² Liber revelationum Elisabeth de sacro exercitu virginum Coloniensium, 3; ed. F. W. E. Roth, Die Visionen der hl. Elisabeth und die Schriften der Aebte Ekbert und Emecho von Schönau (Brünn: Verlag der Studien aus dem Benedictiner- und Cistercienser-Orden, 1884), 124; trans. Anne L. Clark, Elisabeth of Schönau: The Complete Works (New York: Paulist Press, 2000), 215.

³ Bruce L. Venarde, Women's Monasticism and Medieval Society: Nunneries in France and England, 890–1215 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1997), 54. For a survey of female monastic communities in the Rhineland during the twelfth century, see Franz J. Felten, “Frauenklöster und –stifte im Rheinland im 12. Jahrhundert,” in Reformidee und Reformpolitik im spätsalisch-frühstaufischen Reich, ed. Stefan Weinfurter (Mainz: Selbstverlag der Gesellschaft für mittelrheinische Kirchengeschichte, 1992), 189–300.

⁴ For a brief survey of the campaign to abolish priestly marriage, see James A. Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 214–223. Anne Barstow argues that efforts to abolish priestly marriage coincided with an increase in clerical misogyny: Anne Llewellyn Barstow, Married Priests and the Reforming Papacy: The Eleventh-Century Debates (New York: E. Mellen Press, 1982), 178–180. According to Jo Ann McNamara, the “Gregorian revolution aimed at a church virtually free of women at every level but the lowest stratum of the married laity”: Jo Ann McNamara, “The ‘Herrenfrage’: The Restructuring of the Gender System, 1050–1150,” in Medieval Masculinities: Regarding Men in the Middle Ages, ed. Clare A. Lees (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994), 3–29, 7. The coincidence of reform and decline for religious women is argued in Jo Ann McNamara, Sisters in Arms: Catholic Nuns through Two Millennia (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996).

⁵ On the cura monialium, see Klaus Schreiner, “Seelsorge in Frauenklöstern—Sakramentale Dienste, geistliche Erbauung, ethische Disziplinierung,” in Krone und Schleier: Kunst aus mittelalterlichen Frauenklöstern, ed. Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn und dem Ruhrlandmuseum Essen (Munich: Hirmer, 2005), 53–65; Fiona J. Griffiths, “Brides and Dominae: Abelard's Cura monialium at the Augustinian Monastery of Marbach,” Viator 34 (2003), 57–88; Fiona J. Griffiths, “‘Men's Duty to Provide for Women's Needs’: Abelard, Heloise, and their Negotiation of the Cura monialium,” Journal of Medieval History 30:1 (March 2004), 1–24; Julie Hotchin, “Female Religious Life and the Cura Monialium in Hirsau Monasticism, 1080 to 1150,” in Listen, Daughter: The Speculum Virginum and the Formation of Religious Women in the Middle Ages, ed. Constant J. Mews (New York: Palgrave, 2001), 59–83; Brian Golding, Gilbert of Sempringham and the Gilbertine Order, c. 1130–c. 1300 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 71–137; Les religieuses dans le cloître et dans le monde des origines à nos jours, Actes du Deuxième Colloque International du C.E.R.C.O.R. Poitiers, 29 Septembre–2 Octobre 1988 (Saint-Étienne: Publications de l'Université de Saint-Etienne, 1994), 331–391; and Penny Schine Gold, The Lady and the Virgin: Image, Attitude, and Experience in Twelfth-Century France (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 76–115.

⁶ Barbara Newman writes that Elisabeth's revelations present a “vision of religious life as a glorious, equal-opportunity venture in which women and men could provide mutual aid and comfort”: Barbara Newman, “Preface,” in Clark, trans., The Complete Works, xvii. Franz Felten notes the importance of Elisabeth's visions for the light they shed on life within the double monastery at Schönau: Felten, “Frauenklöster und –stifte,” 269. For a study of Elisabeth's visions against the backdrop of the double monastery, see Joachim Kemper, “Das benediktinische Doppelkloster Schönau und die Visionen Elisabeths von Schönau,” Archiv für mittelrheinische Kirchengeschichte 54:1 (2002), 55–102.

⁷ Caesarius reports that Verena “strengthened me to undergo martyrdom and I, seeing her steadfastness in agony, suffered together with her”: Liber revelationum, 3; ed. Roth, Die Visionen, 124; trans. Clark, The Complete Works, 214.

⁸ According to one explanation, Ursula's father had arranged that bishops from Britain accompany the women on their initial journey in order to provide “comfort” for the virgins: Liber revelationum, 6; ed. Roth, Die Visionen, 126; trans. Clark, The Complete Works, 217.

⁹ Bishop Maurisus was martyred with his nieces Babila and Juliana; Archbishop James of Antioch with his nieces; and the Greek bishop Marculus with his niece, Constantia, whom he had brought to Ursula in order to safeguard her virginity: Liber revelationum, 10, 9, 14; ed. Roth, Die Visionen, 128, 128, 130; trans. Clark, The Complete Works, 219, 218, 221–222.

