Abstract
Godstow Abbey was a Benedictine monastery for women, founded in the early twelfth century.1 Before the end of the twelfth century it had gained royal patronage, and in the 1530s it ranked about fifteenth in wealth among medieval English nunneries. Although Godstow’s status has probably been overstated in some modern accounts, it was certainly one of the more eminent female houses in England. Because of its relative wealth and prominence in the Middle Ages, its location near Oxford, and the burial of Henry Il’s mistress in the convent church, Godstow is quite well known even today, in a superficial way.2
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
William Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum: A History of the Abbies and Other Monasteries in England and Wales, 6 vols (1646, rpt London: James Bohn, 1846), 4:357–377; The Victoria History of the County of Oxford, vol. 2, ed. William Page (London: Archibald Constable & Company Limited, 1907), pp. 71–75
Eileen Power, Medieval English Nunneries, c. 1275 to 1535 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1922), 2, 456.
Dugdale, Monasticon, 4:357–358; Victoria History of the County of Oxford, vol. 2, pp. 71–72; Sally Thompson, Women Religious: The Founding of English Nunneries after the Norman Conquest (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 167–168 (unusually, citing the Latin cartulary)
Sharon K. Elkins, Holy Women of Twelfth-Century England (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), pp. 62–65
Lesley Smith, “Benedictine Women at Oxford: the Nuns of Godstow,” in Benedictines in Oxford, ed. Henry Wansbrough and Anthony Marett-Crosby (London: Darton, Longman, & Todd, Ltd., 1997), p. 96.
For a similar event in another foundation legend, see Penelope B. Johnson, Prayer, Patronage, and Power: The Abbey of La Trinité, Vendôme, 1032–1187 (New York: New York University Press, 1981), p. 9.
Anthony Wood identified Ediva’s son as Abbot Walkelin; The Life and Times of Anthony Wood, Antiquary, of Oxford, 1632–1695, Described by Himself, ed. Andrew Clark, 5 vols (Oxford: Oxford Historical Society, 1891–1900), 1:339.
Abbot Adam of Evesham addressed a sermon to Godstow’s nuns; David Cox, “The Literary Remains of Adam, Abbot of Evesham (1161–1189),” Journal of Medieval Latin 20 (2011): 149–150.
Elizabeth Alvilda Petroff, Medieval Women’s Visionary Literature (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 6.
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, trans. G. N. Garmonsway (London: Everyman Press, 1972), p. 261; Victoria History of the County of Oxford, vol. 2, p. 71.
English Episcopal Acta I: Lincoln 1067–1185, ed. David M. Smith (London: The British Academy, 1980), no. 33; Victoria History of the County of Oxford, vol. 2, p. 72.
The seal may be influenced by that of Evesham, which shows the founding abbot; T. A. Heslop, “Seals,” in English Romanesque Art 1066–1200, ed. George Zarnecki, Janet Holt, and Tristram Holland (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1984), pp. 312–313.
See also Joanna Cannon, “Kissing the Virgin’s Foot: Adoratio before the Madonna and Child Enacted, Depicted, Imagined,” Studies in Iconography 31 (2010): 1–50.
For lay women’s seals, see Brigitte Bedos Rezak, “Women, Seals, and Power in Medieval France, 1150–1350,” in Women and Power in the Middle Ages, ed. Mary Erler and Maryanne Kowaleski (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1988), pp. 61–82; “Medieval Women in French Sigillographic Sources,” in Women and Sources of Medieval History, ed. Joel T. Rosenthal (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1990), pp. 1–36.
See J. C. Dickinson and P. T. Ricketts, “The Anglo-Norman Chronicle of Wigmore Abbey,” Transactions of the Woolhope Naturalists’ Field Club 39 (1969): 413–433
Noel Denholm-Young, “An Early Thirteenth-Century Anglo-Norman MS,” The Bodleian Quarterly Record 6 (1929–31): 225–230.
The Godstow text would be almost the only known verse history of an English monastic house; but see Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, “‘Outdoing the Daughters of Syon’: Edith of Wilton and the Representation of Female Community in Early Fifteenth-Century England,” in Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts in Late Medieval Britain, ed. Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, Rosalynn Voaden, Arlyn Diamond, Ann Hutchison, Carol Meale, and Lesley Johnson (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2000), pp. 393–409. In the 1467 translation from Godstow, the foundation legend has a rubric suggesting that the original source was historical: “The chronicle of the house and monastery of Godstow maketh mention of how that place was founded …” (English Register of Godstow Nunnery, ed. Clark, p. 25; emphasis added).
For example, Delbert Russell, “The Campsey Collection of Old French Saints’ Lives: A Re-Examination of Its Structure and Provenance,” Scriptorium 57 (2003): 74–83; Seven More Poems, ed. Klenke, pp. 57, 73, 82, 90, 102, 113; La Passiun de Seint Edmund, ed. Judith Grant (London: Anglo-Norman Text Society, 1978), pp. 121–122.
In addition to the examples here, see Rebecca June, “The Languages of Memory: The Crabhouse Nunnery Manuscript,” in Language and Culture in Medieval Britain: The French of England, c.1100–c.1500, ed. Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, with Carolyn Collette, Maryanne Kowaleski, Linne Mooney, Ad Putter, and and David Trotter (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2009), pp. 347–358, esp. 349–350.
London, British Library, Cotton Faustina B.3; I am grateful to Mary Dockray-Miller for bringing this reference to my attention. See Mary Dockray-Miller, Saints Edith and Aethelthryth: Princesses, Miracle Workers, and their Late Medieval Audience: The Wilton Chronicle and the Wilton Life of St. Aethelthryth (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2009), pp. 396–397.
The Life of Saint Audrey: A Text by Marie de France, ed. June Hall McCash and Judith Clark Barban (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2006).
Ruth J. Dean, Anglo-Norman Literature: A Guide to Texts and Manuscripts (London: The Anglo-Norman Text Society, 1999), pp. 278–322. Most of the listed hagiographical works are verse; the majority are in octosyllabic couplets.
Russell, “The Campsey Collection,” 65; Emilie Amt, “Ela Longespee’s Roll of Benefits: Piety and Reciprocity in the Thirteenth Century,” Traditio: Studies in Ancient and Medieval History, Thought, and Religion 64 (2009): 8, 10, 18–28, 30
The Early Rolls of Merton College, Oxford, ed. J. R. L. Highfield (Oxford: Oxford Historical Society, 1964), pp. 27, 254, 258, 446–449.
Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, “‘Clerc u lai, muïne u dame’: Women and Anglo-Norman Hagiography in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries,” in Women and Literature in Britain, 1150–1500, ed. Carol M. Meale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 63.
Ela Longespee, d. 1298. Edmund of Abingdon was canonized in 1247; a chapel was built to him in St. Helen’s, Abingdon, in 1288; Wilfrid Wallace, Life of St. Edmund of Canterbury (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, and Co., 1893), p. 402; Accounts of the Obedientiars of Abingdon Abbey, ed. R. E. G. Kirk (London: The Camden Society, 1892), p. xl.
English Register of Godstow Nunnery, ed. Clark, pp. 4–24; David N. Bell, What Nuns Read: Books and Libraries in Medieval English Nunneries (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1995), pp. 35, 139.
Editor information
Copyright information
© 2012 Charlotte Newman Goldy and Amy Livingstone
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Amt, E. (2012). The Foundation Legend of Godstow Abbey: A Holy Woman’s Life in Anglo-Norman Verse. In: Goldy, C.N., Livingstone, A. (eds) Writing Medieval Women’s Lives. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137074706_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137074706_2
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-29605-7
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-07470-6
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)