Spiritual Economies
Subtitle: Female Monasticism in Later Medieval England (Middle Ages Series)
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Published: February 2001
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 276
ISBN-13: 9780812235838
Subjects: Christianity; Monasticism and religious orders for women; History: World; Europe - Great Britain - General; History; History - General History; Monasticism and religious orde; Monasticism; Medieval; Women's Studies - History; England; 1066-1485; Church history; Middle Ages, 600-1500
First sentence: Documents of monastic profession and visitation provide nuns with fundamental "ideological scripts," the impacts of which exceed the textual realm, shaping nuns' participation in material, spiritual, and symbolic systems of exchange.
Description: "From its creation in the early fourteenth century to its dissolution in the sixteenth, the nunnery at Dartford was among the richest in England. Although obliged to support not only its own community but also a priory of Dominican friars at King's Langley, Dartford prospered. Records attest to the business skill of the Dartford nuns, as they managed the house's numerous holdings of land and property, together with the rents and services owed them.

That the Dartford nuns were capable businesswomen is not surprising, since the house was also a center of female education.".

"For Nancy Bradley Warten, the story of Dartford exemplifies the vibrancy of nuns' material and spiritual lives in later medieval England. Revising the long-held view that fourteenth- and fifteenth-century English nunneries were impoverished both financially and religiously, Warren clarifies that the women in female monastic communities like Dartford were not woefully incompetent at managing their affairs.

Instead, she reveals the complex role of female monasticism in diverse systems of production and exchange. Like the nuns at Dartford, women religious in late medieval England were enmeshed in material, symbolic, political, and spiritual economies that were at times in harmony and at other times in conflict with each other."--BOOK JACKET.