Intercessors

Chapter 5 spotlights Benedictine nuns as intercessors, focusing especially on how they served those who were not members of their communities through offering prayers. This role—both in its idealized forms and in its lived realities—is reconstructed through the conventual and personal seals, charters, letters, mortuary rolls, prayer books, and psalters that women’s communities received, produced, and used. This chapter challenges the persistent scholarly assumption that nuns’ intercessory prayers depreciated in value over the central Middle Ages because, unlike their male counterparts, they could not offer the individualized forms of commemoration increasingly desired by prospective patrons—namely Masses—without the assistance of resident chaplains or visiting priests. Comparative analysis of the extant documentary sources from religious communities in Oxfordshire reveals that the nuns of Godstow Abbey rivaled neighboring monks, canons, and Templars in attracting lay donations in return for certain spiritual benefits, particularly prayers for the remission of sins and salvation.