With the publication in 1962 of "Land, Family, and Women in Continental Europe, 701-1200," David Herlihy embarked on a 30-year investigation of medieval women. The findings from his search are numerous articles and the considerable portions of Les toscans et leurs familles and Medieval Households that focus on women. Herlihy's last book, Opera Muliebria, was an attempt to outline the experiences of women in various kinds of work, ranging from agricultural labor, to medicine, to sacred scholarship, in late antiquity and across the medieval millennium.

In Opera Muliebria, Herlihy at last appeared to be in accord with the conclusion of a "feminist historiography" (his term) he had previously approached with caution. Among American scholars, the paradigm has been most forcefully argued by Jo Ann McNamara and Suzanne Wemple, whose classic 1977 essay posited that "women of the high and late Middle Ages (1100-1500) found their rights and roles increasingly curtailed and their ambitions frustrated." (1) In 1970, Herlihy found that, despite the burdens and prejudices women accumulated across the course of the Middle Ages, "the balance of change was in their favor."(2) But 15

years later, he acknowledged that the opposite view "carries much conviction."(3) In Opera Muliebria, the answer, at least concerning women and work, was quite clear. From antiquity until the twelfth or thirteenth century, women were "prominent participants in many forms of productive activity," but by the fifteenth century their role in economic life "had become circumscribed."(4) In his last years, then, David Herlihy joined the chorus of scholars -- many of whom had made use of his quantitative evidence -- who believed that the position of women did indeed deteriorate across the Middle Ages.

That conclusion, in combination with the exponential increase in sources for social history in the later Middle Ages, has produced an odd effect. Apparently finding the greatest inspiration in either the broad scope of women's activities in the early Middle Ages or the multiplication of sources from the thirteenth century onward, students of medieval women have written far more about these periods than about the years 1000-1250. The English translation of Edith Ennen's Frauen im Mittelalter, which surveys the era from 500 to 1500, devotes 73 pages to the early Middle Ages, and 119 pages to the late Middle Ages, but a scant 51 pages to the period from 1050 to 1250.(5) In a recent collection by American scholars entitled Women and Power in the Middle Ages, only 3 of 11 essays devote more than a few words to women in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.(6) We are still far better informed about early or late medieval women than about their counterparts in the central Middle Ages. If women's status began to decline after A.D. 1000, it is all the more important to investigate their activities in an era of transition.

This essay follows the traces of a few twelfth-century nuns as they manage monastic property. I do not pretend to consider typical figures; it is difficult to make a claim of "representativeness" for any medieval woman whose achievements were significant enough to be recorded. However, the field for a great deal of this kind of women's work existed: several hundred nunneries were founded in France between the turn of

At the turn of the twelfth century, the errant evangelist Robert of Arbrissel settled a band of his followers in a forest just south of the Loire, where Anjou, Touraine, and Poitou meet.(8) Robert gathered together men and women of all sorts and conditions whom he regarded simply as the poor of Christ. The huts in which these seekers gathered were soon overcrowded, and the erection of more substantial buildings began.(9) Such were the modest beginnings of Fontevraud, which grew at a remarkable pace in the first half of the twelfth century. Although it was in large part his charismatic preaching that drew people to Fontevraud, Robert did not wish to supervise the monastery and never became a monk or superior there. Only a few years after founding the community, with the work of building still going on, he returned to the apostolate. He continued his ministry across western France, with frequent stops at Fontevraud, until his death in 1116.

Before he left the newly established community, Robert needed to establish some form of organization for the supervision of construction and other business. He chose from the ranks of the sisters a leader, Hersende, a woman of "great devotion and equally great wisdom," and an assistant, Petronilla, an "experienced estate manager." As events proved, this was indeed a "wise, hard-working and very cautious" team.(10) Hersende, a native of Burgundy, was the widowed mother-in-law

The choice of women for leadership in a mixed community of men and women was something of a risk, as Robert doubtless realized. Submission of male religious to female superiors was practically unknown in Western Christendom by 1100. Furthermore, the early charters of Fontevraud are filled with names suggesting the tenor of life in the area; it was probably no easy task to keep peace with locals known as Jerorius Fat Lips, Ogerius Sword-Rattler, Peter Booty-Seizer, Geoffrey Bad Monk, and Raginald Who Folds Up Peasants,(13) to say nothing of monastic and episcopal neighbors. Jerorius, Geoffrey, and many others (including Arraudus Livid and his brother Andrew Livid, as well as Honey-Sated John)(14) were early donors to Fontevraud. More than 200 charters from the first two decades of the history of Fontevraud have survived in a fragment of what was once a much fuller cartulary.(15) In these and later doc-

