Full text of DOI:10.1016/S0304-4181(00)00018-X

Journal of Medieval History 27 (2001) 43–54
www.elsevier.com/locate/jmedhist
La Cour Notre-Dame de Michery: a response to
Constance Berman
*
Anne E. Lester , William Chester Jordan
Department of History, Princeton University, 129 Dickinson Hall, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA
Abstract
In a recent article in JMH, Constance Berman suggested that the thirteenth-century history
of the Cistercian nuns of La Cour Notre-Dame de Michery in France has been distorted by
scholars’ reliance on the fifteenth-century cartulary of the house. This compilation, she argues,
was meant to portray the nunnery as a failure and to justify its transformation into a male
priory. The authors of the present article attempt to show that Berman’s doubts about the
reliability of the cartulary are unjustified and that the archeological evidence of the church of
La Cour which she uses to infer La Cour’s financial vigor in the thirteenth-century actually
points strongly in the opposite direction.  2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Cistercians; Nuns; Archeology; Cartularies
Curiously, the Cistercian nunnery of La Cour Notre-Dame de Michery, founded
in 1225 and overlooked by historians for many years, has become the centre of a
cluster of historical questions. Aside from a few brief notices in reference works,
La Cour Notre-Dame first seems to have received some sustained scholarly attention
in 1985, when one of the authors of this essay wrote a brief article about the nun-
1
nery. That piece addressed a number of issues about the financial management of
the house, the diligence of abbatial visitation of Cistercian nunneries, and the mission
or aspirations of that particular community of religious women. In the decade and
a half following the publication of this article there have been important studies
*
Corresponding author. Tel.: +1-609-258-4159; fax: +1-609-258-5326.
L.-H. Cottineau, R e´ pertoire topo-bibliographique des abbayes et prieur e´ s (M aˆ con, 1939), I, 899;
1
Dictionnaire d’histoire et de g e´ ographie eccl e´ siastique (Paris, 1956), XIII, 948–49; Gallia christiana in
provincias ecclesiasticas distributa, 16 vols. (Paris, 1715–1865), XII, col. 129; William Jordan, ‘The
Cistercian nunnery of La Cour Notre-Dame de Michery: a house that failed’, Revue b e´ n e´ dictine, 95 (1985),
3
11–20.
0
304-4181/01/$ - see front matter  2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
PII: S0304-4181(00)00018-X

4
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A.E. Lester, W.C. Jordan / Journal of Medieval History 27 (2001) 43–54
relating to female monasticism that have changed how historians look at sources for
female houses, how they pose questions, and what kinds of basic assumptions they
2
bring to this material.
Partly informed by these new approaches, Constance Berman has offered a new
3
interpretation of La Cour Notre-Dame’s history. Like that of most monastic houses,
our knowledge of La Cour is based largely on its cartulary. Berman argues that the
cartulary is a biased source created in the fifteenth century by the monks of C ˆı teaux
who sought to justify the suppression of the nunnery and its conversion into a male
priory. She contends that the evidence in the cartulary is coloured by the intent of
its creators who strove to represent La Cour as a community that mismanaged its
resources, fell into financial ruin, and deserved suppression. While Berman’s cautions
about the cartulary are salutary, the meaning and interpretation she ascribes to the
documents transcribed there seem extreme. La Cour may not utterly have ‘failed’
(Jordan’s word), but Berman goes too far the other way and, we believe, fundamen-
tally misrepresents the community at La Cour. This response to her article challenges
some of Berman’s central assumptions, returns to a few of the fundamental docu-
ments in the La Cour cartulary to justify the challenge, and provides a fresh and,
we hope, persuasive interpretation of the nuns’ situation.
The nunnery of La Cour Notre-Dame de Michery (or l e` s-Gouvernay) grew out of
a small community of religious women ministering to several lepers in the hamlet
of Viluis (or Viluys) to the north of Sens. Some time before 1225 a number of these
women moved into a small cluster of farmhouses that they held nearby at Michery
in order to carry out their religious devotions in a more monastic setting. With the
aid of the archbishop of Sens the women of La Cour petitioned to follow the customs
of the Cistercians, specifically the way of life of the nuns of Saint-Antoine des
4
Champs of Paris. In 1226 the abbots of Pontigny and Cercanceaux personally visited
the nuns and were persuaded, perhaps by the zeal of the women they saw or through
their own good dispositions, that the women living there had sufficient resources to
5
sustain a house. As a result, their association with the Cistercian order was accepted.
2
To list just a few, Paulette L’H e´ rmite-Leclercq, Le Monachisme feminine dans la soci e´ t e´ de son
temps: Le Monast e` re de La Celle (XIe-d e´ but du XVIe si e` cle) (Paris, 1989); Penelope Johnson, Equal in
Monastic Profession: Religious Women in Medieval France (Chicago, 1991); Roberta Gilchrist, Gender
and Material Culture: The Archaeology of Religious Women (London, 1994); Bruce Venarde, Women’s
Monasticism and Medieval Society: Nunneries in France and England, 890–1215 (Ithaca, 1997); and
Maralyn Oliva, The Convent and the Community in Late Medieval England: Female Monasteries in the
Diocese of Norwich, 1350–1540 (Rochester, NY, 1998).