¹⁰ For a discussion of Ekbert's role and his influence on Elisabeth's life and visions, see John W. Coakley, Women, Men, and Spiritual Power: Female Saints and their Male Collaborators (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), 25–44; Anne L. Clark, “Repression or Collaboration? The Case of Elisabeth and Ekbert of Schönau,” in Scott L. Waugh and Peter D. Diehl, eds., Christendom and its Discontents: Exclusion, Persecution and Rebellion, 1000–1500 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 151–167; Anne L. Clark, Elisabeth of Schönau: A Twelfth-Century Visionary (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992), 130; Anne L. Clark, “Holy Woman or Unworthy Vessel? The Representations of Elisabeth of Schönau,” in Gendered Voices: Medieval Saints and Their Interpreters, ed. Catherine M. Mooney (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), 35–51. Ekbert was at Elisabeth's side when she died and recorded the details of her death in a quasi-hagiographic text, De obitu domine Elisabeth, which he composed for female relatives at the Augustinian community of Andernach.

¹¹ According to Elizabeth Clark, the rise of Christianity was accompanied by a “blow to ‘family values’” as church fathers extolled the ascetic renunciation of both marriage and family: Elizabeth A. Clark, “Antifamilial Tendencies in Ancient Christianity,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 5:3 (January 1995), 356–380, 358. For the argument that late antique Christian discourse was not entirely anti-family, see Andrew S. Jacobs, “‘Let Him Guard Pietas’: Early Christian Exegesis and the Ascetic Family,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 11:3 (Fall 2003), 265–281; and Rebecca Krawiec, “‘From the Womb of the Church’: Monastic Families,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 11:3 (Fall 2003), 283–307. On the centrality of the family to early monasticism, see also Susanna Elm, “Formen des Zusammenlebens männlicher und weiblicher Asketen im östlichen Mittelmeerraum während des vierten Jahrhunderts nach Christus,” in Doppelklöster und andere Formen der Symbiose männlicher und weiblicher Religiosen im Mittelalter, eds. Kaspar Elm and Michel Parisse (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1992), 13–24. On late antique household monasticism, see Susanna Elm, Virgins of God: The Making of Asceticism in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996); Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 263–5; and, with a particular focus on women, the essays by Kate Cooper in Household, Women, and Christianities in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, eds. Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker and Jocelyn Wogan-Browne (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005).

¹² Synod of Elvira (306), canon 27; ed. J. D. Mansi, Sacrorum conciliorum, nova et amplissima collectio, 54 vols. (Paris: H. Welter, 1901–1927; repr. Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt, 1960–61), 2:10.

¹³ First Council of Nicaea (325), canon 3; ed. and trans. Norman P. Tanner, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 2 vols. (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1990), 1:7. The catalogue of “acceptable” kinswomen published at Nicaea was repeated by many other church councils—East and West—in subsequent years. Hans Achelis, Virgines subintroductae: ein Beitrag zum VII. Kapitel des I. Korintherbriefs (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1902), 69–70. For a list of councils forbidding clerics to live with women unrelated to them, see Pierre de Labriolle, “Le ‘mariage spirituel’ dans l'antiquité chrétienne,” Revue historique 137 (May–August 1921), 204–225, 222.

¹⁴ On the concept of fictive, or spiritual, kinship within early Christianity, see the essays in Constructing Early Christian Families: Family as Social Reality and Metaphor, ed. Halvor Moxnes (New York: Routledge, 1997).

¹⁵ In particular, church leaders opposed the cohabitation of priests with women, who were known as sunesaktai or, in Latin, virgines subintroductae: Achelis, Virgines subintroductae; and Hans Achelis, “Agapetae,” in Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, ed. James Hastings, 13 vols. (New York: Scribner, 1961), 1:177–180.

¹⁶ Clement of Alexandria, Paedagogus, 3.11.81; ed. C. Mondésert and C. Matray, Le Pédagogue, Sources chrétiennes no. 158 (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1970), 156–157; cited in Michael Philip Penn, Kissing Christians: Ritual and Community in the Late Ancient Church (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), 1. That the fraternity of unrelated “brothers” and “sisters” could be perceived as “promiscuous” is discussed by Brown, The Body and Society, 140–159.

¹⁷ Council of Ancyra (314), canon 19; ed. Mansi, Sacrorum conciliorum, 2:520. On the conflation of metaphorical kinship (which was not necessarily chaste) and biological kinship, see John Boswell, Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe (New York: Villard Books, 1994), 131–135.

¹⁸ On the significance of biological siblings within medieval kinship networks, see Didier Lett, “Brothers and Sisters: New Perspectives on Medieval Family History,” in Hoping for Continuity: Childhood, Education and Death in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, ed. Katarina Mustakallio (Rome: Institutum Romanum Finlandiae, 2005), 13–23. For a survey of relationships between saintly siblings (brother-sister and sister-sister) in the early Middle Ages, see Jane Tibbetts Schulenburg, Forgetful of their Sex: Female Sanctity and Society, ca. 500–1100 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 271–305.

¹⁹ Athanasius of Alexandria, The Life of Antony, 3; ed. and trans. G. J. M. Bartelink, Vie d'Antoine (Paris: Cerf, 1994), 134–5; trans. Tim Vivian and Apostolos N. Athanassakis, Cistercian Studies Series 202 (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 2003), 61.

²⁰ The Bohairic Life, 27; The Life of Saint Pachomius and His Disciples, trans. Armand Veilleux, Pachomian Koinonia, 3 vols., Cistercian Studies Series 45–47 (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1980–1982), 1:49–51. On Pachomian foundations for women, see Elm, Virgins of God, 289–296. For a discussion of women's involvement in the early monastic life, see McNamara, Sisters in Arms, 61–88.

