i Manresa, Memòries de la Secció Històrico-Arqueològica 53 (Barcelona, 1999). CC5 = Santiago Sobrequés i Vidal, Sebastià Riera i Viader, and Manuel Rovira i Solà, eds., Catalunya Carolíngia, volum V: Els comtats de Girona, Besalú, Empúries i Peralada, rev. by Ramon Ordeig i Mata, Memòries de la Secció Històrico-Arqueològica 61 (Barcelona, 2003). Comtal = Gaspar Feliu i Montfort and Josep M. Salrach i Marés, eds., Els pergamins de l'arxiu comtal de Barcelona de Ramon Borrell a Ramon Berenguer I, Diplomataris 18–20 (Barcelona, 1999). Condal = Federico Udina Martorell, El Archivo Condal de Barcelona en los siglos IX–X: Estudio crítico de sus fondos, Textos 18 (Barcelona, 1951). Dotalies = Ramon Ordeig i Mata, ed., Les dotalies de les esglésies de Catalunya (segles IX–XII), Estudis Històrics: Diplomataris 1–4 (Vic, 1993–97). Sant Joan = Joan Ferrer i Godoy, ed., Diplomatari del monestir de Sant Joan de les Abadesses (995–1273), Diplomataris 43 (Barcelona, 2009), accessed 12 June 2017, http://www.fundacionoguera.com/libros/DIPLOMATARI ST JOAN.pdf.
Many of the documents cited appear in more than one of these editions; I have provided alternatives in parentheses. Thus, the charter signed by the nuns is CC4 645 (Condal 128).
7 Michel Zimmermann, Écrire et lire en Catalogne (IXe–XIIe siècle), Bibliothèque de la Casa de Velázquez 23 (Madrid, 2003), 1:89: “l'ineptitude à l’écriture est générale chez les moniales,” although this very charter is discussed at Zimmerman, 1:302 n. 111. Zimmermann makes great efforts to hide female literacy in this work; the most startling example is his analysis of a Vic library catalogue, in which his prose genders a female borrower, Riquilda, male: Zimmerman, Écrire et lire en Catalogne, 2:593: “Quant à Richeldes, il conserve le livre des Rois.”
8 This scholarship is too large to list here; items of particular influence on this article will be evident in subsequent citation. General benchmarks might however include David Herlihy, “Land, Family, and Women in Continental Europe, 701–1200,” Traditio 18 (1962): 89–120, repr. in Women in Medieval Society, ed. Susan Mosher Stuard (Philadelphia, PA, 1976), 13–45; Joan W. Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” American Historical Review 91 (1986): 1053–76, DOI: 10.2307/1864376, repr. in Scott, Gender and the Politics of History, 2nd ed. (New York, 2000), 28–50; Mary Carpenter Erler and Maryanne Kowaleski, eds., Women and Power in the Middle Ages (Athens, GA, 1988); Janet L. Nelson, “Family, Gender and Sexuality in the Middle Ages,” in A Companion to Historiography, ed. Michael Bentley (London, 1997), 153–76; Pauline Stafford and Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker, eds., Gendering the Middle Ages (Oxford, 2005); and Judith M. Bennett, History Matters: Patriarchy and the Challenge of Feminism (Manchester, 2006). A review of earlier work in the field can be found in Margaret Schaus and Susan Mosher Stuard, “Citizens of No Mean City: Medieval Women's History,” Journal of Women's History 6 (1994): 170–98, DOI: 10.1353/jowh.2010.0303.
9 Jaime Villanueva, Viage á las iglesias de Vique y Solsona, 1806 y 1807, Viage literario a las Iglesias de España 8 (Valencia, 1821), accessed 26 January 2015, https://archive.org/details/viageliterariola08vill, ap. I.
10 Ramon d'Abadal i de Vinyals, La Plana de Vich en els segles VIII i IX (717 – 886) (Vic, 1954), repr. as “La reconquesta d'una regió interior de Catalunya: la plana de Vic (717–886),” in Ramon d'Abadal i de Vinyals, Dels Visigots als Catalans, ed. Jaume Sobrequés i Callicó, Estudis i Documents 13 (Barcelona, 1969), 1:309–21; cf. Jonathan Jarrett, “Settling the Kings’ Lands: Aprisio in Catalonia in Perspective,” Early Medieval Europe 18 (2010): 320–42, DOI: 10.1111/j.1471-8847.2010.00301.x.
