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Chapter 5 - Syon Abbey and the Birgittines

from II - Circles and Communities in England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2023

Corinne Saunders
Affiliation:
Durham University
Diane Watt
Affiliation:
University of Surrey
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Summary

The rich textual history of Syon Abbey, the only English house of St Birgitta of Swedenߣs Order of St Saviour, is the focus of this essay. Although there is limited evidence of English Bridgettine nuns authoring their own texts, St Birgitta, Syon Abbey, and its community of nuns as well as monks had profound and multiple influences on womenߣs literary culture in fifteenth- and early-sixteenth-century England. While the significance of Syon within the late medieval English cultural landscape cannot be overemphasised, its (textual) community is also representative of the intricacies of womenߣs literary culture. Syon women, including as well as superiors aristocratic lay women with close ties to the abbey, were engaged in the commissioning of texts. The Syon community, led by Abbess Elizabeth Gibbs, was quick to exploit the new technology of printing, and also supported by the patronage of wealthy noble women, such as Lady Margaret Beaufort. However, the textuality of the abbey expanded beyond these powerful women to include the wider community of Syon nuns, and beyond England into continental Europe.

Type
Chapter
Information
Women and Medieval Literary Culture
From the Early Middle Ages to the Fifteenth Century
, pp. 104 - 123
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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References

Further Reading

Bell, David N. (1995). What Nuns Read: Books and Libraries in Medieval English Nunneries, Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications.Google Scholar
da Costa, Alexandra (2012). Reforming Printing: Syon Abbey’s Defence of Orthodoxy 1525–1534, Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de Hamel, Christopher (1991). Syon Abbey: The Library of the Bridgettine Nuns and the Peregrinations after the Reformation, London: Roxburghe Club.Google Scholar
Ellis, Roger (1984). Viderunt eam filie Syon: The Spirituality of the English House of a Medieval Contemplative Order from Its Beginnings to the Present Day, Salzburg: Analecta Cartusiana.Google Scholar
Erler, Mary C. (2002). Women, Reading, and Piety in Late Medieval England, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Claes, Gerjot, Risberg, Sara, and Åkestam, Mia, eds. (2010). Saint Birgitta, Syon and Vadstena. Papers from a Symposium in Stockholm 4–6 October 2007, Stockholm: Kungliga Vitterhets Historie och Antikvitets Akademien.Google Scholar
Gillespie, Vincent (2002). Syon Abbey: with the Libraries of the Carthusians, Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues 9, London: British Library.Google Scholar
Grisé, C. Annette (2002). The Textual Community of Syon Abbey. Florilegium 19, 149–62.Google Scholar
Hutchison, Ann M. (1995). What the Nuns Read: Literary Evidence from The English Bridgettine House, Syon Abbey. Mediaeval Studies 57, 205–22.Google Scholar
Jones, E. A., and Walsham, Alexandra, eds. (2010). Syon Abbey and Its Books: Reading, Writing, and Religion, c. 1400–1700, Cambridge: Boydell & Brewer.Google Scholar
Powell, Susan (2017). The Birgittines of Syon Abbey: Preaching and Print, Turnhout: Brepols.Google Scholar
Warren, Nancy Bradley (2001). Spiritual Economies: Female Monasticism in Later Medieval England. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar

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