²¹ Despite his support for his sister's religious life, Pachomius's rule established that no monk should visit the women's community “unless he has there a mother, sister, or daughter, some relatives or cousins, or the mother of his own children”: Rule, 143; trans. Veilleux, Pachomian Chronicles and Rules, Pachomian Koinonia, 2:166–7. The Bohairic Life further notes that only brothers “who had not yet attained perfection” could visit a relative in the women's community: The Bohairic Life, 27; trans. Veilleux, Pachomian Koininia, 1:50.

²² Palladius, Lausiac History, 33, 1; trans. Veilleux, Pachomian Koinonia, 2:129. See also The Bohairic Life, 27; trans. Veilleux, Pachomian Koininia, 1:51.

²³ On double communities, see Stephan Hilpisch, Die Doppelklöster: Entstehung und Organisation (Münster in Westf.: Aschendorff, 1928); Catherine Rosanna Peyroux, Abbess and Cloister: Double Monasteries in the Early Medieval West (unpublished Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1991); Stephanie Haarländer, “‘Schlangen unter den Fischen’: Männliche und weibliche Religiosen in Doppelklöstern des hohen Mittelalters,” in Frauen und Kirche, ed. Sigrid Schmitt, Mainzer Vorträge 6 (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2002), 55–69; and the essays in Doppelklöster, eds. Elm and Parisse. On the methodological problems associated with the study of double monasteries, see Elsanne Gilomen-Schenkel, “Das Doppelkloster—eine verschwiegene Institution. Engelberg und andere Beispiele aus dem Umkreis der Helvetia Sacra,” in Studien und Mitteilungen zur Geschichte des Benediktiner-Ordens und seiner Zweige 101 (1990), 197–211. For criticisms of the term “double monastery,” see Sharon K. Elkins, Holy Women of Twelfth-Century England (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), xvii–xviii; and Gold, The Lady and the Virgin, 101–102.

²⁴ Rousseau assesses the domestic versus the institutional character of Macrina's community, concluding that the community was primarily an “extended family”: Philip Rousseau, “The Pious Household and the Virgin Chorus: Reflections on Gregory of Nyssa's Life of Macrina,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 13:2 (Summer 2005), 165–186.

²⁵ Gregory of Nyssa, Vita sanctae Macrinae, 12; ed. and trans. Pierre Maraval, Vie de sainte Macrine, Sources chrétiennes, no. 178 (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1971), 182–3; trans. Joan M. Petersen, Handmaids of the Lord: Contemporary Descriptions of Feminine Asceticism in the First Six Christian Centuries, Cistercian Studies Series 143 (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1996), 61.

²⁶ Peter later became head of the male portion of the double community: Gregory of Nyssa, Vita sanctae Macrinae, 37; ed. and trans. Maraval, 258–9; trans. Petersen, Handmaids of the Lord, 80.

²⁷ Anna M. Silvas, The Asketikon of St. Basil the Great (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 23–24. Silvas writes that the example of Macrina's religious life “cannot but have been a material factor in Basil's own turn, or preferably re-turn, to Scripture and in the resultant ‘Christianization’ of his ascetic discourse” (92). Susanna Elm writes that “it is reasonable to suggest that Basil and Macrina developed their ideas in continuous exchanges, although we do not possess a single source by her alone.” Indeed, she notes that Basil “seems to have considered Macrina's community as model”: Elm, Virgins of God, 102, 104, n. 90. Nevertheless, Basil's rule for monks warns against entanglement with family members who remain in the world and sets forth strict guidelines concerning contact between consecrated men and women: Saint Basil, The Long Rules, 32–33; trans. Silvas, The Asketikon, 233–236.

²⁸ Gennadius of Marseilles writes that Cassian founded two monasteries “id est virorum et mulierum.” Gennadius of Marseilles, De viris inlustribus, 62; ed. Ernest Cushing Richardson, Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur, 14.1 (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1896), 82. Cassian's relationship with his sister is somewhat obscure: Columba Stewart writes that “of family members he mentions only a sister who remained somehow part of his monastic life” (4). Cassian the Monk (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 4–5, 16. Although he recognized the tradition that monks were to shun women and bishops, Cassian admits that he had been unable to avoid (vitare) his sister: De institutis coenobiorum, 11.18; ed. and trans. Jean-Claude Guy, Institutions cénobitiques, Sources chrétiennes no. 109 (Paris: Cerf, 2001 [1965]), 444–445.

²⁹ Caesarius initially sent his sister to a monastery in Marseille (presumably Cassian's foundation for women) in order that she might be “a pupil before becoming a teacher”: Vita Caesarii, 1. 35; ed. Germain Morin, Sancti Caesarii episcopi arelatensis Opera omnia, 2 vols. (Maredsous, 1937–42), 2:310. On Caesarius, see William E. Klingshirn, Caesarius of Arles: The Making of a Christian Community in Late Antique Gaul (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).

³⁰ Caesarius, Ep. 21; ed. Morin, Opera, 2:134–144; trans. William E. Klingshirn, Caesarius of Arles: Life, Testament, Letters, Translated Texts for Historians 19 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1994), 129–139. Caesarius, Regula sanctarum virginum; ed. Morin, Opera, 2:99–124; trans. Maria Caritas McCarthy, The Rule for Nuns of St. Caesarius of Arles: A Translation with Critical Introduction (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1960).

³¹ The separation of the two communities was in keeping with canon 28 of the early sixth-century Council of Agde: ed. Mansi, Sacrorum Conciliorum, 8:329. In his letter 21, Caesarius wrote to his sister and her companions, warning them vehemently against the dangers of contact with the opposite sex: Ep. 21, 3; ed. Morin, Opera, 2:137; trans. Klingshirn, 131–132.

