sword and spear, was the neighborhood at peace. It was not with these ladies in mind that Wordsworth found the sunset-hour as 'quiet as a nun.'

The women-saints of England are all Anglo-Saxon; after the coming of the Normans there are no more of them. And these early saints were generally ladies of high degree. Hilda, the famous Abbess of Whitby, was grand-niece of Edwin, King of Northumbria. The first religious settlement for women in England was founded by Enswith, daughter of Edbald, King of Kent. This Christian princess was sought in marriage by a heathen King of Northumbria, whom she challenged to prove the power of his gods by inducing them miraculously to lengthen a beam. The suitor failed and withdrew. Enswith herself without difficulty caused a stream to flow up hill. Bede's statement that the ladies of his day were sent to the Continent to be educated is borne out by what we know of Saint Mildred, Abbess of Upminster in Thanet. She was sent as a girl to Chelles, where, among other adventures, she was cast by the abbess into a burning furnace burning furnace for contumacy, but escaped unhurt. When she returned to England, she stepped from the vessel upon a flat stone which retained the print of her feet. Nay, more, says her chronicler, 'the dust that was scrapen off thence, being drunk, did cure sundry diseases.' A blood-fine being due her from Egbert, King of Kent, she was promised as much land as her deer could run over in one course, and the animal covered ten thousand acres of the best land in Kent.

We obtain a glimpse of the culture of the Anglo-Saxon nun by consulting the correspondence of St. Boniface, the friend of many cloistered ladies. They write to him in fluent Latin on many different subjects: one sends him some hexameter verses, another sends him

fifty gold-pieces and an altar-cloth. One says, 'I prefer thee almost to all others of the masculine sex in affectionate love'; another 'salutes her revered lover in Christ'; yet another says, 'I shall always cling to thy neck with sisterly embraces.' Like other priests in all ages, the good bishop is greatly comforted in times of discouragement by the affection of his feminine admirers. He begs one of them to finish the copy of the Epistles of Peter which she had begun to write for him in letters of gold. He responds to all their philandering with advice and sentiment and little presents. The noble Edburga, abbess of a house in Devonshire which she freely left to reside in Rome, is 'his dearest lady, and in Christ's love to be preferred to all others of the female sex.' Nevertheless he does not approve of continental travel for Anglo-Saxon nuns, and writes to Cuthbert of Canterbury, 'I will not withhold from your holiness that it were a good thing if the synod and your princes forbade women, and those who have taken the veil, to travel and stay abroad as they do. For there are very few districts of Lombardy in which there is not some woman of Anglian origin living a loose life among the Franks and the Gauls. This is a scandal and disgrace to your whole church.'

The composite photograph of the correspondents of Boniface shows a lady as important as a man, as well educated and as economically free as a man, thoroughly understanding the politics of her time and taking a hand in them, standing solidly on her own feet and sweetening existence with the harmless sentimentalism so much used by men. She has contrived that love, if not banished from her life, should be a thing apart, not her whole exist

ence.

The foundation of great abbeys like Thanet and Ely, Whitby and Barking,

was the result of the Anglo-Saxon social organization, which allowed women in some cases to hold real property; just as the existence of the female saint was due to the Teutonic estimate of the personal value of women After the social ideas of the Normans became dominant, there were in England no more women-saints, and few more abbeys for women were founded. The new settlements for religious women after the Conquest were generally priories, and the prioress was of very inferior importance to the abbess. But though the abbess owed her existence to an earlier social system, she was rather strengthened than weakened by the application to her case of feudal principles. Being always a landlord and sometimes a very great one, she shared the prestige of the landlord class. She was in some cases of such quality as to hold of the king 'by an entire barony.' By right of tenure she had the privilege at one period of being summoned to Parliament. She drew two incomes, spiritualities from the churches in her jurisdiction, and temporalities from her lands. Her manors often lay in several different shires, at a considerable distance from the abbey. It was profanely said that if the Abbot of Glastonbury were to marry the Abbess of Shrewsbury, their heir would own more land than the king. This abbess had in her gift several prebends; in the reign of Henry I she found seven knights for the king's service, and she held her own courts for pleas of debts and the like. The great capacity for business necessary to conduct the affairs of so complex a position seems to have been possessed by the average abbess, for the property of the old houses at the time of the dissolution was in a very flourishing condition.

Among the Saxons on the Continent the aristocratic tone of the convent was fully as marked. Whole families

+

of royal princesses took the veil, rather gaining the world than losing it by the step. As in England, the abbess was virtually a baron. She was overlord often of an immense property, holding directly from the king. Like a baron, she had the right of ban, she sent her contingent of armed knights into the field, she issued the summons to her own courts, she was summoned to the Reichstag, and in some instances she struck her own coins. The abbess was in close relations with the court and imperial politics. Matilda, Abbess of Quedlinburg, was twice regent for her nephew Otto III, dealt strongly in that capacity with the invading Wends, and summoned a diet on her own authority.

Under the presidency of great ladies of this type, the abbeys everywhere + before the twelfth century were centres where the daughters of nobles might live a pleasant life and receive such education as the time afforded. The early nun was not even in form what we commonly think of by that name. She was not always bound by vows, nor distinguished by her habit, nor even required to live in a particular place. Originally she as often as not remained in the world, though dedicated to God. When she was attached to a convent it was difficult to find means to constrain her to stay in it. We have seen how Boniface wrote to Cuthbert on this subject. Eldhelm, in the eighth century, describes thus the dress of the nuns of his time: 'A vest of fine linen of a violet colour is worn, above it a scarlet tunic with a hood, sleeves striped with silk and trimmed with red fur; the locks on the forehead and temples are curled with a crisping-iron, the dark head-veil is given up for white and coloured head-dresses, which, with bows of ribbon sewn on, reach down to the ground; and the nails, like those of a falcon or sparrowhawk, are pared to resemble talons.'