3
Constance Berman, ‘The “Labours of Hercules”: the cartulary, church and abbey for nuns of La
Cour Notre-Dame-de-Michery’, Journal of Medieval History, 26 (2000), 33–70.
4
Archives D e´ partementales [AD]: Yonne, H 787, fol. 12v; edited in M. Quantin, Recueil de pi e` ces
pour faire suite au Cartulaire G e´ n e´ ral de l’Yonne (Auxerre and Paris, 1873), no. 329. On the continuing
relationship between the women and the lepers at Viluis and the authorization of this relationship by the
archbishop of Sens, see Fran c¸ ois-Olivier Touati, Maladie et soci e´ t e´ au moyen aˆ ge (Paris, 1998), p. 683
(
the reference to La Cour as a priory in the thirteenth century is, however, in error).
5
AD: Yonne, H 787, fol. 12v; J.-M. Canivez, Statuta Capitulorum Generalium Ordinis Cisterciensis,
8
vols. (Louvain, 1933–1941), II, year 1226, cap. 33: Petitio domini Senonensis de quadam abbatia monial-
ium, quae vocatur Curia Sanctae Mariae, Ordini socianda, committitur abbatibus de Pontiniaco et de

A.E. Lester, W.C. Jordan / Journal of Medieval History 27 (2001) 43–54
45
It is not clear by what standard admission to the order was permitted in 1226.
Judging from a number of early charters, the nuns of La Cour held only small parcels
of lands, a few arpents of vineyards and fields, but enough, it seems, to convince
6
the abbots of their viability as a Cistercian house. The nuns received donations
throughout the century, but few amounted to substantial gifts. Furthermore, during
this period the nuns cared for and devoted part of their income to the lepers at
Viluis. All the while the women’s numbers continued to grow. In 1245 the nuns had
7
possession of their properties confirmed by Pope Innocent IV. By this time they
apparently felt financially secure, for they planned the construction of a new sanctu-
8
ary. The date of the building campaign is usually placed near but prior to 1260.
Soon after, however, evidence begins to suggest that the nuns were overextending
themselves financially. In 1268, the abbot of C ˆı teaux (to whom they were directly
subject) sent the women a copy of a decree of Pope Clement IV, which stated that
all religious houses of women had to be able to maintain themselves by their own
resources. The abbot appended a warning to the nuns of La Cour, specifically
instructing them to limit their number to 40, with the exception of lepers, servants,
9
and serving girls, under pain of excommunication and interdict.
The extent of the financial strain on the nunnery is further illuminated by a papal
investigation that occurred in 1286. The nuns defaulted on the payment of a grant
for the French crusade against Aragon in 1285. The investigation of 1286, conducted
by the cardinal-priest of Saint Cecilia of Rome, discovered that the rents and incomes
from the monastery’s holdings were far too low to sustain the nuns living there. By
1
286, the community, which still included the house and leprosarium at Viluis,
exceeded 50 nuns and counted among its inmates lay servants and 18 children as
well as a number of lepers. During the investigation the abbess admitted that, in order
1
0
to sustain themselves, the nuns were forced by necessity into public mendicancy. It
is difficult to gauge the exact effect the investigation had upon the nunnery, but the
Sacracella, ut personaliter accedant ad locum, et si invenerit quod moniales sufficienter habeant unde
vivant et inclusae secundum statutum Capituli generalis fuerint, exauditur.
6
This was to change in the coming years. In 1228 the General Chapter passed a statute requiring all
new female houses affiliated with the order to have enough resources to be self-sufficient. Canivez, Statuta,
II, year 1228, cap. 16. Thus, after 1228 admission to the order was perhaps more difficult to obtain
without a significant endowment and a number of monastic buildings already built or provided for. A
further glimpse at the increased regulation in regard to monastic endowment comes from the early docu-
ments of La Joie (Gaudium) another Cistercian nunnery founded in the diocese of Sens. The earliest
foundation document dates from 1230 for a house of Cistercian nuns with 10 arpents (equivalent to 5
hectares) of land. In 1233 this amount of land was augmented by another two arpents because 10 were
not seen as sufficient. Gallia christiana, XII, col. 67–68: Ad augmentationem itaque dicti loci, qui ad
fundandam abbatiam minime sufficiens videbatur, quasi duo arpenta terrae quae juxta dictum locum div-
ersi homines possidebant, acquisivimus ab eisdem. It was only in 1236 that La Joie was formally admitted
into the Order.
7
Quantin, Recueil, no. 503.
Marcel Aubert, L’Architecture cistercienne en France, 2 vols. (Paris, 1953), II, 182.
AD: Yonne H 787, fol. 6v. Partly transcribed in Quantin, Recueil, no. 640.
AD: Yonne H 787, fols. 21–23.