³² Vita Caesarii, 1, 58; ed. Morin, Opera, 2:320; trans. Klingshirn, 39. Caesarius's death and burial in the basilica of St. Mary is described in Vita Caesarii 2, 50; ed. Morin, Opera, 2:345; trans. Klingshirn, 65.

³³ Leander, De institutione virginum; PL 72:873–894; trans. Claude W. Barlow, Iberian fathers, 3 vols., The Fathers of the Church, vol. 62, 63, 99 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1969), 1:183–228. Isidore, De fide catholica contra Judaeos; PL 83:449.

³⁴ Gregory of Nyssa's friend, Gregory Nazianzus, also memorialized his sister, Gorgonia, composing a funeral oration for her: Gregory Nazianzus, Oration 8; ed. and trans. C. G. Browne and J. E. Swallow in A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, 2nd series, 14 vols. (Grand Rapids Mich.: Eerdmans, 1952 [1890–1900]), 7:238–245.

³⁵ For other examples of early medieval double monasteries founded by brother-sister pairs, see Schulenburg, Forgetful of Their Sex, 275–278.

³⁶ Donatus of Besançon composed a rule for the women of Jussanensis, a community founded by his mother, Flavia, and in which his sister Siruda also lived: Jo Ann McNamara and John Halborg, The Ordeal of Community (Toronto: Peregrina, 1990), 32–73.

³⁷ Other brother-sister pairs who were buried together include Pope Damasus I and his sister Irene. In an an epitaph composed for Irene's tombstone, Damasus describes his loss at her death: describing Irene pointedly as his germana or “blood sister,” Damasus writes, “I did not fear her death, since she approached heaven freely/but I confess that I was pained to lose the companionship of her life.” “Non timui mortem caelum quod libere adiret/sed dolui, fateor, consortia perdere vitae.” Epitaphius sororis, ed. Antonius Ferrua, Epigrammata Damasiana (Vatican City: Pontificio Istituto di Archeologia Cristiana, 1942), 109. Like many other men devoted to their sisters, Damasus was reunited with Irene in death: the Liber Pontificalis reports that he was buried “close to his mother and sister”: Liber pontificalis, 39; ed. Th. Mommsen, Gestorum Pontificum Romanorum, I, Libri Pontificalis pars prior, MGH (Berlin: Weidmann, 1898), 84; trans. Raymond Davis, The Book of Pontiffs (Liber pontificalis): The Ancient Biographies of the First Ninety Roman Bishops to AD 715 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2000), 30.

³⁸ Brother-sister relationships were so prominent within the texts of early monasticism that one scholar has remarked, with little exaggeration, “It was almost as important for these mythological heroes of medieval hagiography to have a sister as it is for the President of the United States to have a wife”: Pearse Aidan Cusack, “St. Scholastica: Myth or Real Person?” The Downside Review 92 (1974), 145–159, 148.

³⁹ Several Sayings of the early desert fathers stress the need for separation not simply from women, but from female relatives as well. That even a man's own mother could threaten his chastity is clear in one account in which a holy man carrying his mother across a river covers his hands with a cloak, explaining to her that “a woman's body is a fire. Simply because I was touching you, the memory of other women might come into my mind”: The Desert Fathers: Sayings of the Early Christian Monks, trans. Benedicta Ward (London: Penguin, 2003), 31. For men who avoided contact even with a female family member, see below, 49–51.

⁴⁰ For various interpretations of Scholastica's significance in the Life, see J. H. Wansbrough, “St. Gregory's Intention in the Stories of St. Scholastica and St. Benedict,” Revue bénédictine 75 (1965), 145–151; Adalbert de Vogüé, “The Meeting of Benedict and Scholastica: An interpretation,” Cistercian Studies 18 (1983), 168–183; and Cusack, “St. Scholastica: Myth or Real Person?”

⁴¹ Gregory, Dialogues, 2.33.4, 2.34.2; ed. Adalbert de Vogüé, 3 vols., Sources chrétiennes no. 251, 260, 265 (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1978–1980), 2:232, 234; trans. Odo J. Zimmermann and Benedict R. Avery, Life and Miracles of St. Benedict: Book Two of the Dialogues (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1980 [1949]), 68, 70.

⁴² This is Cusack's conclusion: Cusack, “St. Scholastica: Myth or Real Person?” 159.

⁴³ Paul Meyvaert makes a case for the historical Scholastica in his review of William D. McCready, Signs of Sanctity: Miracles in the Thought of Gregory the Great (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1989) in Speculum 66:2 (April 1991), 446–9, 449.

⁴⁴ As Cusack writes, “The introduction of a sister adds to the interest of the story; it gives edification to both sexes and avoids the embarrassment of pairing the saint with a female who is otherwise unrelated to him”: Cusack, “St. Scholastica: Myth or Real Person?” 148.

⁴⁵ Thomas of Cantimpré, Vita Lutgardis, 3.1.3; AASS June III (June 16), 254; trans. Margot King (Toronto: Peregrina, 1991), 90.

⁴⁶ Walter Goffart, “Le Mans, St. Scholastica, and the literary tradition of the translation of St. Benedict,” Revue bénédictine 77 (1967), 107–141. Goffart cautions that the monks at Fleury and Le Mans were less concerned with Scholastica than with Benedict, whose importance was “overshadowing” (129).

