Chapter One
Attendentes and Secular Canonesses
Pope Clement V published his new collection of canon law on March 21, 1314. He called it Liber Septimus since it was a compilation of papal constitutions and counciliar legislation that had come into existence subsequent to the promulgation of the Liber Sextus by Pope Boniface VIII in 1298. Less than a month later Clement V died and both the name and, to some extent, the content of his collection changed.
Formal promulgation or circulation of copies of a new legal collection to the universities, especially to the preeminent law school at the university of Bologna, was fundamental to medieval practice. Clement V''s death postponed promulgation of his book, and it was not until October, 1317, that the new pope, John XXII, completed that process. In the intervening years the collection had been renamed the Clementinae or Constitutiones Clementinae, and John had also felt free to make modifications in the text itself.
The Clementinae was the last official collection of medieval canon law and, as such, its content and the circumstances surrounding its publication have interested legal historians for some time. But for historians of women religious, Clement''s collection of laws is known principally because it contains two decrees, referred to by their opening words Cum de quibusdam and Ad nostrum. Both deal, although from very different perspectives, with the beguines, and given the popularity of beguine scholarship it is not surprising that these two constitutions are routinely cited to illustrate Clement V''s attitude toward quasi-religious women. But the Clementinae contains legislation dealing with a much more venerable quasi-religious group as well. A canon of the Council of Vienne (1311-12) published in Book III of the Clementinae, pertains to a group of aristocratic quasi-religious known as secular canonesses, women whose claim on the religious life of the church was as ancient as it was contested.
The beguines originated in the late twelfth century, but some historians, and medieval canonesses themselves, traced the roots of the canonical way of life back to the fourth century. They found evidence that in the Eastern Church at that time, the term canonica, along with several others such as mulier religiosa, ancilla Dei, and femina Deo devota, designated women whose pious services for a church were recorded in its canon or register. Even if we confine ourselves to Western prototypes, however, it becomes clear that secular canonesses had provided a quasi-religious alternative to convent life for aristocratic women in Germany, France, and the Low Countries at least since the eighth century. In 742 the Concilium Germanicum drew the distinction between virgines velatae, or nuns, and virgines non velatae, canonesses. The term canonicae was then applied to virgins and widows who did not enter a convent but rather lived according to the synodal canons of the local bishop, "sub ordine canonica." In an attempt to regularize practice in Frankish territories, various councils ordered that pious women choose between profession as a Benedictine nun or a life guided by canonical regulation. Those regulations remained inconsistent and largely unavailable to women until the Council of Chalons in 813 published rules for canonesses (sanctimoniales qui canonicas vocant). In 816, when the Council of Aachen met, these rules were expanded into the Institutio sanctimonialium, and the institution of canonesses was officially recognized.
As the Latin terminology cited above suggests, the distinction between nuns and canonesses was not always clear-cut. Both nuns and canonesses were ruled by abbesses, and even the regulations issued by the Council of Aachen address canonesses as sanctimoniales, the term generally used to mean nuns. Modern historians forced to rely on evidence from foundation documents and chronicles with imprecise terminology have had considerable difficulty differentiating between nuns and canonesses. Medieval canonesses, however, frequently insisted upon such a distinction, especially when resisting reformist attempts to turn institutes of canonesses into Benedictine nunneries.
Canonesses consistently claimed to be distinct from nuns in that they were not bound by strict cloister regulations and made no formal profession, hence taking no permanent vows. The rejection of strict claustration stemmed from the fact that canonesses had traditionally performed public liturgical functions, ranging from ringing church bells and leading processions to participating in provincial synods, and that such functions made enclosure impractical, if not impossible. The absence of permanent vows had even greater ramifications. Since they did not vow chastity, they could leave the canonical life to marry; since they took no vow of poverty, secular canonesses retained rights to private property, and they lived in their own houses or apartments within the monastery walls, built around the abbey church.
Throughout the Middle Ages, secular canonesses were highly regarded. Their patrons were kings, queens, popes, and local nobility. Emperors freed these communities of noble women, some founded by their mothers or sisters, from local jurisdiction; some even obtained exemption from episcopal tithes. The greatest houses, such as Gandersheim, Quedlinburg, and Essen, possessed tremendous wealth and became centers of learning and culture. The abbesses in such houses wielded power commensurate with their titles of metropolitana and diaconissa.