11 Jarrett, “Power.” On Santa Maria see Ramon d'Abadal i de Vinyals, “La fundació del monestir de Ripoll,” in Miscel·lània Anselm M. Albareda (Montserrat, 1956), 1:187–97, repr. in Abadal, Dels Visgots als Catalans, 1:485–94, and Antoni Pladevall i Font, Joan-Albert Adell i Gisbert, and Xavier Barral i Altet, “Santa Maria de Ripoll,” in Pladevall, Ripollès, 206–75 and 332–34.
12 CC4 4, 8 and II (= Condal 3 and 4); see Jarrett, “Power,” 235–41.
13 CC2 Sant Joan de les Abadesses I (= Condal 11).
14 CC4 119 and 120 (= Condal 38 and ap. II A, with faulty dates); see Jarrett, “Power,” 241–48; Jarrett, Rulers, 35–42. Neither of the latter works is used by Martí Aurell i Cardona, “Emma, primera abadessa de Sant Joan de les Abadesses,” in Crispi and Montraveta, Sant Joan de les Abadesses, 38–45, which makes it little more than an extension of Martin Aurell, Les noces du comte: Mariage et pouvoir en Catalogne (785–1213), Histoire ancienne et médiévale 32 (Paris, 1995), 26–27.
15 Jarrett, “Power” (n. 3 above), 241–48.
16 See below and Albert, Abadesses (n. 3 above). On these women it will soon be possible to consult Xavier Costa Badia, “Les abadesses de Sant Joan després d'Emma: Gestió econòmica i política del monestir a la segona meitat del segle X,“ in Boada, Brugués, and Costa, El monestir de Sant Joan. I also treat the establishment of the nunnery in more detail in Jonathan Jarrett, “La fundació de Sant Joan en el context de l'establiment dels comtats Catalans,” trans. by Xavier Costa Badia, in Boada, Brugués, and Costa, El monestir de Sant Joan; Emma's additions to its patrimony will be further covered in Costa, “El monestir i el seu entorn. La formació i consolidació del patrimoni monàstic de Sant Joan durant l'abadiat d'Emma (c.885-c.942),” in the same volume.
17 For what follows see Jarrett, Rulers, 64–71; Pladevall, “Monestir de Sant Joan” (n. 3 above), 26–27, is unaware of this work.
18 Sant Joan 13; Comtal 121 (= Sant Joan 14), both among numerous other printings referenced there. Aurell, Noces du comte, 198, claims that Abbess Ingilberga had rejected papal judgement, but the papal document actually only says that the nuns had avoided facing judgment and that no further delay could be brooked (“Illis vero refugientibus, et ne flagitia earum penitus nudarentur, apostolicum iudicatum declinantibus … visum est nobis … ut ulterios dilationem sententiae de absentia ne lucrarentur”); the pope nonetheless invited anyone innocent to seek absolution from him (“quemadmodum qui est innocens, ut absolvantur, quaerit”).
19 Pladevall, “Monestir de Sant Joan,” 28–29. Aurell, Noces du comte, 197–202, has an obit. of 1040 for Emma, which forces him to attribute the presence in the palace to Bishop Oliba; this seems to derive from confusion with her half-sister Emma Ingilberga, the daughter of Ermemir castellan of Besora, whose earlier date of death this is. Ramon d'Abadal i de Vinyals, L'Abat Oliba, Bisbe de Vic, i la seva època, 3rd ed., Biblioteca biogràfica catalana 30 (Barcelona, 1962), repr. as “L'abat Oliba i la seva època,” in Abadal, Dels Visigots als Catalans, 2:141–277, resolved this confusion (at 190–200 of the reprint). For more on the ex-nuns after 1017 it will soon be possible to consult Irene Brugués Massot and Xavier Costa Badia, “Després del 1017: El destí de les monges,” in Boada, Brugués, and Costa, El monestir de Sant Joan.
