Every so often, a student approaches me with an incredibly technical question about medieval female monasticism. Almost always, my response is to direct them to one of Elizabeth Makowski's many books which for years now have formed the authoritative corpus on anything to do with law and medieval female religious life. Makowski's new book about nuns who voluntarily or involuntarily found themselves on the wrong side of their monastic vows finds its natural place alongside her previous works on canon law, Periculoso, and quasi-religious women. Apostate Nuns is a broad term for the women under consideration, who for multiple reasons abandoned their cloistered life to return to the secular life, without formal canonical dispensation (vii). In addition to recovering the fragmented lives of these admittedly rare women, the author also explores how the development of canon law sought to encourage adherence to religious vows by addressing inconsistencies in application and interpretation. The result is an important study on a fascinating aspect of medieval female monasticism that serves to reinforce the complexities of how religious status was defined and lived by ordinary religious women.
Makowski's books have increasingly turned toward medieval English monasticism and law, and Apostate Nuns is no exception. Most nuns in this study ran away from English nunneries between 1300 and 1450, though the author does draw upon continental sources such as records generated by papal curia as well. Peculiarities of English common law meant that the legal record for apostate English nuns is unusually well-documented. A significant number of nuns who attempted to nullify their vows did so in order to try to inherit property, or to reassert lay statuses in cases where family members had tried to confine them to convents as children in order to quash inheritance claims. English common law accorded control of landed property to the king, and disputes over inheritance of estates were handled by royal courts (viii). English nuns who stood to inherit property—if they could prove that their monastic vows were invalid and therefor they were technically lay women—pleaded their cases in secular courts, and these courts consequently remanded copious ecclesiastical investigation. Property cases like these, as Makowski explains, unintentionally yield useful information about the lives of apostates (before and after leaving their convents), their sometimes bungled circumstances of profession, and how they understood their religious statuses as invalid. The English writ (warrant) system, and particularly the process of de apostata capiendo, which was designed to facilitate coordination between secular and ecclesiastical authorities to capture runaway religious, also generated a parallel source base of information on particularly unrepentant apostates. Makowski acknowledges that both types of sources tend to be formulaic and rarely hint at motivation, circumstances, or outcomes: to fill in the gaps, she turns frequently to recent studies on female spirituality and penitential practice. Most of the chapters connect themes to well-known narrative sources, such as the famous love affair between Sor Lucrezia Buti and Fra Filippo Lippi or the chronicle of Johannes Busch, and spend considerable time describing these events.
Makowski often reminds readers that though canon lawyers defined any person who left the monastery after formal profession as an apostate, the situation was much more complicated. Indeed, Makowski argues that apostate nuns did genuinely believe that they were on the right side of the law when they left their convents (193). Makowski's meticulous treatment of the various reasons nuns might find themselves in apostasy makes it clear that there is no way to uniformly characterize medieval female apostasy, and that moreover, the trajectory of alleged apostate nuns was hard to predict. The popular trope of the wayward runaway is also misleading, and though nuns left their convents for a variety of reasons, many did eventually seek to return.
The tight organization of the book establishes the complexity of defining apostasy, the various reasons a nun might leave the convent, and how apostasy was handled pastorally and practically. Part One presents the canonical ideal of monastic profession: how ceremonies were supposed to take place, how divergence could lead to uncertainty of religious status, and how then dissatisfied nuns could successfully petition that their vows were invalid. The simplest route was to prove that they had taken their vows as children or had been passively subsumed into the community (such as when novices wore the same habits as veiled nuns, and in convents that did not follow standard profession ceremonies). Part Two looks at the most common reasons nuns left their convents. Petitioning the papal curia was expensive and only realistic for elite nuns with resources; in other cases, nuns simply left without permission and did not return. Some nuns claimed they had been physically threatened with death or bodily harm if they did not profess, which was difficult to prove, but was backed by long precedent for nullification. On less sure legal footing were nuns who left for lust, marriage, or to conceal pregnancy. Others were involuntarily displaced from their convents due to plagues, famines, or rampaging armies, and then chose not to return later on. Others seem to have just been bored or feared that reforms would make life intolerable. Part Three examines the penalties imposed on nuns who had been returned to their convents, as well as the difficulties in calibrating punishment so as to not drive penitents out yet again. Some nuns reintegrated so well that they eventually even served in elected offices.
Makowski tends to rely upon long excerpts from secondary literature, sometimes with little analysis. Some of the chapters oversell themselves somewhat: for instance, a long build up to “natural disasters” forcing nuns out into the world led me to erroneously expect some exciting anecdotes of convent walls collapsing on top of nuns, earthquakes, floods, or animal infestations, none of which materialized. Nonetheless, this is an important and well-written contribution to the history of women and medieval monasticism, and it will now be the go-to source for any question about the how and why of medieval female apostasy.