Money and powerful patronage protected secular canonesses even from reforming churchmen whose sense of order was offended by the ''irregularity'' of their institution. As noted, Carolingian legislation sought to regularize religious practice among Frankish women. Efforts were also made at that time to impose strict, or at least stricter, claustration among canonesses and to restrict their quasi-sacerdotal liturgical activities. Both reform programs were resisted, and there are many examples from the tenth century of powerful abbesses living unrestricted lives amid considerable personal and communal wealth.
Nevertheless, with the renewed reform efforts of the late eleventh century, the quasi-religious character of secular canonesses once again became an issue among some of the church hierarchy. In 1059 a Roman synod required canonesses to opt for either the Benedictine or Augustinian rule and, as we shall see, a decree from the Second Lateran Council of 1139 was even more pointed in its denunciations of alleged abuses.
It is within this context of renewed clerical criticism of certain features of female canonical life-criticism that stopped short of becoming blanket condemnation of an aristocratic tradition-that we must place the Clementine decree Attendentes. Along with several other canons of the Council of Vienne, this constitution reflects continuing efforts to renew and reform monastic life. Indeed, almost all of the text is devoted to procedures to be followed in the visitation of nuns:
"Visitors, be they bishops or others responsible for the oversight of monasteria monialium, are enjoined to regulate the dress and comportment of nuns, to dissuade them from wearing the latest fashions and from attending banquets and dances." Provisions regarding the office of abbess are followed by instructions about the number and nature of the visitor''s entourage, and the decree concludes with a warning directed at those who would dare to interfere with any aspect of ordinary visitation. Shortly before this conclusion, however, there occurs a cryptic insertion pointedly subjecting secular canonesses to visitation:
We also order, by our apostolic authority, that those women who are commonly called secular canonesses and who lead a life like that of secular canons, making no renunciation of private property and no profession, should be visited by the local ordinaries, who are to visit the non-exempt on their own authority and the exempt on the authority of the apostolic see. By this, however, we are not intending to approve the status, rule or order of secular canonesses.
Within two years of its formal presentation to the law schools of the major medieval universities, canonists began to produce commentaries on the Clementinae and so on Attendentes. Their written analyses could assume several forms, but despite differences in arrangement and depth of treatment, all were intended to explicate legal texts for teaching purposes. One popular form, the Lectura for instance, was nothing more than the compiled lecture notes of a medieval law student or professor.
Commonly, the text to be examined, or glossed, filled the center of a manuscript page and the marginal notes of the commentator bordered that text. Certain words or phrases were singled out for comment and references to other laws, canon or civil, were appended to prove (hence the term ''proof text'') or reinforce the glossator''s points. While tradition and professional practice constrained them, jurists did have a certain amount of leeway when composing their commentaries. They might choose not to comment on some of the legislation included in a compilation such as the Clementines, or they might reserve detailed analysis for those laws or the portions thereof that most interested them.
Furthermore, commentary produced at an opportune time by a well-regarded jurist might become the glossa ordinaria, or standard gloss to a major legal compilation. The ordinary gloss would then have profound influence on legal scholarship and practice since it would be reproduced alongside the original legislation in each new copy of a compilation in manuscript or, by the close of the fifteenth century, in print. Once a standard gloss on a given body of law existed, subsequent commentators would be heavily influenced by it, as would law faculty and working lawyers consulting those books contained in the corpus of canon law.
Canonical comment on Attendentes will illustrate most, if not all, of the above generalizations about the production of academic commentary. Reviewing the factors that routinely influenced the style and content of academic glosses also enables us to understand juristic elaborations that might otherwise appear inapposite, or even bizarre, to the modern reader.
The earliest surviving commentary on the Clementine Constitutions, the Lectura super Clementinis, was the work of the French canonist Guilelmus de Monte Laudano. Guilelmus, a Cluniac monk who received his doctorate in canon law from the University of Paris, taught at the University of Toulouse, and completed his commentary only two years after the formal promulgation of the Clementines. He chose to gloss the decree Attendentes, and when he reached the statement concerning secular canonesses, singled out the word approbare (to approve) in the context: "... By this, however, we are not intending to approve the status rule or order of secular canonesses." His comment is then limited to one statement: "We cannot entirely prohibit the evil inclinations (choices) of mankind."
Guilelmus'' reference comes directly from a statement attributed to Saint John Chrysostom and included in the standard medieval textbook of canon law, Gratian''s Decretum (C. 31 q.1 c.9). Chrysostom had used the words to conclude his discussion of second marriages: "Some things are ordained and some things are merely permitted. Following St. Paul, it is permitted to contract a second marriage [a technically undesirable, if not quite ''evil'' choice] rather than risk falling into the sin of fornication."
