Evangelists

The liturgical proclamation of the gospel serves as the focus of Chapter 3. The evidence examined in this chapter shows that Benedictine nuns in England—like their male counterparts, but contrary to the prescriptive sources ostensibly regulating their practices—read the gospels in a variety of liturgical and communal contexts during the central Middle Ages: Matins on Sundays and on feast days, chapter, and refectory. This chapter also demonstrates that many nuns possessed the requisite literacies to read and comprehend the scriptures for their personal edification and to copy and adapt these texts for their communities’ use. Paleographical, codicological, and textual analyses of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 155, an early eleventh-century gospel book from Barking Abbey, are especially revealing of how nuns could copy and adapt a book for liturgical proclamation. These women were capable of evangelizing the Word through their textual productions, verbal instructions, and ministerial actions.