HSTAM 111 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Double Monastery, Consecration, Leoba
15 May 2017
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
Few options as a woman: enter convent or monastery, get married and raise family. To join a monastery, must generally be of noble status: oblation giving children to a monastery or convent. Benefits: safety from political violence, access to education could follow their intellectual interests, longer lifespan b/c no childbearing, very powerful, revered by society around them. Non-convent noblewomen taught social conventions, housekeeping, knitting/sewing; not reading or writing, necessarily. Women in cloister ( contained within monastery) often assumed roles of men; became near equals to male counterparts. In 4th c. women were pushed out of official church position b/c constantinople declares. Scriptoria rooms in monasteries for writing and copying manuscripts. Nobility found and grant property to monasteries. The person running it very powerful political player (abbot or abbess) Double monastery house for women and house for men; segregated: abbess usually in charge of both houses, example: fulda. Laybrother(sister) do the manual labor in monasteries; commoners who join monastery.