⁴⁷ Adrevald reports that Scholastica's bones were separated from Benedict's through the prayers of the people: Adrevald, Historia translationis s. Benedicti, cc. 12–13; ed. E. de Certain, Les miracles de Saint Benoît, écrits par Adrevald Aimoin, André, Raoul Tortaire et Hughes de Saint Marie, moines de Fleury (Paris: Chez Mme Ve J. Renouard, 1858), 10–13. For further attention to Scholastica, see “Three Songs about St. Scholastica by Aldhelm & Paul the Deacon,” trans. Mary Forman, Vox Benedictina 7:3 (July 1990), 229–251. By the later Middle Ages, Scholastica was venerated in her own right; an independent Life appears in a late thirteenth-century South English Legendary: “The Life of St. Scholastica in the South English Legendary,” ed. E. Gordon Whatley, in Saints' Lives in Middle English Collections (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications for TEAMS, 2004), 199–212.

⁴⁸ Vita S. Hiltrudis virginis, 1.7.10; AASS Sept. VII (Sept. 27), 494; Felix's Life of Saint Guthlac, ed. and trans. Bertram Colgrave (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985 [1956]). For Pega, see below, 47. Stephanie Hollis observes that “the kindred-soul relation of Benedict and Scholastica provides the justifying authorization and the model for the hagiographic presentation of the friendships of male and female religious”: Stephanie Hollis, Anglo-Saxon Women and the Church: Sharing a Common Fate (Woodbridge, U.K.: Boydell, 1992), 289.

⁴⁹ Ep. 21; PL 89:720–1; trans. Ephraim Emerton, The Letters of Saint Boniface (New York: Columbia University Press, 1940), 60. For a discussion of the relationship between Boniface and Leoba, see Hollis, Anglo-Saxon Women, 283–297.

⁵⁰ Vita Leobae Abbatissae, 17; MGH SS 15/1:129; ed. and trans. C. H. Talbot, The Anglo-Saxon Missionaries in Germany (London: Sheed and Ward, 1981 [1954]), 222.

⁵¹ First Lateran Council (1123), canon 7; ed. and trans. Tanner, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 1:191.

⁵² Indeed, for Abelard, writing in the twelfth century, Scholastica called to mind not simply the relationship between biological siblings, but rather the obligation that monastic men (“brothers”) had to provide pastoral care for religious women. Abelard writes, “And so the convent of St. Scholastica which was situated on land belonging to a monastery was also under the supervision of one of the brothers, and took both instruction and comfort from frequent visits by him or by the other brothers”: Abelard, Letter 8; ed. T. P. McLaughlin, “Abelard's Rule for Religious Women,” Mediaeval Studies 18 (1956), 241–92, 258; trans. Betty Radice and M. T. Clanchy, The Letters of Abelard and Heloise (New York: Penguin, 2003), 155. For Abelard's concern for the care of religious women, see Griffiths, “‘Men's Duty to Provide for Women's Needs.’”

⁵³ For the idea that men could benefit from their interactions with holy women, see Coakley, Women, Men, and Spiritual Power.

⁵⁴ The notion that a pious woman might convert her male kin was already widespread in the second and third centuries. See, for example, Augustine's discussion of his mother Monica's influence on his own conversion and her long-suffering concern for her husband, who ultimately also converted to Christianity: Augustine, Confessions, 9.8, and 9.9; ed. James J. O'Donnell, Confessions, vol. 1, Introduction and Text (Oxford: Clarendon, 1992), 110, 111–113; trans. R. S. Pine-Coffin, Confessions (London: Penguin, 1961), 192, 194–6.

⁵⁵ Leander, De institutione virginum; PL 72:878; trans. Barlow, Iberian Fathers, 1:189. The author of the Liber de modo bene vivendi, ad sororem (long thought to be the work of Bernard of Clairvaux) makes the same argument, drawing directly on Leander's text, although he removes all reference to biological brotherhood, PL 184:1306. On the Liber and its middle English translation, see Anne McGovern-Mouron, “ ‘Listen to Me, Daughter, Listen to a Faithful Counsel’: The Liber de modo bene vivendi ad sororem,” in Writing Religious Women: Female Spiritual and Textual Practices in Late Medieval England, eds. Denis Renevey and Christiania Whitehead (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000), 81–106.

⁵⁶ Leander, De institutione virginum; PL 72:878; trans. Barlow, Iberian Fathers, 1:189–190.

⁵⁷ De anima et resurrectione, trans. William Moore and Henry Austin Wilson, in A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 5:430. Cautioning that accounts of early Christian women were “literary constructions, some of a high rhetorical order,” Elizabeth Clark writes that “Macrina serves as a tool with which Gregory can think through various troubling intellectual and theological problems that confronted male theologians of his day”: Elizabeth A. Clark, “The Lady Vanishes: Dilemmas of a Feminist Historian after the ‘Linguistic Turn,’ ” Church History 67:1 (March 1998), 1–31, 15, 27.

⁵⁸ Coakley writes that Ekbert approached Elisabeth as a “kind of a research assistant,” using her to find answers to the questions that interested him: Coakley, Women, Men, and Spiritual Power, 28.

⁵⁹ Ekbert, De obitu, 2; ed. Roth, Die Visionen, 271; trans. Clark, The Complete Works, 265.

⁶⁰ Libri visionum, 1.59; ed. Roth, Die Visionen, 29; trans. Clark, The Complete Works, 81. Here Elisabeth records that she prayed to the Virgin “especially” for a certain friend, likely Ekbert, who was a deacon, but whom she had encouraged to seek ordination. See also Emecho's record of the event: Vita Eckeberti, ed. S. Widmann, Neues Archiv der Gesellschaft für altere deutsche Geschichtskunde 11 (1886), 447–454, 449.