20 Sant Joan 13 includes an offer from the pope of an audience to any of the nuns who feels she has been unjustly accused (see n. 18 above), as well as his expression of disbelief on first hearing the accusation. Pladevall, “Monestir de Sant Joan,” seems to believe that the papal judgment cannot have been founded on nothing (28: “no pretenem pas exculpar del tot l'abadessa ni la seva comunitat de la greu acusació de ‘ministres o meretrius de Venus’ amb què la butlla de Benet VIII … es fonamenta per dissolde el monestir”). Cf. Jean Verdon, “Recherches sur les monastères féminins dans la France du Nord aux IXe–XIe siècles,” Revue Mabillon 59 (1976): 49–96 at 63–69; Janet L. Nelson, “Women and the Word in the Earlier Middle Ages,” in Women in the Church: Papers Read at the 1989 Summer Meeting and the 1990 Winter Meeting of the Ecclesiastical History Society, ed. W. J. Sheils and Diana Wood, Studies in Church History 27 (Oxford, 1990), 53–78 at 66–68; and Constance Berman, “How Much Space Did Medieval Nuns Have or Need?,” in Shaping Community: The Art and Archaeology of Monasticism, ed. Sheila McNally (Oxford, 2001), 100–16 at 104.
21 Pladevall et al., “Sant Joan de les Abadesses” (n. 3 above), 357–69, and Pladevall, “Monestir de Sant Joan” (n. 3 above), 31.
22 Josep Camps and Llorenç Soldevila, El Comte Arnau (i el Comte Mal): Tres rutes literàries, Els escriptors i el país 5 (Argentona, 1994). Aurell, Noces du comte, 199–201, provides useful discussion of parallels.
23 Manuel Riu et al., El Castell de Mataplana i del comte Arnau: Una història i llegenda singulars de la Catalunya medieval (Girona, 1999); “El comte Arnau: Arqueologia de la llegenda del comte Arnau,” Caballeria SC, traductors: Traduccions i autoedició, June 6, 2003, accessed 7 December 2017, https://web.archive.org/web/20030606195843/http://personal.readysoft.es:80/caballeria/revista0/elcomtearnau/elcomtearnau.htm.
24 Endowment: Dotalies 57. Restoration: Condal 212. Gaspar Feliu i Montfort, La presa de Barcelona per Almansor: Història i mitificació (Barcelona, 2007), accessed 27 February 2018, http://www.iec.cat/butlleti/pdf/116_butlleti_feliu.pdf, 13, gives references to the historiography of Sant Pere's extensive trail of forgery. See also now Xavier Costa Badia, “Paisatges monàstics: El monacat alt-medieval als comtats catalans (segles IX-X),” Ph.D. thesis (Universitat de Barcelona 2019), pp. 430–445, for a new review of the total evidence.
25 Sant Pere de Burgal and Sant Daniel de Girona, now de Galligants; see Costa, “Paisatges monastics,” pp. 211–213, 319–320 and 431–432. For a list of nunneries in the area, but including none of these, see Jean Verdon, “Recherches sur les monastères féminins dans la France du Sud aux IXe–XIe siècles,” Annales du Midi 88 (1976): 117–38, DOI: 10.3406/anami.1976.1632, esp. 128–29, and for female monasticism in early medieval Spain and Portugal generally, Montserrat Cabré i Pairet, “‘Deodicatae’ y ‘Deovotae’: La regulación de la religiosidad femenina en los condados catalanes, siglos IX–XI,” in Las mujeres en el cristianismo medieval: Imágenes, teóricas y cauces de actuación religiosa, ed. Angela Muñoz Fernández (Madrid, 1989), 169–82.
26 Ramon d'Abadal i de Vinyals, “El renaixement monàstic a Catalunya després de l'expulció dels Sarraïns,” Studia Monastica 3 (1961): 165–77, repr. as “La vida monàstica després de l'expulció dels Sarraïns,” in Abadal, Dels Visigots als Catalans, 1:365–76; cf. Carolyn S. Sniveley, “Invisible in the Community? The Evidence for Early Women's Monasticism in the Southern Balkan Peninsula,” in McNally, Shaping Community, 57–66, for examples of such forgotten late Antique houses elsewhere. See now also on Visigothic continuity the more optimistic view of Xavier Costa Badia, “Los monasterios nacidos a través de pactos en los condados catalanes del siglo IX. Reflexiones en torno a la pervivencia de un modelo fundacional visigodo en tiempos de la reforma carolingia,” Hortus Artium Medievalium 23 (2017): 328–35, and more widely on monasticism in this area Costa, “Paisatges monàstics”.