8
9
1
0

4
6
A.E. Lester, W.C. Jordan / Journal of Medieval History 27 (2001) 43–54
investigators instructed the nuns to reduce their numbers to 30 and to keep tighter
control over their finances.
More devastating financially was the Hundred Years War. The war, which hit the
S e´ nonais particularly hard, destroyed the economy and reduced the community to
11
only 15 nuns. After the war the task of rebuilding and reorganization must have
been overwhelming. In 1496 the nunnery of La Cour met the same end as many of
the smaller rural Cistercian nunneries in the region; it was converted into a male
1
2
priory and its lands and revenues were redistributed.
It must be acknowledged that these events in the history of La Cour Notre-Dame
should not be read cumulatively. The nuns’ admission of mendicancy in 1286 did
not bring about the suppression of their monastery in 1496. However, building a
new church in the thirteenth century, housing a large number of nuns and servants,
and caring for lepers and children exceeded the house’s means. Seeking a remedy
to their financial plight in mendicancy did not make recovery a likely possibility.
Yet La Cour Notre-Dame provides insight into a type of community of Cistercian
nuns little discussed by historians. Because the community did not enjoy the largesse
of the king’s mother, Blanche of Castile, a noted patron of Cistercian houses, or that
of other members of the nobility, La Cour had to find and carefully manage its own
sources of income. Furthermore, the house had to react to changes within the Cister-
cian order in ways quite different from large, well-endowed communities.
1
. The cartulary of La Cour Notre-Dame
The principal, nearly the sole, sources for the history of La Cour Notre-Dame are
its cartulary and the remains of its abbey church. Both must be read in the context
of their creation and in the context of the history of the Cistercian order itself. The
cartulary is an impressive compilation of 222 folio pages containing the copies of
over 300 charters relating to La Cour. It was created at the behest of Jean de Cirey,
abbot of C ˆı teaux (1476–1501), most likely at the time of the suppression of the
house (c. 1496). For Berman the cartulary and what she calls its ‘rubrication’, betrays
the abbot’s interests in La Cour. She sees the first part of the cartulary, that part
which contains the papal documents relating to the house, documents about its affili-
1
3
ation with the order as well as the 1286 investigation, as a dossier for suppression.
But, in fact, the nature of the compilation of the cartulary suggests otherwise.
La Cour Notre-Dame’s cartulary was one of many created in an effort by Abbot
Jean de Cirey and his scribe, Moret, to re-catalogue and organize the archives of a
number of affiliated monasteries. It was during Jean’s abbacy that the charters for
11
Anne Bond e´ elle-Souchier, ‘Les Moniales cisterciennes et leurs livres manuscrits dans la France d’an-
cien r e´ gime’, C ˆı teaux, 45 (1994), 272.
12
Bond e´ elle-Souchier, ‘Moniales’, for an indication of the numbers of small nunneries converted into
male priories during the fifteenth century.
13
Berman, ‘Labours of Hercules’, 40.

A.E. Lester, W.C. Jordan / Journal of Medieval History 27 (2001) 43–54
47
1
4
C ˆı teaux itself were reorganized and copied anew into nine volumes. It is unlikely
that such a general undertaking aimed at administrative improvement throughout the
order and at the mother house was a cover for an attempt to distort the history of
La Cour and justify the suppression of a relatively unimportant foundation.
One of the fundamental aspects of La Cour’s history revealed in the cartulary is
its patronage network. Berman suggests that La Cour Notre-Dame had patrons of
significant power and wealth who made major donations to the community. Among
these individuals she lists King Louis IX, Thibaut IV, Count of Champagne, and
15
Blanche of Castile (who will be treated later). According to Berman, in other words,
La Cour benefitted from the same sort of patronage as a number of famous Cistercian
nunneries in the thirteenth century. Yet it would be a mistake to equate the ties of
a house like La Cour with those of powerful sister monasteries that did receive
repeated royal support or were royal foundations themselves. In particular, the fact
that the names of powerful individuals appear in the documents is not sufficient in
itself to regard those individuals as patrons of La Cour. Louis IX, for example,
appears in a document from 1245 only in recognition of the amortissement of pro-
perty of one ‘Jean of La Cour Notre-Dame’. Jean gave the nuns two arpents of
vineyards located in Villeneuve-le-Roi. Louis IX’s approval was needed for Jean to
alienate the land at Villeneuve-le-Roi, for Villeneuve-le-Roi, as the names implies,
16
was a royal town.
The case is similar for Thibaut of Champagne. Thibaut does not give directly to
the nuns of La Cour, but rather is recognized as the overlord of a number of proper-
1
7
ties donated to the nuns and permits the land transfers to them. The genuine patrons
who appear in the documents of La Cour are members of the lower aristocracy and
of the growing urban elite, individuals such as the lords of Tra ˆı nel, men like Pierre
Fleurigny and Hugues de Balatorio who sell woods or divers good to the nuns, and
Marie, the grand-daughter of one Etienne, an official of the city of Sens, who gave
18
two arpents of land. The nuns of La Cour were involved in exchanges of small
pieces of land and goods, given or sometimes sold to the women by moderately well
off individuals – piety at a local level. The efforts and interest of local men and
women helped to create an endowment for La Cour, but the sum total of these lands
14
C.H. Talbot, ‘Documents cisterciens et l’abb e´ Jean de Cirey (1476–1501)’, in: M e´ langes a` la m e´ moire
du p e` re Anselme Dimier, ed. Beno ˆı t Chauvin, 3 volumes in 6 (Arbois, 1984), IV, 759–67.
