Notes Abbreviations AASS Acta Sanctorum. 70 vols. Paris, 1863–1940. MGH Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Edited by G. H. Pertz et al. Hanover, 1826–1913. PL Patrologia curcus completus: Series Latina. Edited by J.-P. Migne. Paris, 1844–1864. Introduction, pp. ix–xi 1. Laurie A. Finke, Women’s Writing in English: Medieval England (London: Longman, 1999), 213. 2. Her Immaculate Hands: Selected Works By and About the Women Humanists of Quattrocento Italy, eds. Margaret L. King and Albert Rabil (Binghamton, NY: MRTS, 1983), 28–29. 3. This is Carolyn Walker Bynum’s summation of the skeptical school of women’s history, not her own opinion. Quote in Hildegard of Bingen: Scivias, tr. M. Columba Hart and Jane Bishop, pref. Carolyn Walker Bynum, intro. Barbara Newman (New York: Paulist Press, 1990), 4. The work of Brigitte Cazelles, The Lady as Saint: A Collection of French Hagiographical Romances of the Thirteenth Century (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991), 29, takes the argument a step further and argues that most women’s voices are heard only if the women embody female sanctity and, therefore, is “located in Heaven and, consequently, set at a safe distance from earthly reality.” A good analysis of the many flaws in Cazalles’ thesis is found in Elizabeth D. A. Weber, “The Power of Speech: Models of female martyrdom in medieval and early modern French lit- erature,” PhD Diss. University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1994, 4–9. 4. See Andrea Dworkin, Our Blood: Prophecies and Discourses on Sexual Politics (New York: Harper & Row, 1976). 5. See Peter Dronke’s magisterial work, Women Writers of the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984); Medieval Women Writers, ed. Katharina M. Wilson (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1984); Weber, “The Power of Speech”; and Carolyn Walker Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1989). 6. See Patricia Ranft, “A Key to Counter Reformation Women’s Activism: The Confessor- Spiritual Director,” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 10:2 (1994), 7–26. 196 Notes 7. Carolyn Walker Bynum, Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion (New York: Zone Books, 1991), 5:156. 8. For those readers who desire a better background in Western intellectual history, Marcia L. Colish, Medieval Foundations of the Western Intellectual Tradition 400–1400 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997) is an excellent reference work; I refer to it con- tinually throughout the study. For a history more strictly of philosophy, see Frederick Copleston’s multi-volume classic, A History of Philosophy, 7 vols., repr. (Garden City, NY: Image Books, 1963) and History of Women Philosophers, 4 vols., ed. Mary Ellen Waithe (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1989). Central Michigan University offered some support for this study through its Research Professorship program. Chapter 1, pp. 1–34 The Early Renaissance 1. M. T. W. Laistner, Thought and Letters in Western Europe A.D. 500 to 900, 2nd ed. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1976). 2. David Knowles and D. Obolensky, The Christian Centuries, Vol. 2: The Middle Ages (New York: Paulist Press, 1983), 129. For years standard textbooks have gone from Augustine to Anselm with little or no apology. See, for example, the international favorite, Julián Marías, The History of Philosophy (New York: Dover Publications, 1967), which went through twenty-three editions by 1967 and is still being reprinted: “There is, in the first place, a long gap of four centuries, from the fifth to the ninth, in which there is no philosophy” (p. 25). 3. The term “renaissance” has a long history of use and abuse, starting with Charles Homer Haskins challenge to the academic world with his The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1927). I use the term here without any hid- den agenda and only because, even given its problems, it is common and convenient. 4. Marcia L. Colish, Medieval Foundations of the Western Intellectual Tradition 400–1400 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997), 62. 5. Pierre Riché, Education and Culture in the Barbarian West from the Sixth through the Eighth Century, tr. John J. Contreni (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1976), 311. 6. See AASS, January 15, 1:1062–1068, for Ida’s vita. 7. See Riché, Education, 312; John Lanigan, An Ecclesiastical History of Ireland … from Irish Annals and Other Authentic Documents, Still existing in Manuscripts, 2nd ed. (Dublin: J. Cumming, 1829); Roger Reynolds, “Virgines subintroductae in Celtic Christianity,” Harvard Theological Review 61 (1968), 547–566; and John Ryan, Irish Monasticism: Origins and Development (repr., Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1986). 