27 Cabré, “‘Deodicatae’ y ‘Deovotae’,” or José Orlandis Rovira, “Traditio corporis et animae: La familiaritas en las iglesias y monasterios españoles en la alta edad media,” Anuario de historia del Derecho español 24 (1958): 95–280, repr. in Jose Orlandis, Estudios sobre instituciones monásticas medievales, Historia de la Iglesia 2 (Pamplona, 1971), 216–378, esp. 248–49 of the reprint.
28 CC4 4 (= Condal 3): ancillas Dei; CC4 35: sodales; CC4 37 (= Condal 10): sanctemoniales. It should be noted that all these documents are in the voice of Bishop Godmar of Osona, and also consecration acts, which were great areas of grandiloquence for scribes.
29 Orlandis, “Traditio,” 266–67 of the reprint; and now Pablo C. Díaz, “El legado del pasado: reglas y monasterios visigodos y carolingios”, in Monjes y monasterios hispanos en la Alta Edad Media, ed. José Ángel García de Cortázar and Ramón Teja (Aguilar de Campoo, 2006), pp. 9–31.
30 José Orlandis Rovira, “Monasterios dúplices españoles en la alta edad media,” Anuario de historia del Derecho español 30 (1960): 49–88, repr. in Orlandis, Estudios, 165–202 at 197–98 of the reprint; a parallel case at Notre Dame and St. Martin Denain, Arras in Verdon, “Monastères féminins dans la France du Nord,” 52, though there can be no connection. For Sants Joan i Pau see Jordi Vigué i Viñas, Antoni Pladevall i Font, and Joan-Albert Adell i Gisbert, “Sant Joan i Sant Pau de Sant Joan de les Abadesses,” in Pladevall, Ripollès (n. 3 above), 404–6.
31 Aurell's identification of this woman varies between Noces du comte, 46 and 201 (where the new abbess here is the countess who subsequently appears in Condal 130, where she disposed of property, allowing the case for poor Benedictinism to be made) and Aurell, Noces du comte, 192–93, 193 n. 2, 202, and 203 (where she is the previous first abbess of Sant Pere de les Puelles, probably actually a fiction — see n. 24 above). This latter identification allows Aurell to argue with equal brio that the appointment was an attempt to reform Sant Joan (Aurell, Noces du comte, 192: “réformatrice”), but of course then that the homonymous countess had private property implies nothing about Sant Joan's Benedictinism. I argue in forthcoming work, however, that neither of these identifications can be sustained. Aurell lists the documentation that in fact disproves them in Martí Aurell i Cardona, “Jalons pour une enquête sur les strategies matrimoniales des Comtes Catalans,” in Symposium Internacional sobre els Orígens de Catalunya (segles VIII–XI), ed. Frederic Udina i Martorell, Memorias de la Real Academia de Buenas Letras de Barcelona 23 (Barcelona, 1991), 1:281–364, accessed 1 July 2014, http://www.raco.cat/index.php/MemoriasRABL/article/viewFile/202538/298644, (310–11), but repeats his identification of abbess of Sant Joan with countess in “Emma,” 43–45 in order to explain the papal dissolution of the house; cf. n. 19 above and n. 37 below.
32 See n. 13 above.
33 CC4 35.
34 This means among other things that it should be placed after the end of the traditions of female Carolingian monasticism described so well for the eighth century in Felice Lifshitz, Religious Women in Early Carolingian Francia: A Study of Manuscript Transmission and Monastic Culture (New York, 2014), esp. 1–15; see also Alison I. Beach, Women as Scribes: Book Production and Monastic Reform in Twelfth-Century Bavaria, Cambridge Studies in Palaeography and Codicology 10 (Cambridge, 2004), 17–21.
35 On the Institutio sanctemonialium see Valerie L. Garver, Women and Aristocratic Culture in the Carolingian World (Ithaca, NY, 2009), 109–20, marred by continuous equation of nuns with canonesses, esp. at 113, as also in Lifshitz, Religious Women, 12–13; clarity in Beach, Women as Scribes, 18–19.