1
5
Berman, ‘Labours of Hercules’, 47–49.
AD: Yonne, H 787, fol. 102r; Berman, ‘Labours of Hercules’, 47. For Villeneuve-le-Roi, see Dic-
16
tionnaire topographique de la France: Yonne, ed. M. Quantin (Paris, 1872), 142, and William Jordan,
From Servitude to Freedom: Manumission in the S e´ nonais in the Thirteenth Century (Philadelphia, 1986),
4
–5, 41–44.
17
Berman, ‘Labours of Hercules’, 49. Two of his acts are listed in M.H. d’Arbois de Jubainville,
Histoire des ducs et des comtes de Champagne, 7 vols. (Paris, 1859–1869), V, nos. 2496, 2546.
18
See note 17, and AD: Yonne, H 787, fol. 13r. For the lords of Tra ˆı nel see Theodore Evergates,
Feudal Society in the Bailliage of Troyes under the Counts of Champagne, 1154–1284 (Baltimore, 1975),
07. Evergates comments that by the thirteenth century ‘little distinguished them [the Tra ˆı nel line] except
2
the steady succession of male heirs who maintained a “presence” in bailliage affairs and continued
their line’.

4
8
A.E. Lester, W.C. Jordan / Journal of Medieval History 27 (2001) 43–54
and rents was insufficient to sustain the nuns as their numbers and aspirations for a
new church grew.
Issues of patronage are intimately linked to questions of how La Cour Notre-Dame
managed its assets. By 1245, the nuns had amassed enough of an endowment to
seek papal confirmation of their holdings. Yet they were building a patrimony in a
diocese that had three other large Cistercian female communities, Villiers, La Joie
and Le Lys, all three of which had more significant local patrons who were either
connected to the king or, as in the case of Le Lys, had Louis IX and Blanche as
founders. This meant that La Cour had considerable regional competitors for
donations. The text of the pope’s confirmation enumerates, partly in formulaic
fashion, the various lands, fields, woods, mills, water rights, tithes, and rents that
the nuns held. Also listed are three granges, one of which, that at Viluis, was probably
used by the leper community there, as well as possessions the nuns held in places
like Villeneuve-le-Roi. The length of the list may seem to suggest a large patrimony,
but this is misleading. For example, though Villeneuve-le-Roi is listed, the nuns held
only two arpents of vineyard there. No doubt it was important and useful for the
nuns to receive papal confirmation of their holdings. It must have appeared, too, that
there was a portion of the available resources of the house that could be diverted to
the building of a new church. But La Cour had no deep reservoirs of wealth to call
upon if conditions changed.
2
. The church at La Cour Notre-Dame
The church at La Cour raises many difficult questions. Analysis of the church is
hindered by the fact that only two parts of the building are still standing: the single
19
bay of the apse and the north transept arm. In many respects the church of La
Cour is at the centre of Berman’s discussion of the community. In an effort to argue
that La Cour experienced no financial strain as a result of the building campaign
she downplays the expense of the building and its materials, positing that it had a
wooden roof and grisaille glass. In addition, in order to account for the church’s
impressive eastern window panel, Berman credits Blanche of Castile as the donor
of the window. Yet a careful analysis of the church’s stylistic qualities as well as
its structural components leads to a strikingly different interpretation.
2
The apse and north transept of the church both measure about 10 m and have
been closed off to the west and to the south respectively by the addition of a masonry
2
0
wall, creating in effect two separate architectural spaces. The date when the sanctu-
ary was closed off is unclear. Marcel Aubert dates the masonry wall at the west end
19
The most recent description of the site is in Les Cisterciens dans l’Yonne, ed. Terryl Kinder (Pontigny,
999), 33–34, 173–77.
1
20
Berman gives the measurements for the east end as 8.2 m by 8.9 m, whereas for the northern transept
the dimensions are narrower, approximately 9 m by 6.5 m, though Berman does not give the latter
measurements. See Berman, ‘Labours of Hercules’, 64; and Aubert, Architecture cistercienne, II, 182 (a
plan is on p. 179, figure 511).