8. Patricia Ranft, Women and the Religious Life in Premodern Europe (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996), 17. Besides instructing boys, Cogitosus writes that Brendan of Clonfert asked Brigid of Kildare for instruction. 9. Laistner, Thought, 143–148. 10. Bede, A History of the English Church and People, tr. Leo Sherley-Price, repr. (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1986), 3:3 (p. 144). 11. Ibid. (p. 145). Notes 197 12. Ibid., 3:19 (p. 172). 13. Hilda’s vita is in ibid., 4:23 (pp. 245–250). 14. Ibid., 4:24 (p. 250). See Laistner’s comments, Thought, 372–373. 15. Bede, History, 4:24 (pp. 250–253). 16. The Earliest Life of Gregory the Great, tr. Bertram Colgrave (Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 1968); and John Godfrey, “The Double Monastery in Early English History,” The Ampleforth Journal 79 (1974), 19–32. 17. Bede, History, 4:23 (p. 249). 18. Riché, Education, 377, claims that “the culture of nuns was, in fact, more developed in Wessex than elsewhere—another mark of Irish influence.” 19. See Laistner, Thought, 152. 20. Riché, Education, 379. 21. PL 89, 103–104. 22. Colish, Foundations, 64. 23. Aldhelm, De laudibus virginitate, 2, in MGH, AA, xv, ed. R. E. Ehwald, 228–229. 24. PL 89, 106. 25. See examples of curriculi in male monasteries in Riché, Education, 369–399. 26. Aldheim, De virginitatis, 60, p. 323. 27. There exists a questionable charter of freedom for the monks at Malmesbury that Aldhelm signed “at the convent of Wimbourne.” William of Malmesbury, De gestis pon- tificium Anglorum, ed. N. E. S. Hamilton, Rolls Series 52 (1870), 378. 28. Bede, History, 3:25 (p. 187). 29. Godfrey, “Double Monastery,” 29. 30. So says Rosamond McKitterick, “Women and Literacy in the Early Middle Ages,” in idem, Books, Scribes and Learning in the Frankish Kingdoms, 6th–9th Centuries (Brookfield, VT: Variorum, 1994), 13:33. McKitterick agrees with P. Sims-Williams, Religion and Literature in Western England, 600–800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 209, that this Eadburg may have been an abbess of Wimbourne and a dif- ferent Eadburg was Boniface’s correspondent. 31. Ep. 12, Pope Gregory II to Boniface, in The Anglo-Saxon Missionaries in Germany, tr. C. H. Talbot (London: Sheed & Ward, 1954), 68. 32. Within the extant correspondence there are letters to Bugga and to Abbess Bugga; it is also known that one Bugga became Abbess Eadburg. 33. PL 89, 691–692. 34. PL 89, 731. 35. PL 89, 712. 36. Ep. 30, in Michael Tangl, Die Briefe des heiligen Bonifatius und Lullus, MGH, Epistolae Selectae I. 37. Ep. 13, ibid. 38. Ep. 29, in Talbot, Anglo-Saxon Missionaries, 87–88; PL 89, 720–721. 39. Rudolf of Fulda, The Life of St. Leoba, in Talbot, Anglo-Saxon Missionaries, 214. 40. His thirst for knowledge and his reliance on books is evident in many of his letters and not just the ones to women. To Abbot Duddo, for example, he writes: “Extending prayers to God, I continue to be zealous in learning, in the Holy Scriptures and in the Holy Fathers’ spiritual writings on how to become an eloquent teacher of holy books, and for 198 Notes this purpose I, an apprentice in the sacred sciences, need a portion of St. Paul’s writings, which I asked you to send to me. I already have two of his epistles, that is, Romans and First Corinthians. Likewise, any books in your monastery’s library that I do not have or information that is not in my other books, and would be useful to my work, like a faith- ful son with an uneducated father, redirect my thoughts to be worthy of your happiness” (PL 89, 740–741). 41. Life of St. Leoba, 214. 42. Ibid., 215. 43. Ibid., 214. 44. Wolfhard, Miraculis S. Waldburgus Monheimensibus, in MGH, SS, xv, p. 1, 535–555. See the portrait of Walburga summarized in M. Emmanuel, “Saint Walburga Benedictine Abbess and Missionary (710–779),” Word and Spirit 11 (1989), 50–59; and Heilige Walburga, Leben und Wirken (Eichstatt: Abtei St. Walburga, 1979). 45. Bernhard Bischoff, “Wer ist die Nonne von Heidenheim?” Studien und Mitterlungen zur Geschichte des Benediktinerordens und seiner Zweige 49 (1931), 387–397. Text is found in MGH, SS, xv, p. 1, 86–117. It was written in 778. 46. Hugeberc of Heidenheim, The Hodoeporicon of St. Willibald, in Talbot, Anglo-Saxon Missionaries, 153. Boniface established such an atmosphere of scholarship among his dis- ciples that it would be unlikely that those close to him or his bishops would be illiterate. Even his last wishes expressed concern for his books, as his hagiographer, coincidentally Willibald, tells us. Cf. Life of St. Boniface, in Talbot, Anglo-Saxon Missionaries, 54. 47. Ibid. 48. Medieval Women’s Visionary Literature, ed. Elizabeth Alvilda Petroff (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986) 87. 49. Talbot, Anglo-Saxon Missionaries, 152. 50. Riché, Education, 474. 51. Talbot, Anglo-Saxon Missionaries, 152, says the work is “of highest interest” and “of great archaeological value.” 52.