Fontevraud amassed a considerable landed patrimony from its earliest years. The speed with which the nuns accumulated wealth is clear from the amount of cash involved in their transactions only a few years after the monastery was founded. Two documents which date to 1106-8 show payments totaling 18 pounds, in one case a sale price of 8 pounds, in the other 10 pounds, the cost of an overlord's concession when land of his fief was given to Fontevraud.(17) Other transactions in or before 1108 have Hersende returning four horses, two sets of saddle and reins, a cow, a chicken, a tunic, and a total of over 70 solidi to lay people.(18)

A religious institution that could draw on such resources only a few years after its founding was fortunate, and Hersende pressed the advantage as a ready participant in the complexities of the local and regional economy. Not content to own lands for cultivation and pasturage, the nuns were especially careful to gather up mill rights. In one case, Hersende was forced to act vigorously to enforce ownership. A man and his wife donated a mill upon the "reception of our daughter into the church of the new congregation of nuns at Fontevraud." The donation was recognized by the overlords of the property but was subject to two challenges within a few years. Some relatives of the donors seized grain from the mill and were compelled to return it only when Hersende took them to a feudal court in Loudun. Another man, admitting (as the char-

Still more complicated was the acquisition and oversight of property around what is now the hamlet of Raslay, not far from Fontevraud on the Petite Maine, a Loire tributary. Here, too, Fontevraud began to gather property at a very early date. Starting about 1108, the nuns collected arable, meadow, and forest lands, fishing areas, and the watercourse and mill at Raslay. This involved at least six different transactions of donation and sale. Once again, Hersende had to act personally to enforce Fontevraud's rights to new property. A neighbor of the lord who had donated the waterway made a claim against the nuns, which he withdrew when Hersende offered him 40 solidi. Another claim, on the mill itself, was settled without cost to the nuns. Finally, Hersende manipulated a second claim to the waterway to her advantage: the claimant gave up the suit and proceeded to donate two pieces of land to Fontevraud, receiving in return small countergifts (de karitate) for herself, her son, and her daughter.(20)

Hersende also oversaw the founding of Fontevraud's earliest dependent houses. The first of these was Les Loges, located north of the Loire in eastern Anjou. The property was donated by Gautier of Montsoreau, Hersende's son-in-law.(21) A few years later, Hersende traveled to eastern Poitou in order to ensure the transfer of another settlement to the care of Fontevraud. Some hermits had settled in a place called Villesalem late in the eleventh century. Around 1108, the hermits gave their property to Fontevraud. But the abbot of nearby Fontgombaud claimed ownership, so Hersende traveled to the site to settle the matter. She granted a few concessions to the monks, and the property was once and for all ceded to Fontevraud. It was soon after settled, like other dependent houses, with colonists from the motherhouse.(22)

Hersende died sometime before 1113. On his deathbed, in 1116,

Not surprisingly, Robert's choice was Petronilla. "Indeed, it seems to me fitting that one who bore along with me the labor of traveling and poverty should also bear any burden of support and good fortune. Although she is once-married, it seems to me that by virtue of necessity, no one is more suitable for this prelacy."(25) So, in 1115, Petronilla became the first abbess of Fontevraud. For more than 30 years she fostered and supervised the growth of the abbey and its congregation. The vigor with which Petronilla pursued Robert's charge, even long after his death, is evident in the numerous charters of her abbacy. The patrimony of Fontevraud continued to grow. Like Hersende before her, Petronilla was a careful steward of the properties of Fontevraud and brooked no interference with them.

I, Petronilla, who then by the grace of God held the primacy of Fontevraud, have taken care to commend to the memory of the living and of posterity that one day, while I was refreshing myself briefly at La Pignonni?res, Helignandus of Longchamp and Elisabeth, wife of the oft-mentioned Achardus, came up together for the sake of visiting me. And when we had said quite a lot, among other things I reminded Elisabeth that her son Buccardus should concede to lord Robert and the nuns subject to him the land which his father Achardus and she herself had conceded to them in perpetual ownership. She replied to me in words to this effect: the land had been bought and acquired by

her [or "them"] so that they could leave it and give it to whomever they pleased, freely and peacefully. Then I, Petronilla, not wishing to acquiesce to her statement, with the advice of our friends and with her assent, on this account went to the place called Escharbot with some brothers and laymen...