⁶¹ Libri visionum, 2.25–26; ed. Roth, Die Visionen, 51–52; trans. Clark, The Complete Works, 113–114.

⁶² Ekbert, De obitu; ed. Roth, Die Visionen, 263; trans. Clark, The Complete Works, 255.

⁶³ Aelred of Rievaulx, Rule, 32; eds. A. Hoste and C. H. Talbot, Opera omnia, CCCM 1, 2a–2b (Turnhout: Brepols, 1971-), 674; trans. in Treatises: The Pastoral Prayer, Cistercian Fathers Series no. 2 (Spencer, Mass.: Cistercian Publications, 1971), 94.

⁶⁴ Aelred of Rievaulx, Rule, 32; eds. Hoste and Talbot, 673–4; trans. in Treatises, 93–94.

⁶⁵ Aelred of Rievaulx, Rule, 32; eds. Hoste and Talbot, 675; trans. in Treatises, 95.

⁶⁶ The Life of Christina of Markyate: A Twelfth-Century Recluse, ed. and trans. C. H. Talbot (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987 [1959]), 156–7. On Christina, see the essays collected in Christina of Markyate: A Twelfth-Century Holy Woman, eds. Samuel Fanous and Henrietta Leyser (London: Routledge, 2005).

⁶⁷ These visits were undertaken with the permission of Gregory's abbot, Geoffrey, who was himself enthusiastic in his support for Christina: The Life of Christina of Markyate, ed. and trans. Talbot, 158–9. For Geoffrey's relationship to Christina, see Rachel M. Koopmans, “The Conclusion of Christina of Markyate's Vita,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 51:4 (October 2000), 663–698.

⁶⁸ The St. Albans Psalter (Albani Psalter), eds. Otto Pächt, C. R. Dodwell, and Francis Wormald (London: Warburg Institute, 1960), 27.

⁶⁹ The two women appear first in the community's entry list: Else Maria Wischermann, Marcigny-sur-Loire: Gründungs- und Frühgeschichte des ersten Cluniacenserinnenpriorates, 1055–1150 (Munich: W. Fink, 1986), 39. Two other sisters, Mathilda and Adelheid, subsequently entered the community as well, as did two of Hugh's nieces, Ermengardis and Lucia: Joachim Wollasch, “Frauen in der Cluniacensis ecclesia,” in Elm and Parisse, eds., Doppelklöster, 97–113, 99. Other monks at Cluny arranged for their own sisters to enter Marcigny, as did a certain Bernard, who coordinated the transfer of his sister, Anna, from St. Jean, Autun, to Marcigny: Jean Richard, Le cartulaire de Marcigny-sur-Loire (1045–1144): Essai de reconstruction d'un manuscrit disparu (Dijon: Sociéte des Analecta Burgundica, 1957), no. 175. Some men, like Peter the Venerable, even had mothers who were “sisters” at Marcigny.

⁷⁰ Promising his nephew that he would care for Richeza, Anselm wrote, “As far as I am able, I shall not cease to help her in every way as long as I live”: Ep. 328, ed. F. S. Schmitt, Opera omnia, 2 vols. (Stuttgart-Bad-Cannstatt: F. Frommann, 1968–1984), 2:260; trans. Walter Fröhlich, The Letters of Saint Anselm of Canterbury, 3 vols. (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1990–1994), 3:45. For Anselm's relations with women, see Sally N. Vaughn, St. Anselm and the Handmaidens of God: A Study of Anselm's Correspondence with Women (Turnhout: Brepols, 2002).

⁷¹ According to Bernard's biographer, Humbeline came one day to see her brother, magnificently attired and accompanied by a large retinue. Bernard “reviled and cursed her” and refused to see her. Humbeline, struck to the core, called on Bernard to speak with her, lamenting that “if my own brother spurns my body and its appearance, as a servant of God he should not refuse to help my soul.” Promising to obey his advice, Humbeline was ultimately received by Bernard, who (in the tradition of Pachomius and Maria) encouraged her to reject worldly enticements. Some years later, she entered the monastery at Jully and was made prioress, succeeding her sister-in-law, Elisabeth: Vita prima, 6; PL 185:244; trans. Geoffrey Webb and Adrian Walker, St. Bernard of Clairvaux (London: A. R. Mowbray, 1960), 51. The spiritual importance of the sibling bond is emphasized once more in Bernard's Life of St. Malachy, where he records that Malachy encouraged his sister to adopt a more religious life, although in vain. When she died, without having been reconciled to the faith, Malachy's prayers on her behalf secured God's forgiveness for her: Bernard of Clairvaux, The Life and Death of Saint Malachy, 5; PL 182:081–1082.

⁷² Felten, “Frauenklöster und –stifte,” 257–260.

⁷³ Reginald, Libellus de vita et miraculis S. Godrici, Heremitae de Finchale, ed. Joseph Stevenson, Surtees Society 20 (London: Nichols, 1847), 140–5.

⁷⁴ Guibert of Gembloux, Ep. 26: 307–329; Epistolae, ed. Albert Derolez, CCCM 66A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1988- ), 279.

