Early Modern Women's Manuscript Writing by Gibson Jonathan; Burke Victoria E.; & Jonathan Gibson

Author:Gibson, Jonathan; Burke, Victoria E.; & Jonathan Gibson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor and Francis

From Reader to Writer

Armed with Baker's explicit yet vague directions for contemplation and her 'Inke, pennes, paper, [and] bookes', items which she was permitted to have in her cell, a nun would embark on her spiritual journey (Lille MS 20H1, p.42). Although a nun was not allowed to 'appropriate any thing to her selfe', her 'loose papers', or 'her owne Manuscripts, or what concernes her particular Conscience', were an exception (Lille MS 20H1, p.42; Colwich MS P2, fol.l5v). While the Constitutions provide explicit instructions concerning the production of house histories, death notices and other institutional documents, they provide little guidance as to the subject matter of a nun's private writing. However, Baker believed that this kind of writing was in conflict with a nun's precept of silence:

How can a soule but loose the benefit of her silence and solitude allowed and prescribed by the Rule ... when for all that time of silence or for a good parte of it she is extrouerted, vsing her outwarde senses in expressing her minde by wordes or writings ... (Osborn b.268, 'The Varietie of Spirits in Religion', p.69)

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