I should probably be asking if you or
> anyone else on the list can point us in the direction of references to nuns' at
> their needlework, as monks at their book-production.
>
This is a question that deserves a fuller answer than, I suspect, can
currently be given. That nuns practiced embroidery, as well as other
textile arts, is generally believed, but little effort has been made
to document the practice. It may be that the documents necessary to
do so no longer survive, but I suspect that what may have survived
has been pretty much ignored. As other discussions on this list
make clear, however, much work is currently being done on women's
monasticism, and we may soon know more. Certainly, a recent
indication of this is Jeffrey Hamburger's book, Nuns as Artists,
which analyses a series of very interesting devotional paintings done
by south German nuns in the early 16th century, although he also has
references to a house, in Munich I believe, which is documented as
making tapestries, and earlier, in the 12th century, the nunnery at
Quedlinburg may also have produced tapestries back in the 12th
century, although the tapestries in question, which were commissioned
by the abbess, cannot confidently be ascribed to her nuns, and
Dodwell judges that their attribution to the nuns may represent a
"romantic post-medieval view" which relegated all textile arts to
women. As for embroidery, there is not currently much to go on. The
early Maaseik embroideries were once thought to have been made by SS
Harlindus and Relindus, two sisters from an aristocratic family who
founded a nunnery nearly Maaseik in the 8th century, from which the
embroideries entered the parish church at Maaseik in 1577. The
embroideries are now known to be Anglo-Saxon, dating from c.800, but
the confusion is understandable, since the vita of the two saints,
written in the 9th century, mentions that they were taught
embroidery in the nunnery at Valencina (perhaps Valenciennes) and
that they left behind them certain highly decorated small cloths.
And the Council of Clovesho in 747 tried to dissuade nuns from
embroidering their habits (reminiscent of some of Hildegard of
Bingen's distinctive ideas on her nuns' habits). In England, which
in Innocent IV's words was such a treasure house of embroideries in
the middle ages, there is only one surviving work that can
confidently be attributed to a nun, one Johanna of Beverley, a
frontlet for an altar in the Victoria and Albert Museum dating from
1290-1340. It carries the inscription: "Domna Iohanna Beverlai
monaca me fecit." As someone has already mentioned, Christina of
Markyate apparently sent three embroidered mitres to Pope Adrian IV
in 1155, and there are various other documentary references, but in
many cases, it is not clear whether the woman doing the embroidery
should be more pertinently considered a nun or a noble woman. There
are many more references to noble women as patrons of embroidery, but
the practice of it, particularly in nunneries, is at present not well
founded on documentary evidence. I hope we can soon see more solid
research done on this.
Cheers,
Jim Bugslag
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