Medieval Letter Reveals Bawdy Nun Who Faked Her Death to Escape Convent

Disir

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Sep 30, 2011
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Medieval nun fakes death to escape convent and enjoy a life of carnal lust. Sounds like the basis for a juicy novel, but this really happened during the 14th century in England.

Archivist and historian Sarah Rees Jones discovered the real-life tale while investigating the Registers of the Archbishops of York, which recorded the business of archbishops from 1304 to 1405, as part of a project to make the contents of the documents accessible online.

In a letter (in the registers) dating to 1318, Archbishop William Melton describes a "scandalous rumor" he heard, detailing the blasphemous behavior of a nun named Joan to the Dean of Beverley, who was responsible for an area of Yorkshire some 40 miles (64 kilometers) east of York, said Rees Jones, a medieval historian at the University of York and principal investigator on the project.
Medieval Letter Reveals Bawdy Nun Who Faked Her Death to Escape Convent


Those medieval Joans........always in trouble.
 
This looks like a great story.

Iet me suggest that you take a look at the letters between Abelard and Heloise, written 200 years before Randy Joan, if you haven't already. They lived circa 1120, C.E., around the time the Church started on its celibacy kick. Somewhere I have a book of these letters, and recall reading that he would visit her in the convent where he had stashed her after they were married (they hadn't waited for the ceremony, naughty!, and I think that their kid arrived before the ceremony) before her uncle had him castrated.

She wrote of a fond memory of the great time they had in the convent's dining hall. Sad that his loss ruined their marriage, and she mourned the fact that he could no longer give her his special treat, but she became abbess of an abbey he founded.

I look forward to reading about the Not-So-Saint Joan.:eusa_angel:

I once got a card from a friend that featured a monk running up to another monk in the scriptorium (maybe drawn by Gary Larsen). The monk was yelling "It doesn't say 'celibate,' it says 'celebrate'!"
 

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