36 CC4 645 (= Condal 128): “non aptam, quod postea claruit.” Aurell, Noces du comte, 192–93, features an erudite reading of this phrase which allows him to posit an interregnum with no abbess in place, during which Count-Marquis Sunyer appropriated the nunnery's revenues; this seems anachronistic as well as mistranslated. Pladevall, “Monestir de Sant Joan” (n. 3 above), 24–25, proposes an alternative history of this interregnum, involving an unattested war between the comital families of Barcelona and Besalú-Cerdanya in which Borrell's brother Ermengol was killed and which was here being resolved. Ermengol's epitaph at Santa Maria de Ripoll said only that he died by the sword, the location of his demise in Cerdanaya appearing only in the twelfth-century Gesta comitum barcinonensium, which is barely factual for this early period: see Les Gesta Comitum Barchinonensium (versió primitiva), la Brevis Historia i altres textos de Ripoll, ed. Stefano Maria Cingolani, Monuments d'Història de la Corona d'Aragó 4 (València, 2012), 65 and n. 94. Cingolani and some previous authors prefer an equally unattested death for Ermengol at the hands of a Hungarian raiding army, on which see Jonathan Jarrett, “Centurions, Alcalas, and Christiani Perversi: Organisation of Society in the Pre-Catalan ‘Terra de Ningú,’” in Early Medieval Spain: A Symposium, ed. Alan Deyermond and Martin Ryan, Papers of the Medieval Hispanic Research Seminar 63 (London, 2010), 97–127 at 115–19, with references.
37 Condal 130; Albert, Abadesses (n. 3 above), 27–30. On Martin Aurell's inconsistent identifications of this woman see n. 31 above.
38 See n. 68 below.
39 I have benefited a great deal here from discussing this document with Professor Wendy Davies, whose remarks have made me rethink the chronology of the process more than once. Similar concerns were raised by an anonymous reviewer of this article. I hope that the above account proves plausible to both. Cf. alternative models offered by Benoît-Michel Tock, Scribes, souscripteurs et témoins dans les actes privés en France (VIIe–début du XIIe siècle), ARTEM 9 (Turnhout, 2005), 391–92, however.
40 The bibliography on female monastic literate production has burgeoned in recent years, in the Carolingian sphere and elsewhere. An incomplete list of studies relevant to this period includes Rosamond McKitterick, “Nuns’ Scriptoria in England and Francia in the Eighth Century,” Francia 19 (1992): 1–35, repr. in Rosamond McKitterick, Books, Scribes and Learning in the Frankish Kingdoms, 6th to 9th Centuries, Variorum Collected Studies 452 (Aldershot, 1994), chapter VIII; Jane Martindale, “The Nun Immena and the Foundation of the Abbey of Beaulieu: A Woman's Prospects in the Carolingian Church,” in Sheils and Wood, Women in the Church, 27–42; Nelson, “Women and the Word”; McKitterick, The Carolingians and the Written Word (Cambridge, 1989), 257–58; McKitterick, “Continuity and Innovation in Tenth-Century Ottonian Culture,” in Intellectual Life in the Middle Ages: Essays Presented to Margaret Gibson, ed. Lesley Smith and Benedicta Ward (London, 1992), 15–24; Pamela R. Robinson, “A Twelfth-Century Scriptrix from Nunnaminster,” in Of the Making of Books: Medieval Manuscripts, Their Scribes and Readers; Essays Presented to M. B. Parkes, ed. Pamela R. Robinson and Rivkah Zim (Aldershot, 1997), 74–93; Steven A. Stofferahn, “Changing Views of Carolingian Women's Literary Culture: The Evidence from Essen,” Early Medieval Europe 8 (1999): 69–97, DOI: 10.1111/1468-0254.00039; and Lifshitz, Religious Women.
41 See n. 7 above.
42 On the paleography of the Sant Joan documents see Udina, Archivo Condal (n. 6 above), 19–26, and here specifically 286. I owe much here to the kind advice of Professor David Ganz and Dr. Kathleen Neal, although they cannot be held responsible for any of my assertions here.
43 Gentiles's career is tracked in Jarrett, Rulers (n. 3 above), 29–30 and n. 27; Martinus appears only here in CC4 645 (= Condal 128), in CC4 641 (= Condal 127), and in Condal 130. Guiliadus worked for other people as well as the nuns and can be found as scribe of CC4 441, 444 (= Condal 111) and 890, as well as this document. For clerics rising through the ranks at Sant Joan see Jarrett, Rulers, 29–30.