Such determined action was not unusual for Petronilla, who saw no conflict between spiritual aims and temporal necessities. "Often putting aside the glory of reading and prayers, we turn to management of temporal goods for the advantage of our successors, which indeed we do for this reason: that when we are sleeping in our tombs, we may be helped by their prayers before God."(28) Shortly after becoming abbess, Petronilla appealed to Count Fulk of Anjou for the restoration of properties

Petronilla also knew the importance of a written record, as the proems to several charters show. "The goods of the church of the holy mother of God at Fontevraud are committed to writing, lest on account of the swiftness of fleeting life they be given over to oblivion by our successors. Therefore, Lady Petronilla, first religious abbess, ordered that gifts to the above-mentioned place made in her time be written down..."(31) It was probably at Petronilla's behest that the first cartulary of Fontevraud was redacted, shortly after the death of Robert of Arbrissel.(32)

The size of the Order of Fontevraud, as it came to be known, grew steadily through the first half of the twelfth century. Starting with Pascal II, in 1106, every pope except the short-lived Celestine II confirmed to Fontevraud and its dependent houses privileges and properties, strengthening ties between the abbey and Rome. In 1119, Calixtus II dedicated the Romanesque abbey church at Fontevraud.(33) Abbess Petronilla's energies remained undiminished into the 1140s, when she took advantage of

A few weeks later, Abbess Petronilla died after 50 years of service at Fontevraud. The necrology of Fontevraud refers to her as "our incomparable and irrecoverable mother."(37) Owing in large part to Petronilla, and to Hersende before her, there were by 1149 more than 50 monasteries in the order. All of them were, like Fontevraud, mixed communities headed by a female superior, distributed across the region bounded by northern Champagne, Lyonnais, and Aragon. The number of daughterhouses grew some in the decades that followed, but until the French Revolution the Order of Fontevraud remained very much what it had become under the guidance of Hersende and Petronilla: the largest and wealthiest federation of monasteries for women in Western Europe.

Heloise had a child; she and Abelard married but soon after parted. At her husband's insistence, Heloise returned to Argenteuil. Fulbert proceeded to take violent revenge on the man he suspected of spurning his niece: Abelard was castrated. Abelard became a monk and retired to Champagne, living in a hermitage called the Paraclete located a few miles from the Seine, northwest of Troyes. Called to be abbot of a monastery in his native Brittany in 1126, he remembered that his isolated oratory was deserted when he heard that the nuns of Argenteuil, now led by Heloise, had been expelled by Abbot Suger of Saint-Denis, who laid claim to the property. In 1129, some of the community went to the Paraclete, where Abelard came to install the nuns and pay a rare visit to Heloise.

Heloise is best known through her correspondence with Abelard. Most of the letters concern personal and theological matters, but Heloise also asked Abelard to write a rule for the Paraclete, pointing out that the Rule of Saint Benedict was inadequate for women.(39) Most of the lengthy reply addressed matters of internal organization and practice, but Abelard did make some telling remarks about the choice of a superior. He scorned the "pernicious practice" of electing virgins instead of those who have known men, and younger women over older ones, echoing the sentiments of Robert of Arbrissel (whom he did not mention). Abelard also cautioned against the choice of powerful noblewoman as abbesses, for they might become proud to the disadvantage of the convent, especially if they were local people whose families might interfere with

Less well known are Heloise's skills in management of temporal matters, but these were quite exceptional. The Paraclete was a poor foundation at the beginning; Abelard notes that the nuns' life there "was full of hardship at first and for a while they suffered the greatest deprivation..."(42) But this period of want was over by 1147, when Pope Eugenius III issued a bull confirming the possessions of Heloise and her nuns.(43) Eugenius named more than 50 donors, including Count Theobald of Champagne (twice) and his countess, a viscountess, the bishop of Troyes, and the archbishop of Sens. The rest of the Paraclete's patrons were of lesser rank, a few identified as miles, most of them obscure landed men and women. Less than 20 years after the refugees arrived, the Paraclete controlled property in more than 80 places, mostly land but also mills and annual tributes. Unlike Fontevraud, which a few years after its founding had possessions spread across a large portion of western France, the Paraclete's holdings were far more compact. With one exception, all of the Paraclete's properties in 1147 were within 20 miles of the motherhouse. A vast majority were within 10 miles, in a region reaching north from the nunnery across the Seine and south and east toward Troyes. There were also properties further south, along a smaller river, and several near Provins, a town 15 miles northwest of the Paraclete. Because most of the original charters of the Paraclete have not survived, it is difficult to know much about the process by which its patrimony was assembled. But the surviving evidence hints that the model of Fontevraud holds in this case:

A charter of 1133 outlines the donation of some properties in and around Provins, including 40 solidi in tithes at Provins and nearby Lesines, with the proviso that if some or all of the sum cannot be obtained there, the donor is obliged to make up the difference from another holding. It is then repeated that the tithes at Lesines are granted by the donors, one of whom entered the Paraclete; this woman noted that her brother Robert, too, had granted them.(44) Heloise apparently realized two things about such a donation. First, a gift of tithes would constitute a reliable source of income only if carefully acquired. Second, often more than one or two people considered themselves to have title to a property or right in the early twelfth century, and it was necessary to specify who they were. This is clear from a document written three years later in which the archbishop of Sens, acting at Heloise's request, gave to the Paraclete the tithe of Lesines, which he noted that the same Robert and another man had previously conveyed to him personally.(45) Such complexities aside, Heloise had presided over the multiplication of the Paraclete's properties to the extent that by 1146 the nuns could afford to pay 120 pounds for lands and tithes near the monastery.(46)

Abelard observed that once he left Heloise and the nuns "their worldly goods were multiplied more in a single year than mine would have been in a hundred, had I remained there, for as much as women are weaker, so much the more pitiable is their poverty, which easily rouses human sympathy, and the more pleasing is their virtue to God and to men."(47) Despite Abelard's insistence on female frailty, it is unlikely that Heloise

For abbesses and their deputies to be in charge of property and other business was, at least at Fontevraud and the Paraclete, a matter of course. When he appointed Petronilla as abbess, Robert of Arbrissel also drew up a set of rules for Fontevraud. Stipulations about the conditions under which the abbess, prioress, and other nuns might be allowed to leave the cloister show that travel for the purposes of doing business was normal. The maior priorissa, Robert decreed, was to be received in all of Fontevraud's churches and cells and was to be second only to the abbess in executing the business of the community ("habeatque potestatem post abbatissam de negotiis ecclesiae agendis").(52) The Paraclete statutes known as Institutiones nostrae, which date to Heloise's time, contain regulations anticipating this same need for mobility in order to conduct business. As a modern commentary on the Institutiones puts it, the rules are "quite liberal: nuns and lay-sisters are authorized to handle business

Unfortunately, we can discover far less about most superiors of new nunneries in the central Middle Ages than about their status in local economic and social structures. But surely these women were significant figures whose practical acumen could be a useful attribute in monastic leadership, albeit on a smaller scale than at Fontevraud or the Paraclete. A telling hint is provided by the earliest surviving charter from a nunnery near Carcassonne. An 1162 donation is addressed to "God and the church of the Blessed Mary of Rieunette and to you, humble Raina, business manager [praesidenti negotiis] of the monastery of this church."(55) Since the document was drawn up at the convent, its language emphasizes that the nuns and their patrons regarded highly the mundane aspect of the superior's duties. Sadly, lists of twelfth-century abbesses and prioresses are incomplete, and often nothing more than names survive. Their very obscurity suggests that they were, like the men and women who founded and endowed their houses, of less than exalted lineage. But, like the women discussed here, they were charged with the direction of possessions as well as prayer.(56)

If we assume that the women who came after a golden age in the early Middle Ages were hapless casualties of social and ideological change, we are more likely to pity them than understand them. They will almost certainly seem dull. All the more reason, then, to seek out women of all descriptions in medieval charters, in which, as a great nineteenth-century scholar-archivist put it, we can find "the true countenance, interests, passions, laws, and beliefs of the epoch."(57) Charters of the central Middle Ages also shed light on the activities of people who might well go entirely unnoticed otherwise: women of the lower aristocracy like Hersende, Petronilla, Raina, and their deputies, far less visible in narrative sources than are the saints and queens of an earlier era. I strongly suspect that we will discover in documents of practice something other than steady and uniform erosion of women's opportunities in the medieval West.