A.E. Lester, W.C. Jordan / Journal of Medieval History 27 (2001) 43–54
49
of the apse to the sixteenth century when a Renaissance portal (with an inscription
2
1
from 1532) was created to provide an ornamental western entry. The most dis-
tinguishing feature of the church is the remains of a large (approximately 5-m) Ray-
onnant rose and lancet window panel that fills the flat eastern wall of the apse. The
2
2
glass has been filled in but the tracery for the window is still in place. In some
respects the church is an anomaly because it is a small regional church with an
impressive gothic window panel; it is uncertain, therefore, whether the original plan
of the church was ever fulfilled. It is likely, however, that the planners envisaged
three bays in the nave, a transept crossing, and a flat apse in the choir. If completed,
the structure would have been just under 40 m long and 10 m wide, with the transept
spanning just under 30 m. This would have been significantly smaller than, say, the
famous church at Maubuisson (25 m by 60 m), which did enjoy royal patronage.
The stylistic aspects of the church at La Cour cannot be understood apart from
the chronology of the building campaign. When the nuns came to Michery there
was likely a small sanctuary structure in place or soon to be completed that was
used from 1226 through the new building campaign. This church was most likely a
single nave structure with a flat apse, a simple building like many other Cistercian
23
nunnery churches in the region. The new church planned for La Cour, if it reached
its full size, would have been large enough to accommodate a community of 40
nuns, implying that the community of nuns had grown or that growth was expected.
The pattern was a familiar one, eventuated in a modest church, and, once again, was
24
not dependent on royal patronage. Royal patronage led to sanctuaries like Maubuis-
son and Lys, magnificent structures trumpeting devotion to the crown in their monu-
mental size.
The community at La Cour chose to build the church in the Rayonnant style that
25
was manifest all through the S e´ nonais. This meant the addition of a transept cross-
ing and an east end with the aforementioned Gothic window. The extant tracery in
the east details a large circular rose positioned above five lancets, four of which are
paired with oculi above them and placed on either side of a smaller fifth lancet that
21
Aubert, Architecture cistercienne, II, 193. This was of course after the nunnery had been suppressed
and converted into a male priory.
2
2
Aubert, Architecture cistercienne, II, 193.
Similar arguments apply to the churches at the nunneries of L’Amour-Dieu (Marne), La Joie (Seine-
23
et-Marne), and Pont-aux-Dames (Seine-et-Marne). These are nunneries with churches that date to the
thirteenth–fourteenth centuries and that did not directly benefit from the patronage of Blanche of Castile
or substantially from that of the crown in their building campaigns.
24
One can compare the course of events at the Cistercian nunnery of Notre-Dames-des-Pr e´ s, founded
outside Troyes in 1231. The nuns there, who are described as wearing white habits, were installed first
in a grange belonging to Etienne de Campo Guidonis; AD: Aube, G 3101, dated to 1231. Notre-Dame-
des-Pr e´ s only acquired a new church with a nave, rounded apse, and buttresses much later in the thirteenth
century. See Michel Desmarchelier, ‘L’Architecture des e´ glises de moniales cisterciennes, essai de classe-
ment des diff e´ rents types de plans (en guise de suite)’, in: M e´ langes a` la m e´ moire du p e` re Anselm Dimier,
V, 95; N. Becquart, ‘Notre Dame des Pr e´ s, abbaye cistercienne du dioc e` se de Troyes’, summarized in
Biblioth e` que de l’Ecole des chartes, th e` ses de 1945, 39–50.
25
Robert Branner, ‘Paris and the origins of Rayonnant Gothic architecture down to 1240’, Art Bulletin,
4 (1962), 39–52.
4

5
0
A.E. Lester, W.C. Jordan / Journal of Medieval History 27 (2001) 43–54
fills out the central portion of the window panel. In the arrangement of rose and
2
6
lancets the window is similar to many Cistercian rose compositions in the area. In
its form it does indeed proclaim a connection to Cistercian window decoration, but
2
7
one shared by royally and non-royally sponsored houses.
Whether we assume that the nuns expanded a pre-existing building or, following
28
Berman, that the west end of the choir was not completed but rather sealed off
with a masonry wall at the end of the thirteenth century, funding concerns for the
church must have rapidly escalated. From perhaps the later 1240s to well beyond
1
260 the nuns would have been making payments for the sanctuary and its impressive
east window. Berman seeks to establish two points: first, that the construction was not
extravagant in relation to the nuns’ resources and, therefore, in no way contributed to
their economic troubles in 1286. This conclusion is contingent on her second point,
namely, that the east window was a donation from a wealthy patron, most likely
Blanche of Castile. In fact, there is no documentation in the La Cour cartulary relat-
ing to Blanche, who died in 1252, a date probably before any serious headway was
made in building. So, Berman’s suggestion is merely speculation. But is it convincing
speculation? A few additional remarks will show that it is not.
Berman maintains that the roof of the church was wooden and there was no vault-
29
ing. She also writes that ‘art historians agree that La Cour-Notre-Dame’s church
never had or was intended to have stone vaulting’. On this point she gives no refer-
ences, and we have yet to find any corroboration for the opinion. It is hard to imagine
creating an eastern window of the dimensions of La Cour’s in a non-vaulted structure.
Moreover, vaulting would have been a key stylistic component in and of itself, and
it would further account for the evident buttressing on the northeast and southeast
corners of the apse, allowing for the eastern wall to be fully opened for the window
3
0
panel. Aubert reasoned, therefore, that La Cour’s church was vaulted.