Bede records of the Abbey of Coldringham that 'the virgins who are vowed to God, laying aside all respect for their profession, whenever they have leisure spend all their time in weaving fine garments with which they adorn themselves like brides.' A twelfth-century document shows that at that time in Bavaria, Benedictine nuns went about as freely as monks, and wore no distinctive dress.

The phenomenon of the 'double monastery' formed in early days a deviation from the nunnery as we think of it. From the necessity of having priests at hand to minister spiritually to religious women, it seemed reasonable to make houses for nuns side by side with houses for monks, among whom there were always a certain number in orders. The problem that resulted was one of perpetual difficulty. How were the women to get just what they needed from the men, and no more? Saint Basil in his double monastery in Pontus had already been perplexed by difficult questions. May the head of the monastery (he asks) speak with any virgins other than the head of the sisters? When a sister confesses to a priest, should the mother of the monastery be present?

In Europe the double monastery was very popular; ‘a chorus of athletes of God and of chaste virgins,' an early writer rapturously calls it. Architectural remains show us the various shifts different communities were put to, that unity and isolation might be harmonized, as in a hospital devoted to both diphtheria and smallpox. Often there were two churches in the monastery, one for the men and one for the women; but sometimes a common church was split by a wall just high enough to prevent the congregation on one side from having sight of the other. The two sets must not be able to talk with each other, their voices

might mingle only in 'recitation, song, groans or sighs.' The two houses were often separated by a common cemetery, for in death there is neither male nor female. In Spain it was permitted to certain monks to kiss the hand of certain nuns in greeting, but the occasions for this observance are strictly regulated. By the rule of Saint Fructuosus it is laid down that if a monk fall ill he must not lie in a monastery of nuns, lest his soul grow sick while his body grows well. Monk and nun may not eat together.

An odd form of double monastery was especially common in Spain and England, where a whole family would transform itself into a religious house, father and mother, children and servants, continuing to live together in their old relations with the new ones added. The motive in most cases seems to have been pecuniary: hereditary possessions could in this way be safeguarded by royal charter and the prestige of religion. Sometimes the husband did not himself take the tonsure, but merely had his wife made an 'abbess.'

In many of the double monasteries an abbess was at the head of all, both men and women. It was not unnatural that she should now and then try to exceed the limits set by the Church to the services of women. Sometimes she heard confession, and occasionally she excommunicated. Sometimes she was 'weighed down with anxiety for the account she will have to give at the day of judgment for her government of a cloister containing men and women of various ages.' All the early nunneries in England of which we have any evidence on the point were of this type, and without exception the whole establishment was ruled over by a woman. The most famous example is of course Hilda of Whitby, great lady, administrator, theologian, educator, and saint. We know very little of the personal

account of the diligence of the female sex' he set women who were clever at writing to the assiduous practice of the art. Famous for centuries were the illuminated transcripts of Diemund of Wessobrunn and of Leukardis of Mallersdorf.

When the Germans bombarded Strasburg in 1870 they destroyed (among other things) the manuscript and the only complete copy of the Garden of Delights, the magnum opus of Herrad, Abbess of Hohenburg. Fortunately, transcripts or copies of parts of it survive and have been piously collected, giving us a very vivid little picture of social life in the twelfth century. Herrad's nuns, according to her own pictures of them, wore clothes differing but little from those of world's women. The only uniform article of dress was a white turban, over which the veil was thrown, but the veil itself might be red or purple, while the dress was also various in color and apparently subject to the wearer's taste. Herrad's great work was written for the instruction of her nuns, and covers the history of the world, based on the Bible narrative. She digresses frequently into questions of philosophy, ethics, and profane learning. In discussing the decay of faith in connection with the Tower of Babel, she introduces a very respectful graphic presentation of the Seven Liberal Arts. Personified as women in twelfth-century dress, they are ranged around Philosophy, Socrates, and Plato, and there is nothing to warn the nuns against their charms unless it be the head of a howling dog carried by Dialectic.

The interest taken in the nunnery in natural science may be seen by reference to the encyclopædic Physics of Hildegard, Abbess of Rupertsberg, a complete materia medica of the middle age. Hildegard describes a large number of plants, animal and chemical substances, closing each description with

a statement of the object's therapeutic qualities. qualities. We cannot say that her conclusions are always based on direct observation, for she has as much to say about the unicorn as about the pig. But she holds the sound conviction that 'devils' can be eliminated from the system by water-drinking, and displays in general so much common sense that it is clear her reputation for wonderful cures rested on a basis of scientific treatment. The care of the sick was always one of the duties of a religious house, where a light diet, regular hours, and a generally pure watersupply furnished better sanitary conditions than were always attainable in the world. Books such as those of Herrad and Hildegard presuppose a tradition of scientific interest, and the coöperation of intelligent pupils, as well as the stimulus of an appreciative public. A good deal of the work in each was probably done, as we should say to-day, in the seminar; and it is fair to infer from them a widespread intellectual interest and freedom among the pupils in the cloister.

Gerberg, Abbess of Gandersheim and daughter of the Duke Lindolf, the progenitor of the royal house of Saxony, was an excellent scholar and encouraged among her nuns the studies she had herself followed under the guidance of learned men. In the scholarly atmosphere of her abbey in the tenth century, the nun Hrotsvith produced the works which make her name memorable, not only among women but in the general history of literature. Her metrical legends and history of her own time have merits of their own, but they can be paralleled among the writings of other authors of the period. Her unique value is as a writer of Latin drama. From the close of classic times to the crude beginnings of the miracle-play, we know of no dramatic composition in Europe save the seven plays of