We must at all costs refrain from taking at face value the opinions and observations of powerful and articulate men about their female contem-

NOTES

1. Jo Ann McNamara and Suzanne Wemple, "Sanctity and Power: The Dual Pursuit of Medieval Women," in Becoming Visible: Women in European History, ed. Renate Bridenthal and Claudia Koonz (Boston, 1977), 116. See also Joan Kelly-Gadol's essay "Did Women Have a Renaissance?" in the same volume. For an argument focusing specifically on the twelfth century as a period of decline, see Jo Ann McNamara, "Victims of Progress: Women and the Twelfth Century," in Female Power in the Middle Ages, ed. Karen Glente and Lise Winther-Jensen (Copenhagen, 1989), 26-37.

2. David Herlihy, Women in Medieval Society (Houston, 1971), 14.

3. David Herlihy, "Did Women Have a Renaissance?: A Reconsideration," Medievalia et Humanistica, n.s., 13 (1985): 16.

4. David Herlihy, Opera Muliebria: Women and Work in Medieval Europe (New York, 1990), xi.

5. Edith Ennen, The Medieval Woman, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Oxford, 1989).

6. Women and Power in the Middle Ages, ed. Mary Erler and Maryanne Kowaleski (Athens, Ga., 1988).

7. On this phenomenon, see my "Women, Monasticism, and Social Change: The Foundation of Nunneries in Western Europe, c.890-c.1215," Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1992, esp. 23-57. For a thorough description of several contexts of female monastic life in the central Middle Ages, see Penelope D. Johnson, Equal in Monastic Profession: Religious Women in Medieval France (Chicago, 1991).

8. Two vitae of Robert written shortly after his death are printed in the Patrologiae cursus completus, Series latina, ed. J.-P. Migne, 221 vols. (Paris, 1844-64) (hereafter PL), 162:1043-78. The most important recent work on Robert and the early history of Fontevraud is by Jean-Marc Bienvenu, some of whose writings are cited below.

9. PL 162:1053: "quos alio nolebat censeri vocabulo, nisi pauperes Christi. Multi confluebant homines cujuslibet conditionis; conveniebant mulieries, pauperes et nobiles, viduae et virgines, senes et adolescentes, meretrices et masculorum aspernatrices. Nec iam innumeram copiositatem praeparata capiebant tuguriola, imo capacioribus tirunculi Christi indigebant mansionibus."

10. PL 162:1054: "Constituit igitur ex sororibus unam responsis et operibus assistricem, et magistram, Hersendis nomine....Vivebat autem Hersendis et magnae religionis et magni pariter consilii. Huic autem Hersendi conjunxit et Petronillam procurationis mansionariae gnaram....Has itaque duas feminas quoniam congnoverat prudentes et industrias et magnae cautelae personas, aliis, ut dictum est, praefecerat sororibus."

11. Jean-Marc Bienvenu, "Aux origines d'un ordre religieux: Robert d'Arbrissel et la fondation de Fontevraud," Cahiers d'histoire 20 (1975): 241.

12. A charter of 1106 from Bishop Peter of Poitiers (PL 162:1090) notes that "ipse [Robertus] vero in predicta ecclesia plures congregavit mulieres, quas sanctimoniales constituit, ut ibi regulariter viverent..." without any mention of the men who prayed and worked together with them at Fontevraud.

13. Paris, Biblioth?que Nationale (hereafter BN), ms.nouv.acq. lat. 2414, folios 31v. (#663, "Jerorius crassa labra"), 82v. (#803, "Ogerius verberans ferrum"), 12r.-v. (#598, "Petro trahente predam"), 8v. (#587, "Gaufridus malus monachus"), 135r.-v. (#913, "Raginaldus plicat vilanum").

14. Ibid., folios 31v.-32r. (#664, "Arraudus Lividus"), 83r. (#804, "Johannes Saturatus Melle").

15. These charters are in the so-called Great Cartulary, of which only a fragment still exists (BN, ms.nouv.acq.lat. 2414). See R.I. Moore, "The Reconstruction of the Cartulary of Fontevrault," Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 41 (1968): 87-95. To the portion of this volume that Moore argues must have been redacted in the period shortly after Robert of Arbrissel's death, I would add an additional 6 folios (quire xix, folios 9-14). This makes a total of 223 charters from the first two decades of the history of Fontevraud that still exist in nearly contemporary copies.