A comparison of Berman’s recent photograph of the east end of the apse with the
photograph reproduced by Aubert and published in 1953 shows, moreover, that the
roof has been rebuilt and lowered in the last 50 years. In the earlier photograph, a
clear course of corbels is visible along the southern wall of the apse articulating the
original height of the roof. Berman does not offer a detailed description of the interior
of the apse. However, it is likely, again to invoke Aubert, that the vaulting would
have sprung from corbels visible only from the original interior of the church.
In an attempt to downplay the cost and ‘extravagance’ of the window, Berman
imagines that the glass was grisaille, a colourless and, allegedly, inexpensive glass
26
For example, the rose at the west end of the abbey church of the Cistercian male house of Notre-Dame
de Champagne-sur-Oise; Ile-de-France gothique, I, ed. M. Bideault and C. Lautier (Paris, 1987), 145.
27
Cf. Anselm Dimier, ‘L’Architecture des e´ glises de moniales cisterciennes’, C ˆı teaux, 25 (1974), 8–
2
3; Desmarchelier, ‘Architecture des e´ glises de moniales’, 79–121; Cisterciens dans l’Yonne.
2
2
3
8
9
0
Berman, ‘Labours of Hercules’, 63.
Berman, ‘Labours of Hercules’, 63.
Aubert, Architecture cistercienne, 182. We would like to warmly thank Patricia Pongracz of Brown
University for help in understanding the architecture of the church of La Cour.

A.E. Lester, W.C. Jordan / Journal of Medieval History 27 (2001) 43–54
51
31
common in Cistercian windows. In fact, grisaille was often ornately painted and
was also often of comparable quality and expense to coloured glass. The choice of
3
2
a grisaille window, if this were the choice, would have been stylistic not monetary.
Even if the grisaille were significantly cheaper, why spare the expense, particularly
if the money was coming from the Queen Dowager or a patron of similar social
(
33
status?)
3
. The mission of the nuns of La Cour Notre-Dame
In 1245, the Cistercian order in France began negotiations with the papacy that
would continue through the end of the century over the payment of crusade taxes.
In 1248, to preserve its privilege of exemption, the order volunteered a specific
sum of money for Louis IX’s crusade. This amount was augmented for subsequent
expeditions, such as Charles of Anjou’s campaign in the Mediterranean to gain the
3
4
kingdom of Sicily in the 1260s and Louis IX’s final crusade (1270). C ˆı teaux nego-
tiated the sums, but all houses contributed, including nunneries. The repeated need
for funds may help explain why the abbot of C ˆı teaux personally sent La Cour a copy
of Pope Clement IV’s bull requiring communities of nuns to limit their numbers in
relation to their resources. What is indisputable is that by 1285 the community of
La Cour defaulted on its tax assessment for the crusade against Aragon. The order
had negotiated for a payment fixed at 75,000 livres tournois; Cistercian nunneries
35
were to pay 2000 livres tournois. A number of communities – towns and monas-
3
6
teries, Cistercian and non-Cistercian – that were taxed in 1285 defaulted.
In 1286, after the nuns had been excommunicated for default, a papally authorized
investigation took place in the diocese of Sens. The outcome of the inquest, as pre-
served in the cartulary, was a determination that the rents and other acknowledged
income of the monastery were inadequate, indeed stretched beyond the limit, and
that as a consequence the abbess and nuns were not able to sustain themselves from
them. Nonetheless, as the women finally admitted, they eked out a living by begging
3
3
1
2
Berman, ‘Labours of Hercules’, 66.
Cf. Meredith Lillich, ‘A redating of the thirteenth-century grisaille windows of Chartres cathedral’,
Gesta, 11 (1972), 11–18; Helen Zakin, ‘French Cistercian grisaille glass’, Gesta, 12 (1974), 17–28.
33
One other point might be made. Simple grisaille windows may have been characteristic of the early
part of the thirteenth century, but grisaille windows in combination with coloured glass were something
of a fashion in the mid- and late-thirteenth century. Precise dating of the La Cour rose, therefore, even
if Berman’s other conjectures are right, is impossible; cf. Virginia Raguin, Stained Glass in Thirteenth-
century Burgundy (Princeton, 1982), 62–63, 69–70, 82.
34
Daniel Buczek, ‘Medieval taxation: the French crown, the papacy and the Cistercian order, 1190–
1
320’, Analecta Cisterciensia, 25 (1969), 42–69.
35
Buczek, ‘Medieval taxation’, 68, n. 36.
36
Joseph R. Strayer, ‘The crusade against Aragon’, in: Medieval Statecraft and the Perspectives of
History (Princeton, 1971), 113.