44 On signatures in the documents of this area see Udina, Archivo Condal, 15–23, or in (much) more depth Zimmermann, Écrire et lire (n. 7 above), 1:57–190.
45 Expectation in works in n. 40 above. For clerics in the Girona chapter at this date see Ramon Martí, “Delà, Cesari i Ató, primers arquebisbes dels comptes-prínceps de Barcelona (951–953/981),” Analecta Sacra Tarraconensia 67 (1994): 369–86 (369–73). Those appearing here are Bishop Godmar II, the archdeacon Ató and, pace Martí, the deacon Miró, brother of Count Sunifred.
46 CC4 37 (= Condal 10) and Nathaniel L. Taylor, ed., “An Early Catalonian Charter in the Houghton Library from the Joan Gili Collection of Medieval Catalonian Manuscripts,” Harvard Library Bulletin 7 (1997): 37–44, accessed 19 May 2007, http://www.nltaylor.net/pdfs/Houghton_charter.pdf.
47 As per Janet L. Nelson, “Literacy in Carolingian Government,” in The Uses of Literacy in Early Mediaeval Europe, ed. Rosamond McKitterick (Cambridge, 1990), 258–96 at 269, citing Carolingian episcopal legislation for the education of girls at parish level, and indeed Isabel Velázquez, “Ardesie scritte di epoca visigota: Nuove prospettive sulla cultura e la scrittura,” in Privaturkunden der Karolingerzeit, ed. Peter Erhart, Karl Heidecker, and Bernhard Zeller (Dietikon Zürich, 2009), 31–45 at 34–37, arguing for such education in the Visigothic-era Meseta to explain a similar diversity of signatures on slate documents from there. Cf. however Roger Collins, “Literacy and the Laity in Early Medieval Spain,” in McKitterick, Uses of Literacy, 109–33, repr. in Collins, Law, Culture and Regionalism in Early Medieval Spain, Variorum Collected Studies 356 (Aldershot, 1992), chapter XVI, esp. 131, and Garver, Women and Aristocratic Culture (n. 35 above), 131–44, with examples of girls being sent to school at nunneries, and 144–51, covering teaching at home; the two modes are treated as exclusive.
48 Collins, “Literacy and the Laity,” for literacy in general in this area at the time.
49 Other female autographs are also known, e.g., CC4 782. As Lifshitz observes, in Religious Women, 193–96, the key question is whether these were all individual instances or whether there was influence between any of them. This article cannot exclude the latter possibility, but it does not demonstrate it.
50 On Camprodon see Jordi Vigué i Viñas et al., “Sant Pere de Camprodon,” in Pladevall, Ripollès, 85–95, and Jarrett, Rulers and Ruled, 68–69.
51 CC5 358 (= Condal 162), 359 (= Condal 163) and 360, of which the last is the original.
52 CC4 856 (= Condal 146), as well as now Costa, “Paisatges monastics”, pp. 565–589.
53 Aurell, Noces du comte (n. 14 above), 195–96 and 201; cf. pp. 6–7 and n. 31 above. For Bede's possessions, famously including a box of pepper, see Cuthbert, “Letter on the Death of Bede” in Bede, Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. Bertram Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford, 1992), 580–86 at 584.
54 Zimmermann references the document at Écrire et lire, 1:108 and 1:500. On gifts of books to and from religious women in other, better-evidenced, contexts, see Mary Carpenter Erler, Women, Reading, and Piety in Late Medieval England, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature 46 (Cambridge, 2002), 27–46.
55 Jean Verdon, “Les moniales dans la France de l'Ouest aux XIe et XIIe siècles: Étude d'histoire sociale,” Cahiers de civilisation médiévale 19 (1976): 247–64, DOI: 10.3406/ccmed.1976.2044, at 249–52.