16. On the institutionalizing of the relationship between the sexes and Robert's insistence on "woman-centeredness," see Penny Schine Gold, The Lady and the Virgin: Image, Attitude, and Experience in Twelfth-Century France (Chicago, 1985), 93-113. Gold touches on the matter of business and management, primarily to make the point that it was useful for Fontevraud to have monks available for matters outside the cloister. I agree, but here put more emphasis on the role of the female superiors. For an extension of Gold's thesis, see Carl Kelso Jr., "Women in Power: Fontevrault and the Paraclete Compared," Comitatus 22 (1991): 55-69.

17. BN, ms.nouv.acq.lat. 2414, folios 80r. (#795), 100 r.-v. (#846).

18. Ibid., folios 10v.-llr. (#591), 12v. (#600), 37v.-38r. (#681), 43v. (#697), 80r.-v. (#796), 115v. (#867), 131r.-v. (#906).

19. Ibid., folio 125v. (#892, "pro Dei amore et filiae nostrae in ecclesia novae congregationis monacharum Fontis Evraudi susceptione"), 128v. (#899), 121v.-122r. (#885), 126r. (#893, "Ego Radulphus ... diu malo consilio abusus"). For the process of obtaining another mill, see ibid., folios 126r.-127v. (#894-95).

20. Ibid., folios 111r.-v. (#859), 12r. (#600), 124v. (#890), 133v.-134r. (#911),81r. (#798), 30r. (#659), 129v. (#902), 30v. (#660).

21. Jean-Marc Bienvenu, L'?tonnant fondateur de Fontevraud, Robert d'Arbrissel (Paris, 1981), 108-10.

22. Jacques de Bascher, "Villesalem: L'ermitage fontgombaldien et les origines du prieur? fontevriste," Revue Mabillon 61 (1987): 106-8, 116-19.

23. PL 162:1074: "Ibi jacet Hersendis monacha, bona coadjutrix mea, cuius consilio et opere construxi Fontis Evraldi aedificia."

24. PL 162:1060: "Sed quomodo poterit quaelibet claustrensis virgo exteriora nostra convenienter dispensare, quae non novit nisi psalmos cantare? Quid enim rationabiliter cantavit terrestria, semper consuevit operari spiritualia?"

25. Ibid., 1061: "Dignum quippe mihi videtur, ut quae portavit mecum laborem peregrinationis et paupertatis, portet enim pondus qualecunque consolationis nostrae et prosperitatis. Licet enim monogama fuerit, cogente tamen necessitate, nulla mihi convenientior videtur huic praelationi."

26. BN, ms.nouv.acq.lat. 2414, folio 103r.-v. (#849): "Memoriae tam presentium quam posterorum commendare curavi quod ego Petronilla quae tunc Dei gratia Fontis Ebraudi prioratum tenebam, dum uno die apud Pignorariam paululum me recreassem, Helignandus de Longo Campo et Elisabet uxor sepedicti Achardi, me visitandi gratia, pariter ad me venerunt. Cumque satis plura dixissemus, haec inter cetera ipsi [sic] Elisabet reduxi memorie ut filius suus Buccardus domno R[obertol et feminis sibi subpositis concederet terram quam pater eius Achardus et ipsa perpetuo eis tenendam concesserat. Quae meis itaque verbis huiusce modi verba respondit: quia predicta terra de emptione sua et adquisitione fuerat et cui ipsi voluissent earn libere vel quiete dare ut dimittere potuissent. Tunc ego Petronilla nolens suis adquiescere dictis, consilio amicorum nostrorum et suo assensu, ad locum qui vulgo Escarbot appellatur de fratribus et saecularibus hominibus huius rei gratia transmisi..." These events date to the earliest period of Petronilla's abbacy, or possibly even before it, since Robert of Arbrissel was apparently still alive.

27. Ibid., folios 97v.-100r. (#845 and 845 bis), 101r.-102v. (#848).

28. Ibid., folio 71v. (#768, dated 1119): "Sepe postpositis lectionis oracionumque floribus, ad disponenda temporalia propter successorum utilitatem nos inclinamus, quod nimirum idcirco facimus ut cum in sepulchris dormierimus, earum precibus apud Deum adiuvari valeamus."

29. Ibid., folio 105v. (#852): "denuntiamus quamdam iniuriose calumpnationis iniuriam quam quidam vir advena, Gireus nomine... diabolico instinctu nobis fecit...." The document is undated but must be early because one of the witnesses is Fulk's mother, the one-time queen of France, Bertrade (d. 1116).