5
2
A.E. Lester, W.C. Jordan / Journal of Medieval History 27 (2001) 43–54
37
publicly for alms (de elemosinis). Abbess Constance and several other nuns, as
well as the men who ministered to the women’s sacramental and administrative
3
8
needs, all testified to the veracity of these findings. As distressing as the admission
of poverty was, what was more baffling and most worrisome to the cardinal-priest
who headed the investigation was that the nuns had wandered in pairs outside the
confines of the monastery, beyond the leprosarium at Viluis, to the cities of Sens
and Paris, among others, to seek alms. This aspect of the testimony deserves careful
consideration and affords a glimpse at a nunnery seeking to solve its own financial
problems without the intervention of the order’s hierarchy. In other words, at a point
3
0 years prior to the inquest the nuns had searched for a way of acquiring supplemen-
tal cash, cash that would sustain them as their community grew and as they con-
structed a worthy church, but which would otherwise go unrecorded in their lists of
rents and conventional income. The solution to their chronic financial difficulties,
mendicancy, went against the mounting strictures of the papacy and of the order in
regard to women’s claustration. Or so we believe.
Berman disagrees, but her reading of the 1286 inquest is quite eccentric and
presents a number of serious problems. To begin with, she sees the 1286 document
as reflecting the strong leadership of Abbess Constance, even though the income
totals for the nunnery as recorded in 1286 (295 livres 7 sous 10 deniers) are start-
39
lingly low, a fact that seems at variance with Berman’s strong conviction that La
Cour was a financially secure nunnery under good direction. How can this apparent
contradiction be resolved? We would argue that there is no contradiction. Constance
may have been a fine abbess, but the nuns were begging precisely because their
regular income was so low. According to Berman, however, the figure preserved in
the investigative records was only calculated from various testimonies; the sum itself
40
was not provided by the abbess. We are to imagine, it seems, a sort of plot by the
compilers of the cartulary two centuries later to represent the monastery as adminis-
tratively weak as part of the justification for its suppression. This scenario seems far-
fetched.
Also according to Berman, the abbess constructed a story in which she exaggerated
the plight of the nuns and ‘inflated the numbers’ of dependents in order to represent
4
1
the abbey as poor and, by doing so, cleverly avoided paying the crusade tax. Also,
though, ‘the situation in 1286 was probably less dire than their account of her testi-
42
mony paints it to be’. Abbess Constance was, in this second scenario, an extremely
37
AD: Yonne, H 787, fol. 21r: Inquisita vobis constiterit quod redditus et proventus ipsius monasterii
adeo sunt tenues et exiles. Quod ex ipsis eadem abbatissa et conventus sustentari non possint. Sed pro
habenda vite sue substantatione necessarie habeant publice mendicare, de elemosinis publice petere.
3
8
Abbess Constance appears on AD: Yonne, H 787, fol. 21r; the other witnesses, on fol. 22r.
AD: Yonne, H 787, fol. 22r: Somma reddituum annorum predictorum ostendit usque ad sommam
39
duocentarum octoginta quindecem librarum septem solidorum et decem denariorum turonensium et
nichil amplius.
4
4
4
0
1
2
Berman, ‘Labours of Hercules’, 57.
Berman, ‘Labours of Hercules’, 56.
Berman, ‘Labours of Hercules’, 57 (our emphasis).

A.E. Lester, W.C. Jordan / Journal of Medieval History 27 (2001) 43–54
53
subtle liar, but unfortunately a liar whose lies were compounded by the investigators
and/or compilers. In point of fact, there is no evidence to confirm this view.
Indeed, the evidence, especially the nuns’ mendicancy and Abbess Constance’s
hesitancy or shame at having to admit to it, is all the other way. Consequently,
Berman must play down the significance of or reinterpret the nuns’ confession of
mendicancy. The abbess, we are told, in the third and most breathtaking of Berman’s
deconstructive scenarios, did not mean what she said: ‘What abbess Constance may
have overtly dramatized as “public begging”, however, is not quite so obviously
outright mendicancy – nor was begging or breaking enclosure at this time necessarily
43
strictly forbidden.’ If this is true, then why did the nuns so carefully hide what
they had been doing? In fact, the nuns of La Cour chose to violate the explicit
regulations of their order (on which, more presently). The abbess’s words, ‘they
necessarily had to beg publicly’ (necessarie habeant publice mendicare) – pretty
‘obviously’ an indication of ‘outright mendicancy’ – are not susceptible of any other
reasonable interpretation.
Berman is correct, of course, in stating that the rules and enforcement of enclosure
were not always strict throughout the Catholic world before 1298 and the circulation
of Pope Boniface VIII’s bull Periculoso which categorically imposed rigorous
44
claustration on religious women. This scarcely justifies her imputation that the nuns
of La Cour regarded their own ‘breaking [of] enclosure’ as not ‘necessarily strictly
forbidden’. The Cistercians had required strict claustration from the first quarter of
the thirteenth century. In the years following 1218 ‘Cistercian statutes’, Elizabeth
Makowski remarks, ‘show a concerted effort to enforce cloister rules in affiliated
houses, to remove obstacles preventing the realization of strict enclosure, and to
4
5
restrict even necessary excursions by the nuns’. Regulations to this effect were
repeatedly confirmed, as, for example, in 1237 and 1257; those who broke them
46
were slurred as fugitives. In the codifications of 1237, a serious fear was expressed
4
4
3
4
Berman, ‘Labours of Hercules’, 58.