⁷⁵ Although Gilbert Crispin downplays Heloise's role in the foundation, Bec was founded on Heloise's dower lands. Gilbert Crispin noted that “she performed the duty of a handmaid (ancilla), washing the garments of God's servants and doing most scrupulously all the extremely hard work imposed upon her”: Vita Herluini, ed. J. Armitage Robinson, Gilbert Crispin, Abbot of Westminster: A Study of the Abbey under Norman Rule (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1911), 93; trans. Vaughn, St. Anselm and the Handmaidens of God, 69.

⁷⁶ Chronicon Beccensis; PL 150: 648; cited in Vaughn, St. Anselm and the Handmaidens of God, 91.

⁷⁷ Herman of Tournai, Liber de restauratione monasterii Sancti Martini Tornacensis, 62–63; MGH SS 14:302–305; trans. Lynn H. Nelson, The Restoration of the Monastery of Saint Martin's of Tournai (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1996), 89–94.

⁷⁸ Herman of Tournai, Liber, 65; MGH SS 14:305; trans. Nelson, Restoration, 95. The conversion of an entire household is also recounted in the life of Stephen of Obazine: Vita S. Stephani Obazinensis, 1.29; ed. and trans. Michel Aubrun, Vie de saint Étienne d'Obazine (Clermont-Ferrand: Faculté des lettres et sciences humaines de l'Université de Clermont-Ferrand, Institut d'études du Massif central, 1970), 86–7. See also the example of Geoffrey III of Semur, who entered the monastery with his wife, son, and at least two daughters: Richard, Le cartulaire de Marcigny-sur-Loire (1045–1144), between 240 and 241.

⁷⁹ Herman of Tournai, Liber, 69; MGH SS 14:307; trans. Nelson, Restoration, 99.

⁸⁰ Even in the early Middle Ages, the entrance of entire family groups was not uncommon. Fructuosus of Braga's seventh-century “General Rule for Monasteries” notes some of the problems that the entrance of families could pose, cautioning that families “may not hold converse together, except with the permission of the prior.” Demonstrating that the entrance even of small children was not unusual, Fructuosus nevertheless allowed that exceptions should be made for the “tiniest children … who are still in the cradle” who were allowed to go “to their father or mother when they wish”: Fructuosus of Braga, Regula monastica communis, 6; PL 87:1115; trans. Barlow, Iberian fathers, 2:186.

⁸¹ Even so, the incidence of “saintly siblings” declined at this time, as Schulenburg observes: Forgetful of Their Sex, 305.

⁸² Ekbert reports having summoned Elisabeth's sister to her deathbed, describing her as “a God-fearing woman whom I had called from afar for Elisabeth's funeral”: De obitu, 2; ed. Roth, Die Visionen, 273; trans. Clark, The Complete Works, 268. For the arrival of Elisabeth's brother, see De obitu, 2; ed. Roth, Die Visionen, 276; trans. Clark, The Complete Works, 272. Schulenburg notes that saintly siblings were often present at a brother or sister's death and often took a leading role in preparing for the burial: Forgetful of Their Sex, 297–303.

⁸³ The Life of Christina of Markyate, ed. and trans. Talbot, 160–161.

⁸⁴ Elkins, Holy Women of Twelfth-Century England, 99.

⁸⁵ Marilyn Oliva, “All in the Family? Monastic and Clerical Careers among Family Members in the Late Middle Ages,” Medieval Prosopography: History and Collective Biography 20 (1999): 161–180, 164.

⁸⁶ Vita prima, 6; PL 185:245; trans. Webb and Walker, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, 52.

⁸⁷ Peter the Venerable, Ep. 185; ed. Giles Constable, The Letters of Peter the Venerable, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967), 1:427–434; trans. Vera Morton in Guidance for Women in Twelfth-Century Convents (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2003), 98. Osbert of Clare, Ep. 21–22; ed. E. W. Williamson, The Letters of Osbert of Clare, Prior of Westminster (London: Oxford University Press, 1929), 89–96; trans. Morton, Guidance for Women, 111–120.

⁸⁸ For Hildegard's nephew, see Hildegard, Ep. 10–10r; ed. L. Van Acker, Hildegardis Bingensis Epistolarium. CCCM 91 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1991), 23–25; trans. Joseph L. Baird and Radd K. Ehrman, The Letters of Hildegard of Bingen, 3 vols. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994–2004), 1:45–47. For a later example of brothers who supported their visionary sister, see Susan D. Laningham, “Making a Saint out of a Sibling,” in Sibling Relations and Gender in the Early Modern World: Sisters, Brothers and Others, eds. Naomi J. Miller and Naomi Yavneh (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 15–27.

⁸⁹ In her first letter to Abelard, Heloise emphasized the shift in their relationship, from marriage partners to spiritual siblings: “To her lord, or rather father; to her husband, or rather brother; from his handmaid, or rather daughter; from his wife, or rather sister: to Abelard, from Heloise”: Heloise, Letter 2; ed. Eric Hicks, La vie et les epistres: Pierres Abaelart et Heloys sa fame (Paris: Champion-Slatkine, 1991), 45; trans. Radice and Clanchy, Letters, 48.

⁹⁰ Heloise, Letter 2; ed Hicks, 48; trans. Radice and Clanchy, Letters, 50.

⁹¹ Indeed, the valorization of the sibling bond may have served to entrench the segregation of the sexes, encouraging ascetic men to limit their contact with unrelated women and to devote their available energies instead toward the fostering of bonds with biological siblings.