30. Ibid., folio 64r. (#746): "Abbatissa itaque tunc temporis de Chimilliaco Petronilla, mulier sapientissima, adeo ut eos contigit non tantum quod male fecerant misericordiam eius implorantes suppliciter emendarent, verum eciam donum fratris sui se contra Dei familiam male fecisse confitentes, confirmaverunt."

31. Ibid., folios 58r.-v. (#734): "Bona ecclesie sancte Dei genetrici Marie Fontis Evraudi in scriptis mittuntur, ne a posteriis nostris, propter velocitatem transeuntis vitae, oblivioni tradantur. Ideoque domna Petronilla prima religiosa abbatissa illius loci dona supradicti suo tempore facta scribere [sic] iussit...."

32. Moore, "The Reconstruction of the Cartulary of Fontevrault," 94-95. Although I think Moore underestimates Robert of Arbrissel's practicality -- he did choose Hersende and Petronilla, after all, to attend to business matters -- I agree that Petronilla frequently showed herself "determined to secure the rights of her abbey against all comers and exercised a high degree of competence in doing so."

33. PL 163:1121. The church and several other twelfth-century structures, including a fascinating octagonal kitchen, have survived.

34. [Bernard of Clairvaux], Sancti Bernardi Opera, ed. J. Leclercq, C. H. Talbot, and H. Rochais (Rome, 1957-), 8:57 [letter 200]: "Lacrimas magis dare quam litteras libet."

35. PL 179:635-36.

36. Jean-Marc Bienvenu, "Le conflit entre Ulger, ?v?que d'Angers, et P?tronille de Chemill?, abbesse de Fontevrault (vers 1140-1149)," Revue Mabillon 58, no. 248 (1972): 113-32. The document concerning the final settlement, which is known only through a seventeenth-century edition, is printed at the bottom of the columns in PL 179:923-26.

37. Angers, Archives d?partementales de Maine-et-Loire, 101 H, 225 bis, p. 242: "incomparabilis et irrecuperabilis mater nostra."

38. See Enid McLeod, H?lo?se: A Biography (London, 1971), 8-12, Charlotte Charrier, H?lo?se dans l'histoire et dans la l?gende (Paris, 1933), 50-52; and Robert-Henri Bautier, "Paris au temps d'Ab?lard," in Ab?lard en son temps (Paris, 1981), 75-77, for speculations on Heloise's parentage.

39. [Abelard and Heloise], "The Letter of Heloise on Religious Life and Abelard's First Reply," ed. J. T. Muckle, Mediaeval Studies 17 (1955): 241-53, esp. 242-44. The translation is published in The Letters of Abelard and Heloise, trans. Betty Radice (Harmondsworth, 1974), 159-79.

40. [Abelard], "Abelard's Rule for Religious Women," ed. T. P. McLaughlin, Mediaeval Studies 18 (1956): 252-54; translated in Letters of Abelard and Heloise, 200, 202.

41. Peter the Venerable, The Letters of Peter the Venerable, ed. Giles Constable, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 1967), 1:303-8; translated in Letters of Abelard and Heloise, 277-84. The abbot wrote to Heloise in 1144.

42. Abelard, Historia calamitatum, ed. Jacques Monfrin (Paris, 1959), 100; Letters of Abelard and H?lo?se, 97.

43. Cartulaire de l'abbaye du Paraclet, ed. Charles Lalore, vol. 2 of Collection des principaux cartulaires du dioc?se de Troyes (Paris, 1878), 6-14. On the early properties of the Paraclete, see the remarks in Charrier, H?lo?se dans l'histoire, 261-73. The observations that follow will be superseded shortly by Mary Martin McLaughlin's forthcoming study of Heloise and the Paraclete.

44. Cartulaire du Paraclet, 62-63: "Galo et Adelaudis, uxor ejus, soror Ermeline, que se Deo et ecclesie Paracliti in sanctimonialem dedit, laudaverunt et concesserunt ... et XL solidos census. Et in hoc censu habebunt sanctimoniales Paracliti censum Pruvini, et hoc quod restabit ad percipiendum de XL solidis capient apud Lesinas, si ibi inveniri poterit; si vero ibidem inveniri non poterit, prefatus Galo in propinquiori loco quem habuerit, predictos XL solidos census perficiet... prenominatus Galo et Adelaudis... et ipsa Ermelina laudaverunt et concesserunt Deo et dicte ecclesie Paracliti decimam de Lesignis, quam Robertus Goisias dederat eidem ecclesie..."