Elizabeth Makowski, Canon Law and Cloistered Women: Periculoso and its Commentators: 1298–
1
545 (Washington, DC, 1997). Makowski reproduces an edition and translation of the bull in Appendix
I, pp. 131–36.
4
5
Makowski, Canon Law, 32–33.
Canivez, Statuta, I, 1213, cap. 3: Item constituitur auctoritate Capituli generalis ut moniales quae
46
iam etiam incorporatae sunt Ordini, non habeant liberum egressum, nisi de licentia abbatis sub cuius cura
consistunt, quia omnino non expedit animabus earum. Si quae vero fuerint incorporandae de cetero, non
aliter admittantur ad Ordinis unitatem, nisi penitus includendae. Inhibetur autem, auctoritate praedicta
praemissa, ne praesumant mittere moniales suas ad aliquem locum construendum, nisi de licentia Capituli
generalis. Quod si praesumptum fuerit, quae missae fuerint pro fugitivis habeantur. Abbates in singulis
domibus monialium quas habent sub cura sua, auctoritate Capituli quae praedicta sunt satagant ordinare.
And in 1218, cap. 84: Moniales quae de cetero incorporantur Ordini, sicut definitum est, penitus includan-
tur, et nullum habeant proprium. Liceat tamen abbatissae cum duabus egredi propter inevitabiles causas,
de licentia abbatis cui commissae sunt, si potest fieri, quod tamen rarissime fiat et honeste. Qui visitator
taxet numerum personarum quem transgredi non liceat. Again in vol. II, 1228, cap. 17: De his quae sunt
iam Ordini societae a septem annis et infra, antiqua sententia teneatur, videlicet ut penitus infra triennium
includantur; et quae includi noluerint, ubicumque fuerint, a custodia Ordinis se noverit separatus. Bernard
Lucet, Les Codifications cisterciennes de 1237 et de 1257 (Paris, 1977), Dist. XV (the section of the text
devoted to the customs concerning nuns), cap. 1 and 5 of 1237 and cap. 7 of 1257.

5
4
A.E. Lester, W.C. Jordan / Journal of Medieval History 27 (2001) 43–54
that a house in straits might illegitimately attempt mendicancy, presumably in imi-
47
tation of the friars. Papal bulls reinforced the order’s own efforts. In 1234, Gregory
IX, in order to limit even licit travel outside the cloister, issued a bull ‘exempting
several Cistercian abbesses from responding to legal citations that would require
4
8
court appearances more than two days journey from their monasteries’. And in
267, in an obvious attempt to forestall imitation of the activities of the approved
male mendicant orders, Clement IV directed that the number of religious women in
1
4
9
each Cistercian house be fixed and limited at a number suited to their resources.
La Cour Notre-Dame de Michery was a modest house of religious women whose
leaders made a series of decisions in the mid-thirteenth century, especially to build
a new sanctuary, that severely taxed its resources. With inadequate conventional
revenues, with no patron of the rank of Blanche of Castile, increasingly burdened
by having to give gracious gifts for the crusades, but reluctant to admit their financial
problems, the nuns adopted a stop-gap measure, public mendicancy in a few large
towns of northern France where their affiliation with La Cour might go unnoticed.
It is unlikely that they expected this ostensibly temporary measure to continue
indefinitely, for it clearly violated the statutes of the Cistercian order, the order to
which they had so fervently wished to affiliate. However, their financial crisis per-
sisted, and so did their practice of public mendicancy in selected towns on a few
high feast days. The nuns always tried to hide what they did from the Cistercian
overseers, like the abbot of C ˆı teaux, but to their chagrin the practice was eventually
discovered. The revelation did not help the reputation of the nunnery, but it is prob-
ably an exaggeration to link the events of the thirteenth century, when the discovery
took place, to the suppression of the monastery in the fifteenth. It was, nonetheless,
a Cistercian administrative effort in the fifteenth century, including an effort to pre-
serve the records of affiliated houses, that led to the copying of the thirteenth-century
records of La Cour. What the cartulary preserves, as far as we can tell, it does so
with evident honesty, and we have tried to show, persuasively we hope, why the
contrary case offered by Professor Berman is not compelling.
Anne E. Lester is studying for her Ph.D. at Princeton University.
William Chester Jordan is Professor of Medieval History at Princeton University. His most recent book is
The Great Famine. Northern Europe in the Early Fourteenth Century (1996).
47
Lucent, Codifications, Dist. XV, cap. 1 of 1237: Si quas vero ex precepto domini pape, aut alia
necessitate suscipere oportuerit, non prius ordini socientur donec peractis competenter edificiis, ita pos-
sessionibus et rebus necessariis sufficienter dotate fuerint quod possint moniales includi penitus et incluse
secundum ordinem vivere, ita quod eas non oporteat mendicare.
4
8
Makowski, Canon Law, 33.
Makowski, Canon Law, 33.
49