56 For other small female communities see Verdon, “Monastères féminins dans la France du sud” (n. 25 above), 134–35; cf. the Galician nunnery of Piasca, whose thirty-six nuns signed José María Mínguez Fernández, ed., Colección diplomática del Monasterio de Sahagún (siglos IX y X), Fuentes y estudios de historia leonesa 17 (León, 1976), doc. no. 79, cited by Wendy Davies, Windows on Justice in Northern Iberia, 800–1000 (Abingdon, 2016), 215. For a later context see Erler, Women, Reading, and Piety, 29–30. Aurell, Noces du comte, 185–86, says that there were eleven nuns in Emma's “conseil” and suggests an entire community of 50 nuns, on no apparent evidence. Pladevall, “Monestir de Sant Joan” (n. 3 above), 28: “desconeixem el nombre exacte de membres de la comunitat, però sabem que era superior a 12 monges” appears to be no more than a statement of belief that the house was technically canonical in population.
57 See n. 46 above and Abadal, “Fundació” (n. 11 above).
58 Gurgúria named as a previous donor to the nunnery in Condal 16; Osseza appears in Condal 112. Despite their religious titles, no actual connection to Sant Joan is apparent for these women beyond the archival, which is to be explained by where their lands wound up, not necessarily where they themselves did; cf. Udina, Archivo Condal, 263 n. 1.
59 CC4 44 (= Condal 12): “ubi domna Emmo est Deodicata vel abatissa cum suas sanctimoniales ibi deserviunt.”
60 Another such senior is discussed in Jarrett, Rulers and Ruled, 148–50.
61 CC5 201 (= Condal ap. II 149).
62 Albert, Abadesses (n. 3 above), 21–25, but cf. n. 36 above.
63 CC4 991 (= Condal ap. II 262).
64 Orlandis, “Monasterios” (n. 30 above) 170–75; Jarrett, Rulers, 58–60, studies such agents at Sant Joan.
65 Comtal 162 (= Sant Joan 16). I owe thanks to Doctor Xavier Costa Badia for the identification of this place.
66 Jarrett, Rulers, 47–48.
67 Cabré, “‘Deodicatae’ y ‘Deovotae’” (n. 25 above).
68 Albert, Abadesses (n. 3 above), 27–38, and on Ranló specifically Jaume Marquès i Casanovas, “Domna Ranlón, ilustre dama gerundense de mil años atrás,” Anales del Instituto de Estudios Gerundenses 15 (1962): 317–31, accessed 14 September 2016, http://www.raco.cat/index.php/AnnalsGironins/article/view/53724.
69 See nn. 31 and 37 above.
70 CC5 312 (= Marqués, “Domna Ranlón”, ap. 2): “Ranlo, qui pro egritudine scribere non potui, sed digito robravi [sic].”
71 Zimmermann, Écrire et lire (n. 7 above), 1:81–83.
72 Albert, Abadesses, 39–42.
73 CC4 714 (= Condal 132).
74 On this branch of the comital family see Manuel Rovira, “Un bisbe d'Urgell del segle X: Radulf,” Urgellia 3 (1980): 167–84.
75 Comtal 188 (= Sant Joan 20).
76 Comtal 80 (= Sant Joan 8); he appears in Condal 187 as son of a deacon Guiscafred, otherwise unknown.
77 Comtal 62 (= Sant Joan 6). Pladevall, “Monestir de Sant Joan” (n. 3 above), 27, reads this document as an entry-gift, which would mean that this El·ló was unrelated to any previous one. In that case, the 964 appearance would be the last one of the 926 oblate, which is possible. However, the text of this document seems clear that El·ló was a nun already. Pladevall may be assuming that she could not receive goods if this were so, but she did anyway in 1015 (see below); perhaps, like Sesnanda's land at Ges, these were extractible from the nunnery's holdings after 1017 because they were given so recently.
78 Comtal 118 (= Sant Joan 12).
79 Comtal 187 (= Sant Joan 19).
80 Comtal 226.
81 Miquel dels Sants Gros i Pujol, “L'arxiu del monestir de Sant Joan de les Abadesses: Notícies històriques i regesta dels documents dels anys 995–1115,” in II Col·loqui d'Història del Monaquisme Català, Sant Joan de les Abadesses 1970, ed. Eufèmia Fort i Cogul (Poblet, 1974), 2:87–128, ap. 25; Aurell, Noces du comte, pp. 198–99.
82 Cf. Mary C. Erler, “Religious Women after the Dissolution: Continuing Community,” in London and the Kingdom: Essays in Honour of Caroline M. Barron, ed. Matthew Davies and Andrew Prescott, Harlaxton Medieval Studies 16 (Donington, 2008), 135–45. Bonds were not so tight here: note that Abbess Ingilberga was still alive in 1032 but apparently not present at Guinedilda's obsequies.