While we might quibble about the appropriateness of Guilelmus'' proof text-we can only speculate about the parallel to fornication which he might have had in mind-it is clear that Guilelmus applied St. Chrysostom''s reasoning to explain the fact that the enduring, yet suspect, institution of canonesses was still permitted to exist.
In 1322 the brevity characteristic of Guilelmus de Monte Laudano gave way to much fuller analysis, complete with citations to some important medieval legislation concerning secular canonesses. 16 It was in that year that Johannes Andreae (1270-1348), one of the most renowned canonists of the later Middle Ages, finished his lengthy Apparatus to the Clementines.
Johannes received his doctorate from the University of Bologna between 1296 and 1300, and held a chair of canon law in 1303. He numbered influential canonists like Johannes Calderinus and Paulus de Liazariis among his students, and no less a luminary than Petrarch among his friends. When he was not teaching, practicing law, or engaged in diplomatic service to the city fathers of Bologna and to Pope John XXII, Johannes wrote prolifically. The esteem with which he was regarded by contemporaries, who referred to him as iuris canonici fons et tuba (roughly, source and trumpet/transmitter of canon law), is reflected in the fact that both his commentary on the Liber Sextus and his Apparatus to the Clementines were quickly accepted as the standard glosses to these important collections. As the author of the glossa ordinaria, Johannes would profoundly influence the way in which the reference to secular canonesses in Attendentes was to be interpreted.
Glossing the words canonicae seculares, Johannes cites three separate pieces of previous ecclesiastical legislation in order to identify these women. The oldest of these laws is a canon issued at the Council of Tribur (895) and included as C.12 q.5 c.7 in Gratian''s Decretum. 19 A brief and clear-cut directive, this canon mandates that the estate of any cleric (quicumque ex gradu ecclesiastico) who died without having drawn up a will, and without surviving cognate relatives, devolve to the church that cleric served during his lifetime. And the same is to apply to women referred to simply as sanctimoniales.
A second proof text, Pope Honorius III''s response to a petition from the abbess of Quedlinburg, is best known by its opening word Dilecta. This reply was not sent directly to the abbess but rather to the abbot of Saint Michael''s, diocese of Halberstadt-a peculiarity which the context of the decretal helps to explain. Apparently the abbess had complained to the pope that, because she lacked the power to excommunicate, disobedient canonesses and clerics under her authority refused to abide by her decisions to suspend them from office and/or to confiscate their livings; therefore, these subordinates remained uncorrected.
Having rehearsed her complaint, Honorius charges the abbot of Saint Michael''s, discretioni tuae, to be sure that the disobedient clerks and canonesses in question abide by the warnings and admonitions of the abbess (eius salubria monita et mandata observent). The pope adds that the abbot might use ecclesiastical censures to that end if needed (monitione praemissa ecclesiastica censura appellatione remota compellas).
By involving a third party, a male third party, in this affair, Honorius implicitly confirmed the fact that excommunication could not be included as a weapon in the arsenal of a canoness, even when that canoness was the abbess of so prestigious a house as Quedlinburg. Yet the pope forthrightly admitted that the abbess was owed the obedience of a superior by both the clerics and canonesses under her jurisdiction. To coerce that obedience, if need be, he enlisted the aid of an abbot who did have the power to impose the ultimate ecclesiastical sanction.
Johannes'' third proof text is the decree Indemnitatibus of Pope Boniface VIII. Like Attendentes, this decree set down guidelines for nuns (in this case rules by which elections were to be governed) which Boniface VIII wished to have applied equally to secular canonesses. Unlike Attendentes, however, Indemnitatibus granted secular canonesses a concession made necessary by the particular circumstances of their quasi-religious life: This decree applies to all nuns living under any approved rule, says Boniface, and even to those who live, as is customary in some places, without renouncing property or making profession as regulars. But since secular canonesses never make religious profession, they are naturally exempt from the requirement [set forth in Indemnitatibus] that candidates for the office of abbess be fully professed members of their communities. "By this concession, however," Boniface immediately adds "we do not wish nor intend to approve their status, order, or rule."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from "A Pernicious Sort of Woman"by Elizabeth Makowski Copyright © 2005 by The Catholic University of America Press. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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