⁹² The Shepherd of Hermas, vis. 2.2.3; ed. and trans. Kirsopp Lake, in The Apostolic Fathers (London: W. Heinemann, 1917), 2:18–19. Jerome expressed a similar idea, writing that a chaste wife was her husband's “sister,” an idea that also appears in the writings of Paulinus of Nola, and in Gregory of Tours' account of Riticius, who was buried alongside his virginal spouse: Jerome, Ep. 49, 6; ed. Isidore Hilberg, CSEL 54, 2nd ed. (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1996), 359. Paulinus, Carm. 25; trans. P. G. Walsh, The Poems of St. Paulinus of Nola (New York: Newman, 1975), 250–251. Gregory, Gloria confessorum, c. 74; ed. Bruno Krusch, MGH Scrip. Rer. Merov. 1/2:341–2.

⁹³ Gregory, Dialogues, 4.12.2–3; ed. de Vogüé, 3, 48; trans. Odo John Zimmerman (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1959), 203. My understanding of chaste marriage is greatly indebted to Dyan Elliott, Spiritual Marriage: Sexual Abstinence in Medieval Wedlock (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993). See also Philip Lyndon Reynolds, Marriage in the Western Church: The Christianization of Marriage During the Patristic and Early Medieval Periods (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994).

⁹⁴ Liber revelationum, 10; ed. Roth, Die Visionen, 128; trans. Clark, The Complete Works, 219.

⁹⁵ Possidius writes, “No woman ever lived in his house, or stayed there, not even his own sister, who as a widow in the service of God lived for many years, to the very day of her death, as prioress of God's handmaidens. It was the same with his brother's daughters, who were also enrolled in God's service, although the councils of the holy bishops had allowed an exception to be made of them. He used to say that even though no suspicion of vice could arise from his sister or his nieces stopping with him, they would have to have other women attending on them and staying with them, and other women again would be coming to see them from outside, and all this might give scandal or prove a temptation to the weak”: Vita Augustini, 26; PL 32:55; trans. F. R. Hoare in Soldiers of Christ: Saints and Saints' Lives from Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, eds. Thomas F. X. Noble and Thomas Head (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995), 58. A similar reasoning was at work in Theodulf of Orléans' decision to abolish the privilege of clerics to live with female family members: “Let no woman live with a presbyter in a single house. Although the canons permit a priest's mother and sister to live with him, and persons of this kind in whom there is no suspicion, we abolish this privilege for the reason that there may come, out of courtesy to them or to trade with them, other women not at all related to him and offer an enticement for sin to him”: Cited in George E. McCracken and Allen Cabaniss, Early Medieval Theology (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1957), 385.

⁹⁶ Felix's Life of Saint Guthlac, 50; ed. and trans. Colgrave, 155.

⁹⁷ Brian Patrick McGuire, “Late Medieval Care and Control of Women: Jean Gerson and his Sisters,” Revue d'historique ecclésiastique 92 (1997), 5–37, 33, n. 98.

⁹⁸ Fructuosus of Braga, Regula, 17; PL 87:1124; trans. Barlow, Iberian fathers, 2:201.

⁹⁹ “For where a man lives together with a woman, it is difficult for the snares of the ancient enemy to be lacking, snares which, without doubt, were not lacking in that place where a brother and a sister, namely Ammon and Thamar, lived alone together for the briefest of times”: Pope Nicholas I, Ep. 99; MGH Epistolae 6:586.

¹⁰⁰ Giraldus Cambrensis, Gemma ecclesiastica, 2.15; Gerald of Wales, The Jewel of the Church, trans. John J. Hagen (Leiden: Brill, 1979), 179–80.

¹⁰¹ For the seventh-century Council of Nantes, see Charles Joseph Hefele, Histoire des conciles d'après les documents originaux, 3/1 (Paris: Letouzey, 1907- ), 297. Referring to instances of priests who had apparently impregnated their sisters, the ninth-century Council of Mainz ruled that women who were blood relations should not be allowed to live with clerics: Council of Mainz, 10; ed. Mansi, Sacrorum conciliorum, 18, 67.

¹⁰² Bible moralisée: Codex Vindobonensis 2554, Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, ed. Gerald B. Guest (London: Harvey Miller, 1995). On the basis of internal evidence, Tracy Chapman Hamilton argues that the manuscript was produced for Blanche of Castile: Tracy Chapman Hamilton, “Queenship and Kinship in the French Bible moralisée: The Example of Blanche of Castile and Vienna ÖNB 2554,” in Capetian Women, ed. Kathleen Nolan (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 177–208. On the depiction of Amnon and Thamar in the manuscript, see Gerald B. Guest, “ ‘The Darkness and the Obscurity of Sins’: Representing Vice in the Thirteenth-Century Bibles moralisées,” in In the Garden of Evil: The Vices and Culture in the Middle Ages, ed. Richard Newhauser, Papers in Mediaeval Studies 18 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies Press, 2005), 74–103, 91–95.

¹⁰³ Trans. in Guest, “ ‘The Darkness and the Obscurity of Sins,’ ” 91.

¹⁰⁴ Cited in Megan McLaughlin, “The Bishop as Bridegroom: Marital Imagery and Clerical Celibacy in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries,” in Medieval Purity and Piety: Essays on Medieval Clerical Celibacy and Religious Reform, ed. Michael Frassetto (New York: Garland, 1998), 209–237, 223.

¹⁰⁵ Late-medieval images depict Humbeline alongside Bernard as the founder of the Cistercian tradition for women. For discussion of Humbeline's depiction in art, see James France, The Cistercians in Medieval Art (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1998), 139–141.

¹⁰⁶ Elm, “Formen des Zusammenlebens männlicher und weiblicher Asketen,” 14.