83 Unless she actually was called Femina; Condal ap. II 259.
84 Comtal 17 (= Sant Joan 2).
85 Comtal 81 (= Sant Joan 9).
86 Comtal 101 (Sant Joan 11): “sum tradita Sancti Iohannis.”
87 See n. 19 above and Albert, Abadesses (n. 3 above), 43–50.
88 On cartulary preservation and its implications see Patrick J. Geary, Phantoms of Remembrance: Memory and Oblivion at the End of the First Millennium, 2nd ed. (Princeton, 1996).
89 Respectively Lifshitz, Religious Women (n. 34 above); Stofferahn, “Changing Views” (n. 40 above).
90 On diet, for example, it would be dangerous to generalize from Michel Rouche, “La faim à l’époque carolingienne: Essai sur quelques types de rations alimentaires,” Revue historique 250, no. 508 (1973): 295–320, although Jean Verdon, “Notes sur le rôle économique des monastères féminins en France dans la seconde moitié du IXe et au début du Xe siècle,” Revue Mabillon 58 (1976): 329–44, did at 332. See now Marta Sancho i Planas, “Recursos alimentaris en el monestir d’època visigoda de Santa Cecília dels Altimiris (Sant Esteve de la Sarga – Pallars Jussà): Primeres aportacions,” Revista d'Arqueologia del Ponent, 28 (2018): 7–24.
91 See Felicity Riddy, “Nunneries, Communities and the Revaluation of Domesticity,” in Stafford and Mulder-Bakker, Gendering the Middle Ages (n. 8 above), 225–32 for references to studies of this kind.
92 A perspective taken for this period especially by Garver, Women (n. 35 above), 1–20 and passim, but esp. 5: “Elite women created a way of life for themselves through the very constrictions placed upon them.” All human beings must do this, however; since we exist in a limited environment, usually subject to social expectations, none of our choices are unconstrained. Vlad Petre Glăveanu, “From Individual Agency to Co-Agency,” in Constraints of Agency: Explorations of Theory in Everyday Life, ed. Craig W. Gruber et al. (Heidelberg, 2015), DOI: 10.1111/1468-0254.00039, offers a useful way through this impasse, which is known in psychology as the structure/agency debate. Cf. Berman, “How Much Space,” or esp. Dana Wessell Lightfoot, Women, Dowries and Agency: Marriage in Fifteenth-Century Valencia, Gender in History 33 (Manchester, 2013), 6–8, for more nuanced treatments of later evidence.
93 Ramon d'Abadal i de Vinyals and José María Font i Rius, “El regímen político carolingio,” in La España cristiana de los siglos VIII al XI, volumen II. Los nucleos pirenaicos (718–1035): Navarra, Aragón, Cataluña, ed. Manuel Riu i Riu (Madrid, 1999), 427–577 at 492–93; the reason was a legal provision, old but maintained, to limit intimidation by the powerful in court, and in this sense it was also a restriction on agency.
94 For example, Wemple, Suzanne Fonay, Women in Frankish Society: Marriage and the Cloister 500 to 900 (Philadelphia, PA, 1981), 149–74Google Scholar, and Fernández, Angela Muñoz, “El monocato [sic] como espacio de cultura femenina: A propósito de la Inmaculada Concepción de María y la representación de la sexuación femenina,” in Pautas históricas de sociabilidad femenina: Rituales y modelos de representación, ed. Tocino, M. Gloria Espigado, Nash, Mary, and de la Pascua Sánchez, María José (Cadiz, 1999), 71–90Google Scholar, depict the cloister as a space for female agency. Garver, Women (n. 35 above), 83, perhaps takes this furthest: her suggestion, “in fact, enclosure can give a certain freedom to religious women,” with reference to n. 66, “Late medieval English women, confined either to the cloister or to certain parts of buildings, may, for example, have found their situations conducive to developing their piety,” could equally be made of prisoners or slaves, but would normally not be (though E. E. Cummings, The Enormous Room [New York, 1922], from the perspective of the prisoner, esp. pp. 58–97, shows how it could be). Naturally one can make a choice to abdicate agency, but one therefore then has it no longer.