Opera Muliebria: Craft Literature and Practice in Medieval Women's Religious Communities

In his sixth-century Rule, Benedict of Nursia instructs his reader that manual labour is essential to monastic life. It could take many forms-agriculture, charity, and even artisanry. Many scholars have investigated monastic craft, including Montalembert, Swartwout, and Knowles.

However, much less emphasis has been placed on the artisanry of medieval religious women, particularly as documented in manuscripts. While several studies of convent textiles and paintings have been produced, these are artifact-based and limited in scope (Seeberg, Ni Ghrádaigh, Hamburger, etc.). In light of the highly gendered medieval approaches to writing and craft practice, I will

investigate texts discussing female monastic artisanry and compare them to their male counterparts. There are six genres of relevant manuscripts: art technology texts, hagiographies, financial/administrative records, monastic rules, chronicles/histories, and ecclesiastical decrees. In analysing these manuscripts, I want to understand how religious women approached craft

practice. Did they choose one genre or tone more frequently than another? How did gendered conventions of writing and craft translate into writings about craft? Understanding the attitudes of medieval religious women toward their crafts will provide a useful lens for interpreting surviving conventual artifacts, and greater insight into women's contributions to medieval art and

technology