45. Ibid., 64: "Henricus, Dei gratia Senonensis archiepiscopus, notum fieri volo tam presentibus quam futuris, quod Heloysa venerabilis abbatissa totusque ejusdem loci sanctissimus conventus, humiliter a nobis petierunt decimam de Lesignis, quam Robertus Goes de Turre et Girardus Ispanellus diu possiderant et in manu nostra dimiserant, eis daremus. Quarum pie petitioni assentientes..."

46. Ibid., 70-71.

47. Abelard, Historia calamitatum, 100-101.

48. For the foundation charter, see Cartulaire g?n?rale de l'Yonne, ed. Maximilien Quantin, 2 vols. (Auxerre, 1854-60), 1:493-94.

49. Cartulaire du Paraclet, 18-20.

50. McLeod, H?lo?se, 211.

51. Cartulaire du Paraclet, 33-34, is a papal letter of 1196, enjoining that the number of nuns not exceed 60. Such a request suggests, of course, that the community was or had been larger.

52. Johannes von Walter, Die ersten Wanderprediger Frankreichs: Studien zur Geschichte des M?nchtums, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1903-6), 1:191 (on leaving the monastery), 1:193 (on the duties of the maior priorissa). Pages 189-95 contain the most complete text of the rule, which is edited in briefer form in PL 162:1079-86.

53. The Paraclete Statutes: Institutiones Nostrae, ed. Chrysogonus Waddell (Trappist, Ky., 1987), 116.

54. Johnson, Equal in Monastic Profession, 207-26, addresses female monastic participation in the economy, usually citing thirteenth-century documents.

55. Cartulaire et archives des communes de l'ancien diocese et de l'arrondissement administratif de Carcassonne, ed. Alphonse Mahul, 6 vols. (Paris, 1857-82), 5:22: "damus Deo et Ecclesie B. Mariae de Rivo nitido, et tibi humili Rainae praesidenti negotiis domus istius ecclesiae..."

56. It is noteworthy that these women sometimes appear to be confronting an older understanding of property explained in Barbara Rosenwein's brilliant study of the tenth- and eleventh-century charters of Cluny. According to Rosenwein, until 1050 or so, title to the transfer of property as we understand it was the less important of two meanings of property, the other being the establishment of an ongoing relationship between the parties involved in any transfer. In such cases, property had symbolic meaning and existed to be given, sold, or exchanged repeatedly. Possessions could in some sense "belong" to a number of individuals and groups, who used transactions concerning it as a means of creating or maintaining bonds, so that property acted as a kind of "social glue." See Barbara H. Rosenwein, To Be The Neighbor of Saint Peter: The Social Meaning of Cluny's Property, 909-1049 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1989), esp. 109-43. Such a conception of property would account for the difficulties Petronilla had in establishing title to Pignonni?res and make sense of Elisabeth's claim that the land was hers to do with it as she pleased, even though she had recognized Fontevraud's ownership only a short time before. The same may well apply to the tithes of Lesines, which a number of people claimed the right to alienate before they came firmly under the control of Heloise and the Paraclete. Constance Bouchard finds a similar "semi-ambiguity in property ownership" among Burgundian Cistercians and their knightly neighbors even in the later twelfth century, arguing that this understanding of the meaning of property had moved down the social scale since the tenth and eleventh century (Constance B. Bouchard, Holy Entrepreneurs: Cistercians, Knights, and Economic Exchange in Twelfth-Century Burgundy [Ithaca, N.Y., 1991], 178-81). Although neither of these excellent studies is explicitly based on David Herlihy's work, the use of charters to explore otherwise hidden aspects of medieval culture follows very much along the same lines.

57. Paul Marchegay, "Recherches sur les cartulaires d'Anjou," Archives d'Anjou 1 (1843): 186.

58. PL 179:864: "Quanto ergo femineus sexus exstat fragilior, tanto magis erga vos paternam curam atque sollicitudinem volumus exhibere, et jura vestri monasterii a pravorum incursibus defensare."

59. David Herlihy, "Women and the Sources of Medieval History: The Towns of Northern Italy," in Medieval Women and the Sources of Medieval History, ed. Joel T. Rosenthal, 147 (Athens, Ga., 1990).

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