NUNS, SIGNATURES, AND LITERACY IN LATE-CAROLINGIAN CATALONIA
Jonathan Jarrett
It is somewhat rare to be able analyze the membership of an early medieval women's religious community in any detail. Sant Joan de Ripoll, which operated from late ninth century until 1017 at modern-day les Abadesses Catalonia, provides not just this opportunity but even rarer chance evaluate nuns’ command writing, by means a single original charter 949 that several them signed autograph. This article argues signatures these nuns indicate they had fact been taught write before joining nunnery. They are thus source for female lay, rather than religious, literacy time and area. Consolidating this, prosopography known derived other charters nunnery's part-surviving archive, including tracing some their careers beyond dissolution house. shows members comital family who founded house provided its abbesses were otherwise frequent among nuns; rather, nunnery recruited local notables neighborhoods, whose interest therefore testify. Such support could prevent closure house, however, closes with reflection on agency available political sphere dominated male, secular interests.
Traditio|White Rose Research Online (University of Leeds, The University of Sheffield, University of York)|White Rose Research Online (University of Leeds)