|
You are here:
The Nun of Watton
In the twelfth-century a nun of the Gilbertine
priory of Watton (who had been there since a girl, but was said
to have had no vocation for the religious life) fell in love with
a lay-brother of the
community -or perhaps a canon - who had been sent to work in the
nuns’ quarters. The girl soon fell pregnant and was, as a consequence,
beaten up and imprisoned by the other nuns. She was then forced
to castrate her lover and once the drastic deed had been done one
of the other nuns thrust the severed parts, ‘befouled with blood’ ,
into her mouth. The nun was returned to her fetters. A miracle was
then reported, and it was said that Henry
Murdac (who had placed the girl in the community in the first
place) appeared to the nun in a vision along with two women who
cleansed her of any traces of her pregnancy, leaving her once again
pure; one of her fetters then fell away. Aelred
of Rievaulx was called to assess the authenticity of these reports
and concluded that they were indeed, miraculous.
[See G. Constable, Aelred of Rievaulx
and the nun of Watton: an episode in the early history of the
Gilbertine
Order, in ed. D. Baker, Medieval Women (Oxford, 1978),
pp. 205-26; also see B. Golding, Gilbert of Sempringham and
the Gilbertine Order (Oxford, 1995), pp. 33-8.]
|